bottle beach, brooklyn

before i lose all my respectable person cred by posting pictures of belize, i wanted to show you this:

there are beaches in brooklyn too. although instead of having white sand and swim up bars they have trash and horse bones. wait wait- it is not just regular trash; it's antique trash! old bottles, shoe leather, and newspapers from the 1930's and 40's. and actually, you can find huge conch shells too.

informally known as bottle beach, this stretch of bay near floyd bennett field is actually (romantically!) called dead horse bay. apparently, what is now floyd bennett field used to be a much smaller island called barren island which NYC used for landfills and horse rendering (read: hooves made into jello). over time, the municipal government expanded this area of land for use as an airfield, and closed up all the landfills. due to erosion in the last 25 years, parts of the landfills have been exposed and tidal currents carry the trash ashore at dead horse bay. because the trash is "washed" and bouyed by the seawater, it often washes ashore cleaned and intact. amazingly, you can find thick glass bottles from the 50's that held even the most mundane things: clorox, asprin, ink.

on a foggy morning in winter, beach combing almost alone, picking up all variety of treasure, i felt almost as happy and relaxed as i did in belize. almost.


to get to bottle beach: take flatbush ave. all the way to floyd bennett field. when you pass the abandoned hanger, you will take a left at the next stop light if you are in a bike. if you are in a car, you will take a right. there is a parking lot and a bus stop. you will know it is the right place if you can see the toll entrance to the bridge from here. if not, keep going. park your car at the parking lot and walk across the road to where a tiny path emerges from the woods. if you're in a bike, taking that left should have led you right to the path. follow the path until you come to a fork with three options- you're going to want to take the rightmost option. you'll walk about 5 mins. until you get to high dunes at which point you're steps away. i know it sounds totally sketchy and borderline ridiculous, but trust me it is the best way.

what you'll find: the trail dumps you out in what seems like the middle of the beach, but if you walk way far out to your left you'll find the beach hooks back around. at the back inlet, you'll find old shoes, lots of rusty iron, some avant-garde driftwood and huge bright orange shells dyed by leather. over the left side you'll find larger bottles and newer garbage- i think some people use this as a current dump too?

note: it feels so foreign to talk about this in brooklyn, but make sure to check the tidal predictions. going at low tide is ideal.

franny's

amazingly, down the block from my apartment just happens to be one of the best casual places to eat in all of new york. and i'm not alone in this assessment either. in the past month, i've been to franny's three times and each time the menu was almost entirely different, due to their commitment to farm-fresh produce, but it was consistently very thoughtful and delicious.

while it is billed as an upscale pizza place, i don't often order pizza. it is good pizza, of course, but nyc has lots of great pizza to offer and i'd rather go to a place like grimaldi's or difara's if i want the real pizza experience. also, i'm not a huge pizza fan. what is really remarkable about franny's are the smaller appetizer dishes, which are unique and inspiring.

recent dishes i've ordered: (just paraphrasing here- the menu sounds much fancier)

salad of bitter greens with an anchovy vinaigrette
potato croquettes (the server explained that they looked like dunkin' donuts' munchkins!)
beets with peppers, walnuts and cheese (which i'm attempting to re-create at home)
coddled egg on crostino with bottarga (bottarga is dried fish roe shavings)
homemade pancetta on crostino with french butter
vanilla panna cotta with saba (like an italian flan)

yes, all of it was lovely, even the salad. i'm not a fan of bitter foods, so i was surprised when i liked this. the only downside to franny's is that it is a little expensive for my budget- around $30 per person for a meal.

last time i was there was on a six-person excursion (as the party liked to call it) and we had a hell of a time figuring out the bill. below was our attempt. one of the worst feelings is going out to dinner with friends and feeling like you paid more than you should have. this elaborate tally, however dorky, ensured that no one had to feel cheated.

Franny's

location, location

during the dead of winter, i often find myself thinking about greener, warmer pastures. i was reminded recently that it was around this time last year that i was off to puerto rico, for what might have been the most relaxing week of my life (oh- minus the all the roosters- the smelly dead ones and the very alive and LOUD ones). sadly, i won’t be going anywhere this year, but the nice thing about living in a four-season climate is that least i can still look forward to the summer. and surprisingly, last summer i found a place in brooklyn that reminded me of puerto rico. i’m going to tell you about it now, because i want you to forget about it by the time the summer comes- it’s so great that i’m sure you’ll be there every weekend, and then it won’t be as abandoned and serene for me.

if you take the B61 bus to red hook, get off on van brunt street near dikeman. it's a nice walk from here. walk down van brunt until you get to a sign on a street post that instructs you to turn for “key lime pies”. i don’t remember what street it is on and anyway, it is more rustic if we pretend to not know. a couple more blocks down, you’ll turn down a gravel lined dirt road toward a seemingly abandoned warehouse. if you’re in the mood, stop at the tiny door on the far end of the warehouse to pick up one of the most delicious things you’ll ever put in your mouth- a swingle; basically a mini key lime pie on a stick, frozen and dipped in chocolate. it sounds good right? well, it tastes even better. if you’re not in the mood (and who are you?!) then head straight to the end of the row of warehouses. little did you know, but you’re on a pier, and a little bit to the right of the view you see above is the best view of the statue of liberty new york has to offer- and you’re all alone to see it, at a picnic table at the end of a pier eating your swingle. just make sure you’re not there when i arrive.

christmas lights in brooklyn

there is something so magical about seeing holiday lights start appearing on houses around the neighborhood. as a kid, it was both a sign of good things to come and one of those things themselves, especially when we'd all pile in the car and take a trip to one of those streets where each and every house was entirely covered in lights and various movable figures. in my hometown the street was affectionately called "christmas tree lane".

upon moving to the city, i was saddened to think that this holiday tradition would be over, until this year (a full 7 years after i moved here!)when gothamist posted about the lights in the dyker heights section of brooklyn. after doing some research about good places to eat (thanks chowhound!) we set off.

when people think about brooklyn, or maybe when i thought about brooklyn as a teenager, i never pictured houses like these. brooklyn is so incredibly diverse and so woefully misrepresented in our common imagination. dyker heights is full of mansions; old colonial, tudor, french estates, italian villas. and each and every one decorated to the nines. we got out and walked around, christmas music blaring from each houses' speakers, making a confused, yet cheery, christmas cacophony.

afterward we headed over to one of the oldest diners in brooklyn, which apparently has a full soda counter still intact and homemade ice cream. sadly, we never got to see it, because, like many other small town diners, they closed very early on weeknights.

for a while last year, i was dead set on moving to la- things have changed since then, but this is yet another reason to stay in brooklyn; i still want to try that ice-cream.

More Dyker Heights Pictures

next wave

for my birthday this year, grace got me tickets to 3 performances at BAM (brooklyn academy of music)’s next wave festival. the first was a dreamy play about the life and work of joseph cornell, the surrealist who assembled mini-worlds in tiny boxes. the second was an incredibly striking and memorable dance performance called “borrowed light”, in which lost shaker songs were sung a cappella while heavily dressed dancers moved violently about. the last, which we saw last night, was the sweetly named “au revior parapluie”, directed and starred in by james thièrrèe, who, if i hadn’t known i could have guessed, is charlie chaplin’s grandson.

i’ve got nothing smart to say about the piece other than it was such a wonderful, whimsical way to spend the evening. part circus, part play, part puppet show, it was all very fun, funny, sweet and deeply moving. grace did good this year.

afterwards, we went to junior’s where i got fried chicken, ate too many pickled beets, and obviously went overboard with the fresh strawberry cheese pie. it was a lovely night. and my birthday was in june!

BAM next wave festival