Jordan's adorable and her grandma, Alexis, asked me to take some photos of her for her upcoming birthday party CD/party-gift. Being the family photographer, I complied (gladly).
Jordan Leigh Mosher at our house on Saturday, May 29, 2004.
Another shot of Jordan.
Ah, I got her to smile at me.
Jessie and Eddie (and baby) left and Peter Lori arrived with Gail. Appetizers were devoured and the main courses, roast pork and skirt steak came off the grill and we sat down to a lovely dinner.
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Today, Sunday, was one of those fabulous spring days. Cool, (very cool for the end of May). And no cars on the streets to speak of. I remarked to Stacey as we pedaled down to the bottom of Park Slope that this was the way Sundays used to be so many years ago. Do you remember those Sundays of long ago? When nothing was open, that is, all the store were closed. The streets were empty. The day was simply pristine: fresh air, dry, not too hot - perfect for rolling through empty streets on your bicycle. What people were out were sitting around in front of their houses, just hanging. It brought back memories of the 60's and 70's when a Sunday was a Sunday -- a true day of rest.
So you probably want to know where we were headed. Stacey had a yen for pancakes and the place for probably the very best pancakes you might ever taste is CAFE LULUc at 214 Smith Street in Cobble Hill.
LULUc is one of our favorite little places: very cozy, great food. And there's a garden in back. Just lovely.
The bar at Cafe LULUc in Cobble Hill.
The pancakes' secret is, according to someone I know who knows someone who knows, maple syrup folded into the batter that gives them a wonderful and intense flavor usually lacking in other flapjacks we've had over the years. Anyway, they're very good. Try'em.
The name, you ask? The "c" was added when, after they opened the place, they discovered that there was another Cafe LULU in existence. So what to do without a big rigamarole and added expense? Just add a "c" to the name of course. Of course.
After brunch we biked onwards. Our destination? We wanted to check out a house on Pioneer Street in Red Hook that Danielle spotted in a real estate listing. And our friend Tamar was showing some of her paintings in a gallery that's housed in an old warehouse on a pier that juts out into New York Bay.
Red Hook is an "up and coming" neighborhood on Brooklyn's "rim" that has been "down and going" for many years. A true backwater neighborhood, it's been forgotten for years: forgotten by the city in terms of services; forgotten by people because it's so out of the way. It lies behnd the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel entrance and the word "hook" in its name derives from the shape of the locale as it juts out into the bay and forms a hook-shaped shelter. In the old days, this hook provided a natural harbor for boats in the Erie Basin, one of NY's largest boat yards. Grain from American's bread basket came from the midwest on barges down the Erie Canal, then down the Hudson and was loaded onto waiting freighters in the Erie Basin to be shipped to markets across the ocean. These yards closed with the advent of containerization in the years after World War II and the remnants are there for all to see today: rotting piers, ancient warehouses and even some hulking wrecks of boats abandoned long ago. Spooky but, hey, this is waterfront property and my guess is that, Manhattan prices being what they are, not to mention other Brooklyn neighborhoods approaching Manhattan prices, this interesting neighborhood has nowhere to go but up and up.
Today, one of those piers with its sturdily built warhouse named after a civil war entrepeneur who built it (William Beard), is the home of the gallery we visited. The warehouse has been wonderfully converted into workshops and studios for artists and galleries to display their work. This is being done under the auspices of BWAC - The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. The view of the harbor is unforgettable. If you like exploring, this visit to Red Hook at the end of Van Brunt Street should be on your lists of day trips this spring.
You can almost touch the Statue of Liberty when you're out on the pier at the end of Red Hook.
The sign tells the story of Mr. Beard and his warehouses.
A band was playing on this beautiful Sunday. But look at the back drop. This is the ghostly Erie Basin - once a dynamic, hustle-bustle of a harbor where grain from American wheat fields in the midwest were loaded off of Erie Canal barges and onto hundreds of freighters that were then sent out to sea to deliver their cargoes in Europe.
Mr. Beard never knew that his warehouse would one day be artists' studios.
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