BROOKLYN OF AMPLE HILLS

Brooklyn of ample hills was mine.

Walt Whitman

Bensonhurst, Brooklyn circa 1900

I read that line a year ago and I stopped writing on this blog.  I had to think about the Brooklyn that was mine – it had changed quite a lot since I moved there.  The real estate developers frothed at the mouth since the Nets Stadium was built and my neighborhood, across the Park from Park Slope enticing with it's run-down buildings was screaming to them to be gentrified.

Now, the steel doors to the pre-war apartment buildings attempting to make them as impenetrable as a prison, were being replaced by glass ones. Exterior vestibules were being built, getting people out of the rain and snow faster and letting them drip in a vestibule instead of the lobby.  Lobbies were getting upgraded and the all elevators were working.  

Thank you, realtors, that Brooklyn is now the most expensive city in the US.  Higher than Manhattan?  Higher than San Francisco?  Seems impossible.

The shabby, stinky grocery at the corner of Lincoln Road and Flatbush Avenue is now a glassy, classy “health food” store.  The building that housed the Chinese restaurant that used to cook everything in the same grease for a week is torn down and a new apartment house is there with a big, clean, upscale grocery store (meaning produce is about 30% higher than any of the stalls on Flatbush) with it’s own overpriced hot and cold salad bar (I must admit the mashed potatoes are great).

There are new restaurants along Flatbush that open fully at the front so their music can blare out and attract customers that love having tinnitus in the morning.  And there are restaurants that are actually inviting – serving wonderful food and a staff with smiles who will turn the music down if you ask them (Gino's Italian at Lincoln Rd. and Flatbush - great lobster ravioli or Bonafini aka Blessings which serves all day, but try them for breakfast).

There’s a huge apartment building on Flatbush which defies the ordinance that you can’t build a building that can be seen from Prospect Park.  People in the park want to feel they have escaped the city and not feel king-konged by real estate developers.  Too bad now.

The Brooklyn I knew when I first moved there is becoming gentrified, but the Brooklyn that was mine will always be mine.  The Brooklyn of winter with that first snow-globe snowfall that brings the city to a whisper.  Followed by northers that make you feel that your eyeballs might freeze.  Christmas lights and decorations and toys displayed in the windows.  Brooklyn of heart-breaking spring days with small leaves on the trees and wildflowers (daffodils and irises) in the park.  The Brooklyn of summer with cool breezes, open windows, people playing dominoes on the sidewalk and that one horribly humid month of August.  Brooklyn of glorious fall.  The 100-foot trees across the street turning yellow and rust.  The sidewalk painted with red aspen leaves, brown oak and maple.  The umbrella of yellow leaves on trees in the park. The history, the pace and passion, neurosis, complaining, anger and aggressiveness.  The sound of the train in the ditch behind the house.  The endless walking past 100 year old houses and trying to hear their stories.  The varying cultures represented in clothing, behavior, accent, restaurants, body language.  

Brooklyn of ample hills was mine and I loved it.  I still love it, but now it’s a little bit slicker on the exterior and people spend a lot of time looking at their cell phones.  The old signs are gone – replaced with new ones.  But it's still got the garbage in the gutters.  And the noises of traffic and people.  Still, underneath, it's still got the Brooklyn that was Walt Whitman’s.

Prospect Park before it was Prospect Park
looking toward Brooklyn Museum circa 1900