From the Victorian houses of Prospect Park South I headed to Cobble Hill and Smith Street for a wee bite at Cafe Luluc. I entered Prospect Park at Park Circle where Coney Island Avenue ends. The park was magnificent -- it always is. And crowded with bikers, skaters, walkers, joggers, picnickers and drummers (yes, drummers who are always drumming by the dozen,on any given weekend, near the entrance at Parkside Avenue). it's a fabulous people's park and the people take to it with great love and affection. On a hot summer day, cool off in Propsect Park.
I took the park drive from the southwest entrance at Park Circle and pedalled (mostly uphill) to the northern exit at Grand Army Plaza. Then I coasted all the way down the Slope on President Street until I hit the Gowanus Canal. I crossed the quaint, old Carroll Street Bridge and arrived in Cobble Hill. And, to my surprise, there was yet another street fair on Smith Street and it was teeming with people.
Smith Street was packed with people on a crisp summer day.
Young girls on Smith Street. Downtown Brooklyn is the center of the Arab community in New York.
A people watcher at the Smith Street festival.
I walked the lenghth of the fair, rolling my bike, not easily, through the crowds. Baluchi, an Indian restaurant, had their food for sale in one of the stalls out on the street and I stopped for a Samosa which is one of the few fried things I eat. Can't resist them. Then I stopped for a bowl of mussels in a spicy red sauce and a cold Belgian Beer at Luluc. I sat there and just watched the world pass by.
The bar at Cafe Luluc as seen from my table.
After lunch I moved a bit further up the street and found a cool (and loud) Latino band playing and the people were dancing a storm. Just as I got there they started a jazzy rendition of the great Puerto Rican song, Que Bonita Bandera "What a beautiful flag!", a song which I knew from many years back. What a great scene: people were dancing, rocking and smiling. The sun was shining. For a few minutes all the negative realities of the new world we live in faded away. It was the way it ought to be.
This band was rocking and the people, dancing! -- ¡Que bonita bandera!
Dancing the day away on Smith Street.
Quite a show.
Cotton candy anyone? From the pink cotton candy jeep no less.
I headed home via the same route I had come; took a few more shots of houses along Rugby Road and was tired but feeling pretty good after 21 miles biking around my dear old Brooklyn. It was a great summer Sunday. The way it ought to be. Indeed.
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