Brooklyn Bound

“Only The Dead Know Brooklyn” may have been an accurate observation in 1935, when Thomas Wolfe wrote the short story for the New Yorker magazine. But today, the people who know Brooklyn are very much alive and inhabit one of the most happening and with it sections of New York City.

Growing up in the Bronx, we learned to avoid Brooklyn, because of its remoteness and the strange dialect attributed to the people who lived there. Going to Brooklyn was like going to a foreign country and took almost as long on the subway system. As luck would have it, Brooklyn police headquarters was my first assignment as a reporter with the New York Post. That’s were they sent the try-outs to make their bones.

Every chilly morning at 5:00 am in the dead of winter, I would mount the train at 207th street in the Bronx for the monotonous hour-long ride to Borough Hall in Brooklyn. How many times did I doze off, miss my station and wind up in Coney Island? That’s when I realized that I needed to pick up a specialty and wangled my way onto the financial desk, where it was 9-to-5 in the more familiar environs of lower Manhattan.

That was almost 50 years ago and so now I return to Brooklyn with great anticipation and only slight apprehension about what my wife and I will find on this first leg of our golden wedding anniversary journey of renewal and discovery.

We start in Brooklyn because that is the summer berth of the Queen Mary 2, from whence it begins the “autumn escape” up the New England coast to Halifax and Quebec. Before boarding the Queen at Pier 12 we’ll take in the various sights of the area, such as the Brooklyn Museum, which is the second-largest art museum in the United States, after the Metropolitan in Manhattan.

We’re told that neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO are very chic now. DUMBO is an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, an area that boosts high-priced condos, shops and galleries. The epitome of extravagance and cheek in Brooklyn, however, has to be the Peter Luger Steak House, a restaurant in the Williamsburg section that is more than 100 years old and serves very expensive melt-in-your-mouth beef, but does not take credit cards.

Think we’ll check out what DUMBO has to offer and leave Peter Luger to meat-eaters with bigger appetites and wallets.

And, That’s That… (for now)

234 Years and Counting

Just days before the 234th anniversary of the birth of this nation and when very little is going right for the US-of-A; this might be a good time to take some inspiration from the people who got us here.

There are several great books that chronicle and reflect on how this unique democracy began and the people who carried it forward. Starting with “1776,” an outstanding journey through the revolutionary war that demonstrates the grit of the early settlers of this British colony and their determination to be free of oppression.

Historian David McCullough traces events not only through the eyes of the leaders of the revolution, but through the dramatic actions of ordinary people, who met tremendous challenges. A central figure in the story is the 25-year-old bookseller, who had the bold idea to haul the massive guns of Fort Ticonderoga, which was captured from the British, overland in the dead of winter to Boston, turning the cannons on the Red Coats. That Herculean accomplishment contributed significantly to the favorable outcome of the revolution.

This bookseller (bookbrokerbob) is offering “1776” and other historical treatments of more recent major events and the leaders who shaped them for good or evil. My Amazon.com Storefront includes Edmund Morris’ “Theodore Rex,” Seymour M. Hersh’s “The Dark Side of Camelot,” Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder’s “The System,” David Halberstam’s “War in a Time of Peace,” Richard A. Clarke’s “Against All Enemies,” and Bob Woodward’s “Bush at War.” You can check out these books and others at great prices by going to http://amazon.com/shops/A38D3KMTMTXUGS.

The heaviest lifting bookbrokerbob will do is to haul your purchase with great care and expedition to the post office.

And, That’s That…