Day 346: Rude awakening

I drift off to sleep
And wake up in Jamaica
Queens, not paradise

I go there a lot, and it never ceases to disappoint.

Day 320: Borough Park girls

Long-sleeved, long-skirted
Four bewigged girls discuss who's
Pregnant and who's not

To them, my life is all bare shoulders and immodesty and misplaced ambition. To me, their life is all baby-making and crockpots and straining within the confines of religion. I can only assume that we're wrong about each other, and probably have a lot more in common than we think.

Day 306: In Mourning

This hard city weeps
For the sweet-faced little boy
Who never came home

Recent events in Kensington, Brooklyn have captured the attention of the entire city, if not the nation. Like any New York neighborhood, Kensington feels like a small town in many ways. You see and interact with the same people on a regular basis. People often smile at one another. There are many, many families with young children.

I know that I frequently link to articles in my haiku, but I prefer not to link to any of the media coverage on this story. I am not comfortable with much of what has been written about the murder of Leiby Kletzky. I feel that it exoticizes the Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities in a wholly unnecessary way. Many journalists seem to be tacitly blaming Leiby's grieving parents for raising him in an insular community. Some comments sections contain appallingly anti-Semitic language.

If you feel compelled to do so -- and I hope that you do -- please send some kindness and generosity into the universe in any way that you see fit. The universe needs it.

Day 283: Variations on a theme

Somewhere under the
East River, Brooklyn begins
And welcomes you home

With a resounding ear pop, in my case. But maybe that's just because I have weird Eustachian tubes. And if you don't already love Brooklyn, these amusing/ridiculous signs brought to you by local buffoon and perennial borough president Marty Markowitz just might win you over.

P.S. Many people insist that no one in Brooklyn actually says "Fuhgeddaboutit." Those people have never met my pharmacist.

Day 261: Old is the New New

Surrounded by change
An old man tells tales of a
Neighborhood that was

The first thing you should know is that I hate shopping. The second thing you should know is that I loathe going to a giant store when all I need are black socks. Imagine my delight when I read this article about a tiny old shop in nearby Carroll Gardens (the author says Cobble Hill. She's wrong.) that could help me to avoid the soul-sucking abyss that is Target. So I went.

Honestly, it was love at first sight. There are boxes of unmentionables stacked to the ceiling, you can buy a floral-print house dress for $8 (I may be back for one -- don't judge), and the sock selection is excellent. I am also now lifelong friends with co-owner Matty, age 83, who spent about an hour telling me stories about the shop, his clientele, and his long Brooklyn life. He was surprised and tickled pink to hear that his shop was mentioned in the Times. You can read an even better article about the shop (with pictures) here on a local blog.

So if you like cheap dry goods and old-timey stories, pay a visit to Marietta -- and encourage Matty to write a book!

I had so much fun that I wrote two haiku. Check back tomorrow.

260: Unwelcome guests

Film production crews?
Here in sleepy Kensington?
Go back to Park Slope

Film crews show up in adjacent neighborhoods all the time, turning the Victorian mansions of Ditmas Park into the Hamptons or having the brownstones of Park Slope stand in for a Manhattan that doesn't actually exist. But at the corner of Albemarle and East 5th? Either they're working on a reality show about elderly Russians or they took a wrong turn.

Also, if you're like me and you love this kind of thing, check out this great map. Props to the 11218 for its diversity.

Day 223: Empire Boulevard, Crown Heights

A profusion of
Scattered chicken bones like a
Spread of dead fingers

Sometimes haiku isn't pretty, but I'm damned if it isn't vivid.

Day 208: Bargain hunting fail

Even castoffs from
Your brownstone castle are far
Out of my price range

I've been haiku-ing far faster than I've been posting lately. Recently, Brooklyn Heights hosted a neighborhood-wide stoop sale in conjunction with the Atlantic Antic, a massively popular street fair that gives me severe agita . Brooklyn Heights is a gorgeous , affluent *** neighborhood full of palatial brownstone townhouses, many with historical and architectural significance.

However, these people could learn a thing or two about stoop sales. I walked by a stoop sale where a woman was looking at a glass candy dish. Nothing fancy. The kind of thing you'd expect to pay $1 for at a stoop sale in most places. When she asked the homeowner how much the dish was, the answer was $30. She put it down like it had bitten her. The next door neighbor's cheapest stoop sale item was $150. No, not $1.50. One hundred and fifty dollars.

***And yes, the property in the link above rents for $11,500 a month. I guess price tags like that skew your perception of reality. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a $300 salad fork to sell.

Day 195: Infant communication

You want a bottle?
Mommy's got a Blackberry
Just send her a text

Wouldn't it be great if babies could do that? Think of the screaming and tears that would be saved. I'm sure Park Slope is piloting a Baby Blackberry program already. Baby texting classes are going to be the new baby sign language classes.

Day 187: the tenth commences the law suit

A child skins her knee
Nine helicopter parents
Rush to make it right

This is why we will soon have an entire generation of people who cannot make simple decisions or use the toilet unaccompanied. Plus, when you over-parent your child this happens. As Intrepid Boyfriend often says, "Park Slope just needs to stop."

Day 175: Ranting at the ranters

This is hallowed ground?
Blocks of tchotchke vendors and
A few titty bars?

I've been following the (grossly misnamed) "Ground Zero Mosque" debacle as closely as anyone, and I must say I'm finding the entire thing mildly ridiculous. Having worked a few blocks from the World Trade Center site for several years, I can confidently say that while the site itself is indeed important both to individuals and to the entire city, the surrounding area is nothing more than a fairly gritty lower Manhattan neighborhood. I'm tired of people from places like Wasilla acting like they know what it's like to live in New York -- or know anything about life in a diverse society, for that matter.

Curious as to what the area around Ground Zero is really like? Check out this link.

Day 165: Brooklyn's own Love Canal

Its opaque waters
Unable to support life
The Gowanus sighs

(Snaking its way into Brooklyn like a crooked, filthy finger, the Gowanus Canal is one of the nation's most polluted waterways. Some of you may remember Sludgie, the apparently healthy Minke whale that wandered into the canal in April 2007 and died two days later. The EPA declared the Canal a Superfund site a few months ago. The designation does not appear to have affected rental prices in the neighborhood.)

Day 155: Crying fowl

Prospect Park laments
An avian genocide
For the sake of flight

(I'm not a wildlife biologist, or a jet pilot, or even a bird aficionado [see my earlier posts on pigeons]. What I am is a Brooklyn resident who loves the Park and its various creatures with naive devotion. That's why I was horrified to read that over the weekend DOA biologists descended on the Park, stuffed 400 Canada geese in crates, and carted them off to the gas chambers. It was part of an action to eliminate all geese within 7 miles of the city's airports. Was it really necessary to euthanize 400 geese that don't even leave the Park? And if this was really necessary, couldn't they at least have used the geese to feed some of the many hungry people in this city?)

Day 154: You're wearing that?

Scantily clad girls
Teeter through the Village on
Impossible shoes

(Saturday night in Greenwich Village involves a fair amount of pageantry. I'm a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl, so I find a lot of humor in the plumage employed to attract the attention of the opposite sex. Case in point: a group of young women parading down West 3rd in 4-inch heels, squealing and taking silly little Imperial China steps through waist-high piles of garbage bags. Well, the important thing is that they seemed to be having the time of their lives.)

Day 153: Sunday morning on the mews

Wives gossip under
Brightly colored kerchiefs while
Men play dominoes

Day 152: Love for Kensington

Yarmulkes, niqab,
Saris and Kente cloth meet
On Ocean Parkway

(One of the most wonderful things about my neighborhood is its diversity. As someone who grew up in a small town that was almost entirely white, I am appreciative of the opportunity to live near and interact with so many people from different backgrounds.)

Day 137: The trust fund baby's mantra

You expect me to
Work for eight whole hours a day?
I'm calling my dad

(Last summer the Times published this supremely humorous article about Williamsburg hipsters that lost their trust fund income as the result of the economic downturn. My favorite part is where the one guy "scales back" by shopping for a $300,000 apartment.)

Day 132: How will he get back to Williamsburg?

A forlorn hipster
With his broken down Vespa
Standing in the rain

(Almost everyone on the bus I was riding pointed and chuckled a little -- myself included. It's not that I relish other people's misfortune, it's just that it's funny to see a hipster so resigned to getting raindrops all over his bushy beard, ironic t-shirt, and Buddy Holly glasses. For those of you unfamiliar with hipsters, here is a handy-dandy guide.)

Day 118: Funny, they don't mention that on their website...

Fancy new hotel
Complete with scenic view of
The holding center

(That's right, for a mere $315 a night, you can stay in a room that overlooks a real live jail! I guess that's what they mean when they say the hotel was "conceived to create an authentic travel experience integrated into the fabric of the local landscape.")

Day 116: And that's the news from Brooklyn...

The adults are cute
The babies are numerous
And the dogs are fat

(I wonder if Garrison Keillor has ever made it out to BK?)