On March 24th, two days after I turned 47, I loaded our apartment-sized freezer into the back of our Subaru. It was a tight squeeze, but everything fit.
It was a big step. It meant we were leaving Brooklyn for a long time. It meant we weren’t planning on coming back until things settled down.
Even now I have a hard time remembering what those days were like. We didn’t know what was happening and we didn’t know what would happen.
No one was wearing masks yet, we didn’t know.
We suspected that things would be better in New Jersey. That we could go outside and take a walk, build a swing set, a playhouse. Plant a garden. Even though it meant two weeks self-quarantine it was worth it, we said.
We were right. We missed a lot in Brooklyn, but we had a better time. The kid had a better time.
That freezer lives in NJ now, but the new one – identical in every way – was just delivered to us in Brooklyn this morning.
One day shy of six months – it feels like we’re back, but we still don’t know what will happen.
After all the time they spent in court defending their plans for condemning people out of their gentrifying homes in a ‘blighted’ neighborhood, it looks like Atlantic Yards is probably dead. That’s old news and it’s going to leave a huge hole in the middle of Brooklyn. Maybe in time we’ll fill it in with something less atrocious than Miss Brooklyn, or maybe it’ll just be a junkie’s delight.
But in terms of tear it down & then have developers back out, how about Coney Island? Coney Island of decades of entertainment for people who can’t afford the Hamptons fame. Fuck them I guess. They’ve started dismanteling, but does anyone really think that they’re going to get billions for the plan? Not going to happen, and we lose the history, the diversion, the fun. I wonder how the Cyclones will like being the only thing between the projects and the beach?
Posted in Brooklyn at December 11th, 2008. Comments Off on Destroy, Don’t Develop..