Seven Red

The last stretch of our adventures took us home, which is to say, to Brooklyn. Sure, the time we’ve spent elsewhere has by now long dwarfed the few paltry years we spent in Brooklyn, but when we walk down Smith Street in the dimming light, we know this is our spiritual home – a tribal and intense feeling that she and I share. So we were thrilled to visit the Brooklyn famiglia in their Cobble Hill apartment, where we spent two short days last week. babygirl got to stroll the cracked sidewalks through the brownstones of Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, and even got to play in a real live New York City playground. We got good wine, killer porterhouse, real buffalo mozzarella, and then a fantastic, Bloody Mary soaked brunch at Bocca Lupo.  And Chelsea beat  Newcastle, much to Loung*rati’s delight.

Here’s babygirl doing whatchoo do in Brooklyn: stoop-sittin’ with the best of them:

A view from the Brooklyn famiglia’s back porch, Lower Manhattan in the background:

And finally, this from the Carroll Gardens park where babygirl played. They have two bocce ball courts in this particular park, one open to all – and in disgusting shape, and one locked in an enclosed area, with the key to said enclosure mysteriously handed out to old Italian men who will kick your bony ass in bocce, and insult your pathetic skills in the bargain. Somehow, Loung*rati managed to get one of these keys – being Italian, but not old. The locked up and free bocce courts are the vestige of the old Court Street/ Carroll Gardens Italians, now overrun with other populations.

There was always a bit of tension when we lived in a quickly regentrifying neighborhood to the east. In some faint imagining of solidarity, I’d nod affirmatively when we saw “WHITE FOLKS GO HOME!!!” graffiti that proliferated on 5th Avenue south of Flatbush. In one spot, some hipster had spray-painted a cringing “LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR” around a naive heart. The anti-gentrification folks had brilliantly transformed it into “YUPPIES LOVE $$$!!! THIS IS NOT YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!” Smackdown, I told she at the time, smiling. “You do understand,” she said, “that we’re the regentrifying white folks, right? We’re the yuppies.” Oh, right.  So, then. This, from the Carroll Gardens park:

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