Intoxicating Variety: Anatomy of a DrunkWalk

Big Sky Brooklyn is less an attempt to document or “capture” the elusive richness of real-life than an effort to communicate the intoxicating variety endemic to Brooklyn. And “intoxicating variety,” as I have found, is best appreciated when one is intoxicated. This is only fitting since the blog grew out of a series of “DrunkWalks,” which started as random wanderings and steadily became more rigorous, through the use of maps, satellite imagery, and other research.


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The well-planned, dutifully executed DrunkWalk™ succeeds as a narrative and fulfills a personal quest to create a poetic map of the terrain. Last year, for example, at the height of Indian summer (an 85-degree day in early October), I set out early to walk the entire length of Stillwell Ave. and a large chunk of Bath Beach. The day was gorgeous, the route was scenic, and more than once I found just what I was looking for: communion with the sublime. It turned out to be an epic DrunkWalk. Following are some images and impressions from that memorable day.


Weekdays in obscure Brooklyn parks and playgrounds, among children, mothers, and retirees: another layer of reality, outside the realm of the working world.



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Calvert Vaux Park






Calvert Vaux Park, on the other side of Shore Parkway (pedestrians have to cross a footbridge to get there), was a strange experience all around. The 73-acre park, also known as Dreier-Offerman Park, is in the early stages of a $40 million renovation. It’s still open to the public, though it’s all but empty, save for workmen (not many, though), some baseball players (practicing in uniform—in October), and some fishermen scattered along the bank facing Coney Island. A thick, sloping underbrush shields the pathway from the water’s edge, so you can’t see the fishermen unless you climb through the bushes, and then it feels like you’re spying on them. Odd.


Crossing back to civilization: end of the footbridge, looking east.


The exceedingly comfortable van seat where I sat at Cropsey Ave. & Bay 46th. When you're planted in a spot like this, the cheapest beer tastes like elixer.


The view looking west.


The view looking east.

School’s out: Late afternoon, the streets and delis are pulsating with juvenile energy.



Shaba grocery, beneath the tracks, at Ave. X and Stillwell (right next to a section of the sprawling, heavily fortified Gravesend trainyard)—an unwittingly iconic juncture. Notice the play of clouds and sky in the interstices between train and tracks. Appreciation of such a tableau is what DrunkWalks were made for.


Deep in the heart of Brooklyn.



Concrete factory/high rise at Stillwell & Z.


Stillwell Avenue Terminus. I couldn’t go this far without hitting the beach—it was October but it felt like a summer day at Coney Island (without all the people).


Every DrunkWalk is an indolence excursion and a true glimpse of the contemplative life. The epic DrunkWalk is one of new vistas and new terrain, and ultimately new ways of seeing the familiar. Discovery is the watchword and pleasure is the spur; the exhilaration of feeling that I’m part of something bigger, immersed in a microcosm of an intricate world, is what gives me wings when I’ve had more than a few. My Brooklyn DrunkWalks have led to a mytho-cosmic wellspring, an endless source of inspiration—in a realm beyond the local.

SLIDESHOW – Coney Island/Coney Island Creek (Flickr)

Still Life/Still Death: Bone on Pavement

Outside the Golf Course (Dyker Beach)

7/14/07 (Saturday), 3:19 pm

Garbage (Good Enough to Eat)

Ft. Greene, Near the Brooklyn Navy Yard; 1/8/08 (Tuesday), 4:52 pm

Derelict Movie Palace (Lowes Kings, Flatbush)

“A teenage Barbra Streisand worked as an usher here. After the 3,000 seat theater closed in 1977 the city bought it to prevent its demolition.”

Source: Walking Brooklyn

Northeastern Gothic: Admirals’ Row (Brooklyn Navy Yard)

“Chain link fencing keeps vandals away from Admirals' Row, once-elegant officers' houses now so decrepit that trees push up through the rooftops . . . Bordered by the Farragut housing projects at the tip of Fort Greene and the elevated Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, locals know [the Navy Yard] as the place to fetch towed cars.”

Source: New York Times

Abandoned Toys (Lost Youth)

Charging Up

Perches

Being idle while surrounded by activity can be quite calming. Here are a couple of my favorite spots to relax and refresh.

These Streets Are Alive With Revelations

Ft. Hamilton Parkway, early September 2007

Newkirk Plaza (It Still Looks the Same)

During a recent walk, far from home and with no particular destination, I came upon Newkirk Plaza. The shabby little subway station/mall in the middle of nowhere gave me more delight than would seem warranted by such a place, for I had passed this way before.

Twenty years ago, when I first moved to Brooklyn, I worked for my friend’s little two-man construction company and the job we were doing was in Midwood, renovating a couple’s basement (in a house on a tree-lined cul de sac, right next to the train tracks). And every morning we took the D train to Newkirk Plaza, which came to symbolize for me the dreariness of those sleepy early mornings and that work for which I was totally unsuited. The trip would register in my head like a tape loop of misery: “Newkirk, Newkirk, Newkirk, Newkirk.” Today, though, with the routine long behind me and trumped by the curious accident that summoned the memory, Newkirk Plaza just makes me smile.

The Bulk District

The Brooklyn Bulk District, home to Costco, Lowe’s, and Home Depot, is a place where mass and variety are the watchwords. These so-called “big box” stores are in fact brimming with big boxes.



I went to Lowe’s just to bask in the excess: 85 varieties of work gloves, 30 types of doormats, 54 styles of toilet seats. As I wandered around awestruck, I fondled scatter rugs and appliances; I picked up cedar hangings, tiles, a “double hook Madrid half pot rack,” a “telescopic gutter blaster,” and basically luxuriated in the textures of commerce. Continuous pop hits from the eternal present played (“My Eyes Adored You,” “If She knew What She Wants,” etc.) . . . “Special assistance needed in the pipe-threading area” . . . The Fork lift beeps . . . sight and sound, touch and smell: a cornucopia for the senses.




Lowe’s is a wonder of mercantile giganticism and represents the transformation of the shopping experience. There’s nothing I really need there, but I like the idea that it exists, as an ideal of plenitude.


I set out for Costco late in the afternoon on a Thursday. The weekend was approaching and I needed to stock up. I also had to replenish for the following week (and the one after that). It was my maiden voyage to the “membership warehouse club,” which I had joined only the week before. It would be a lie to say I wasn't excited, in fact I was giddy.


After only a few minutes wheeling my cart through the bulging aisles of condiments, snack foods, and staples, I realized this was no mundane trip to the grocery store, but rather a journey to the threshold of bloat.



Costco is a retort to scarcity and an icon of abundance. It also epitomizes the downside of affluence. Casualties of over-indulgence abound there, listless and corpulent, object reminders of how the promise of America has been reduced to the promise of self-gratification.


There was too much I wanted, in quantities well beyond my needs, at unreal prices, too. I became paralyzed by so many tantalizing options, so I fled empty-handed. Outside I saw the aftermath of one family’s trip to Costco. Apparently too excited to even get their goods into the car (let alone all the way home), they scarfed them all up right there in the parking lot.