Brooklyn Blues

I should be on a train headed north at 100 mph. But instead I'm looking for hotel rooms, bummed to see that Manhattan is completely sold out! The only room I can find is at a Howard Johnson's in a dubious part of Brooklyn. I'm confident it's a dodgy area. I call a friend who used to live in Brooklyn. He confirms my worst suspicions. He says not to stay there. He's pretty sure it's a bad area. I knew it. The photos on the website say " bad area". I spend another hour on Orbitz, Hotel.com LastMinuteDeal.com, Travelocity and other sites to no avail. I'm headed to Brooklyn tonight.

This puts me in a depressed mood. I've read all the press about how good Brooklyn is these days but to me Brooklyn is The Warriors, The Lords of Flastbush, the racial riots in Bensenhurst, the Bay Ridge rumbles of Saturday Night Fever or the Russian mafia in Coney Island. It's dangerous and a new frontier. I'm nervous and anxious to be staying in Brooklyn. It's big unknown. But me, being me, drawn to discovery and my undying wanderlust getting the better of me and I closed my laptop and headed for the subway before it got dark. Yeah the subway. I wasn't going to pay cab fare all the way to Brooklyn and I was definitely not going straight to the hotel. The longer I waited to go there the better. If it was in a bad neighborhood the less time I was there the better.

I looked at the map and decided to find dinner in Park Slope. Park Slope is the "new" Brooklyn. It's full of middle and high income types. My plan was to get off at Army Square and do a walkabout. Most of the professional hipster white people got off here so I followed them off the train, and I literally kept following them. I had no idea where I was and they obviously did as they walked at a brisk pace away from me. One block down the herd ducked right down a side street and I found myself in an incredibly handsome brownstone neighborhood. It's dusk and getting dark but I could tell the buildings and neighborhood were well maintained. Single men and women, couples, single mothers with babies in strollers or snugglies strolled the sidewalks. Many Brownstones had beautiful front gardens and patios with groomed plantings facing the street. This is my favorite type of urban neighborhood. Urbane, green, safe and beautiful.

I asked someone where the closet area for restaurants was. He directed me one block down to 7th Ave. Sure enough the whole street was lined with commercial shops at street level. Looking for comfort I stopped at a chicken and barbecue joint and had a Bronco sandwich. It was savory and huge! Grilled chicken breast with melted cheeses, peppers and onions on a big ol' kaiser roll.. As I sat there devouring the nosh and getting all anxious about going to the hotel the local cops and fireman came in and ordered Bronco sandwiches too. I knew I made the right choice!

Now I'm getting tired so I flag down a cab. I'm only 15 big blocks from the hotel so it can't be too bad right. Park Slope Brooklyn with it's mutli-million dollar brownstones isn't too bad (sic) so how bad could Crown Heights be?

I tell the cabbie where I'm going. He laughs. Why's he laughing? Oh boy I think. "You staying there tonight"he says and laughs again. Oh shit. What does he know that I don't. He says he just came from there. The cab garage is near there. He wants to head into Manhattan. OK I think. He must just be laughing at himself; at his folly of trying to get to Manhattan while I'm sending him back to where he started. At least that's what I tell myself. I watch Brooklyn drift by out the window. It looks fine. We go through a hasidic area. I think oh, maybe I'm heading into a Jewish area. I look at the map I printed from Google maps and see the hotel is near a Jewish rehab center. Yeah that's it, the hotel is probably Jewish run and full of Jews coming to visit their infirmed loved ones. Soon, no more Jews were out the window. The architecture started to degrade from stately brownstones to homely apartment buildings to three story walk ups to dilapidated one story brick squat houses with rusty old cars and debris in the yard. I'm not in Kansas anymore. I'm on the border of an area called Crown Heights. I'm at the hotel.

I sign in at the desk wondering what the hell I just got myself into.

I get on the elevator and two huge black women get on. They ask me "Are you staying here"? I say yes. " You meeting somebody"? I say no. " You want a girl in your room? I say no thanks and think, oh shit, where the hell am I? The bigger girl hits the smaller one and says " What if he was a cop." I think oh shit!

I pressed third floor in the elevator but it goes down not up. I think, oh shit! The elevator fills with to the brim. I'm the only white dude in there. I exchange eye contact with people in the elevator trying to be cool. Most people get off at the lobby. I think, maybe it's a church group? They look like a church group. One plump 50-ish gentlemen stays on the elevator. He's very well spoken. I think, maybe he's a minister? Yeah this is probably a Christian hotel. The girls on the elevator proceed to ask him. " Are you staying at this hotel? Are you meeting somebody or are you alone? He looks at the big girl and says "you know you're very beautiful". Oh shit I think. Floor three dings. I squeeze my way through the love fest and take off down the hall looking for my room. I duck in, look in the bathroom, the closet, under the bed. All clear. I bolt the door, pull the security hardware to latch it and push a chair against the door. At this point I don't care if I get burned up trying to get out of my room in a fire, I just want to make sure no-one is getting in!

The room was fine, relatively new and clean. It was furnished with inexpensive materials. Plastic tub/shower, veneer woods, serviceable carpet. There was a big red stain on it, I was sure was blood! No sign of bugs or cockroaches.

After watching the NY nightly news full of murders, missing persons and dismembered bodies I turn down the sound and try to fall asleep in my fortified cocoon.

Believe it or not I slept well. I woke up the next morning with the intention of getting outta there before most of the world woke up. I figured hookers, drug dealers, thieves and thugs would never be up at 6:00 AM!

I get down to the the lobby and I get a warm good morning from a young corn rowed kid. I enter the morning breakfast area. Christian radio fills the airwaves. Maybe it was a church group? An animated breakfast host entertains a nice southern family having breakfast.

I have the desk clerk, who was sleeping at the front desk, call me a cab. An unmarked car comes so I make him guarantee me a price before we drive away. Not that I could do anything about it. The guys was the size of a house, middle linebacker material.

I cab it back to Tribeca which 15 years ago gave me the same anxious feeling I had in Brooklyn when it was a desolate, low income neighborhood. Now, the shined up buildings with their awnings and blooming flowers said welcome back to your comfort zone. I sit down, have a cup-o-joe and begin to relax again....then I start thinking about when I'm going to go back to Brooklyn again.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Originally posted 5/12/07

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London - Off to Hogwarts

Funny picture my buddy just sent me. We were in London's Kings Cross Station at Platform 9 3/4 where Harry Potter always leaves for Hogwarts. I did take a running leap at the wall, suitcases and all....but I bounced off, much to the amusement of commuters, tourists and myself. :)

Things to do in New Orleans

Hey all - here's a New Orleans piece I did for Viator.com.

Bourbon Street was like a carnival midway that first night....with strippers. The street was full of life with a surging crowd, dirt & litter under our feet, spilt beer and lithe nearly naked bodies standing in doorways eyeing and enticing potential customers.

We watched a Cajun band inside Tropical Isle from the Bourbon Street banquette .....

For the whole post click here. http://travelblog.viator.com/new-orleans-things-to-do/

New Orleans Cities of the Dead

We were on the streets at 6:30 one morning. I love being out in the quiet. Bird song our only accompaniment down Royal Street.



After coffee at the Royal Blend coffee shop we looped around the hushed Quarter, strolled along the muscular river, turned up Canal Street and hopped a streetcar to Basin Street where we disembarked for St Louis #1, New Orleans' oldest cemetery. It began consuming residents in 1789.









You've seen these cemetery's on TV and movies. All the tombs are above ground because the water table is 5 inches below ground and anything you put under it rots and floats off. At 220 years old the cemetery is a model of derelict beauty. Well kept memorials and vaults watched over by blanche contrapposto angels are only highlighted accents in a wash of crumbling decrepitude.





















































































In the morning you don't get the dark shadows that elicit mind games and conjured phantasms but I gotta tell you entering this ghostly realm was still freaky. I was very hesitant to go too deep. One reason was the supernatural, the other was the Iberville Housing Project next door. We could either be pulled into oblivion by the ghosts of New Orleans or be mugged and killed by some desperate crack head. We slowly entered anyway pulled by the decrepit beauty of the tombs and the same curiosity that killed the cat. Plus I figured that by 6:00 AM the criminal element was tired out from their night's endeavors and went to bed.

Here's some video from our hesitant ramble through the cadaver condos.




Offerings of beads, candles, pages of books, feathers....and what does XXX mean scrawled on the face of certain tombs? People still believe in Marie Laveau's Voodoo Queen power and to conjure Marie's powers you need to mark her tomb with XXX in chalk or brick, rub the ground three times with your foot, knock three times (to wake the dead) and make a wish. Yikes.


These above ground cemetery's are known as the Cities of the Dead. St Louis #1 cemetery spans just one square block, but is the resting place of over 100,000 dead. That's a city sized amount of dead people.

In a city that seems to disregard the concept of linear time and wears all it's histories at once, these cemetery's are cool to visit. From their beehive oven tombs I'm sure these densely packed denizens still hold court over their beloved New Orleans.























I aint afraid a no ghosts!
Who you gonna call?

New Orleans - Joie de vivre

The music of the French Quarter Festival was amazing (as you can see from my previous post) but away from the stages the city of New Orleans itself kept us captive. The street life was convivial, the food was succulent, the drinks were dangerously tasty and the people were full of the joy of living. We explored the Quarter then spun in concentric circles like whirling dervishes radiating out to Magazine Street, St Charles Avenue, Uptown, the Garden District, Carrollton and Mid-City. I'll list some cool places we patronized in my next post but for now check out the vibe that emanates from that crescent curve on the shores of the mighty Missisippi in the city we call the Big Easy.

Enjoy the music. It's the Rebirth Brass Band doing "Fell Like Funkin' It Up".

New Orleans, St Louis Cathedral

We were walking up Orleans Avenue to Royal Street late one night and were met with this spectral image. Standing watch over the back gardens of St Louis Cathedral, Jesus takes up mightier heights when the sun sets to tend the Babylonian flock of quenched revelers roaming the Quarter and flooding up & down Pirates Alley.