Park Slope

UNLIKE the late, great Lou Rawls, I’m not a “natural” man. By that I mean that in my walks around NYC, I much prefer the more urban areas, as the…

In the days before central plumbing, you had to attend to the necessities somehow. New York City used to feature dozens of public baths. A remaining one, on 268 East…

A State Education Department of New York sign, created in 1952, hangs in front of an American Legion hall at 3rd Avenue and 9th Street, stating that remains of the 1st…

SORRY I “buried the lede” in the title, but I didn’t see any other way around it. In the spring I was wandering in Park Slope, the same day that…

I don’t feel shame in admitting that I have pizza at least twice a week, usually one slice for lunch or maybe two for dinner. I’m not adventurous, though; I…

To me, it’s amusing that while many office buildings do not have 13th floors, the devisors of numbered street grids in Manhattan and Brooklyn have never had problems with the…

T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock may have measured his life with coffee spoons, but I tend to measure it with old song lyrics. I passed this apartment building at #203…

Back in 2012 I was shuffling down 7th Avenue in Park Slope and I spied this glass leaf lettering in a window of an art gallery at #57 7th Avenue…

Back in October I was roving Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan quite a bit. In the year of Covid, I resumed roaming about, including riding the subways, at first fitfully in…

In a neighborhood chockablock with rich architectural forms, Public School 39, at 6th Avenue and 8th Street in Park Slope, is a standout even among such nearby treasures as the…

I found several stanzas of Desiderata outside an ice cream shop while staggering around in Park Slope back in 2011. I describe myself as practical and not especially spiritual, but…

As a boy, I took the B63 bus on 5th Avenue with my mother, father, or both, to some downtown Brooklyn destination. Or, sometimes we just took rides, as I…