Just a quick entry today. Yesterday, Sunday - and it's my second day off after the conclusion of jury duty. So I asked Stacey if we could just hop a Q train and head into Manhattan, just to hang out, walk a bit, shop a little and grab a bite.
So we did. And it was fun. It's one of our favorite occupations: just to walk the streets of our fair city. The beauty part of living downtown Brooklyn is that Manhattan is a hop and skip away... it's only 15 minutes and four stops from our subway station of 7th Avenue to Union Square (14th Street) in the "city."
De-training, we walked upstairs and headed to DWS - a giant shoe store that overlooks the park. Union Square has come of age in the last five years. The park has been completely renovated. New restuarants have opened all around it. New shops have been built on formerly decrepit 14th Street and it's a really fun place to walk, hang out, eat and shop. Not to mention the delightful farmers' market several times a week at the north end of the park.
Our quest was new dress shoes for my tuxedo. Yes, Peter Press, my brother-in-law is about to marry his partner of 12 years, Lori Berti. This will transpire next weekend and it's a black tie affair. The Tuxedo is at the cleaners. But it was time to upgrade my shoes and so we looked and found a nice pair at this very large and discounted chain.
After the shoes, we paradoxically headed upstairs to Filene's Basement. Stacey was on a quest for a specific man's cologne to take to our friends (at their request) who we'll be visiting in late January. The building housing DSW and Filene's is new. I think that years ago it housed Bradley's department store, now long gone and probably without many regrets. For years nothing but an abandoned building haunted that location. The new building, however, is quite attractive and has an all-glass front. The view of Union Square and its park was fabulous as we reached the fifth floor. I couldn't resist a photo.
And this is the view from the glass-fronted building that houses DSW and Filene's Basement. Notice the Empire State building - rear, left.
After shopping we walked around the corner and down a few blocks on University Place (so named because of New York University from which the street begins). We headed to a cute Korean restaurant that had been written up favorably in a recent issue of Time Out. It was in an article on DUMPLINGS! And this place has some great dumplings. The name of the little place was the Mandoo Bar and I had been there a couple of times before with my friend Lonnie. A Mandoo is a Korean dumpling and it can be filled with different stuff: pork, seafood, veggies or the fiery spicy-hot Kimchee, which is the national dish of Korea.
The Mandoo Bar on University Place between 10th and 11th Streets.
Now that's some nice dumplings!
After lunch we were going to head home but decided to see what was playing at the theater arond the corner on 13th Street. Our choice? Meet The Fockers and we decided that a silly, stupid but funny movie would fit the day perfectly so in we went for the 5:20 show. Stupid it was but how could anyone resist Robert DeNiro as the very straight, proper and uptight, former CIA agent, Jack Byrnes and father of the bride, his soon-to-be inlaw and counterpart, Dustin Hoffman (playing Mr. Fokker) - unrepentant hippie leftover from the 60's who refers not to the CIA but the CLIA ("Completely Lacking in Intelligence Agency")and his wife, an in-your-face sex-therapist played by, yep -- Barbra Streisand. Their son, Gaylord (Greg) Fokker, (Ben Stiller) a male nurse, is to marry DeNiro's daughter, Dina and macho Byrnes is having none of it. And so it goes and so it went. But there were enough laughs and gags to keep our attention without too much concentration.
After the movie we hopped on the train and were home in under half an hour. A nice New York City Sunday afternoon.
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