Random things

So there are those days when I come across something cool on the web or something that would make a great illustration to a story. I have a folder on my desktop and my goal this week is to make a post using at least one of these photos to refresh this stale and tired blog. Even though it Wednesday we’ll give it a go (you know you have to start out slow as to not over exert oneself)

What we have here is a “borrowed” photo from a flickr account. This is a photo of the bar B61 located on the corner of Columbia and Degraw street in the area which can be referred to as Columbia water front district (even though you can't really see the water front through the fences and the harbor equipment), north red hook (just curious; if this is “north” red hook then honestly where does red hook end and begin) and or carol gardens west (much like “east Williamsburg” don’t kid your self its Bushwick. This is the term applied to this area to make it popular for people to move since Carroll Gardens and the BACOCA area [BA –what-a ? yea exactly]). Well whatever it be named I called it home for the first 2 –3 years I inhabited New York and its borough named Brooklyn.

B61 is located beneath the restaurant Alma, tasty enough not my most favorite spot in the neighborhood. It is the place that I signed my lease and wrote the biggest check in my life so far and handed it over to the “real estate agent” whom I could barely understand and was convinced he has just stepped off the boat from Ireland. B61 was kind of an unwind place that wasn’t my apartment..small cramped…sometimes hostile. B61 is where we made friends with the owners and some of the constant patrons, it is that part of our neighborhood that gave Brooklyn a neighborhood feeling and made it a "my neighborhood" instead of feeling tossed my the Big-ness of the city. You met people that owned the local businesses, ran the water barge museum at the end of red hook, worked on the boats that came into and out of red hook, and awesome bar tenders. It was a place that you could kind of go and see nice people or meet someone new. It was also the bar that 2 1/2 years ago I met Eric.

We both knew the bar tender separately and he had mentioned to me that day his friend had gotten mugged. That friend was Eric. In a bizarre way I think it was almost worth the $16 and stolen disk man or who knows if we would have met.

Its going to be a place that is going to stick with me as long as I am in Brooklyn. In the summer they open up the windows (and as long as they are not cleaning the slaughter house across the street) its beautiful and makes you feel like you are sitting out on a summer night enjoying the people around you.

As much as the neighborhood changes I hope that B61 is always a staple.