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Ankling to the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market

October 21, 2007

Or, if you prefer, the Clinton Flea Market. Hah! No one ‘cept realtors calls it “Clinton” (named after New York’s first governor and not its current junior senator).

The official name:

The flea market is pretty famous, at least locally. I’ve been there about three times and I’d have to say it has gotten smaller each time. Saturday’s displays filled only a fraction of the road blocked off for it (at the corner of 9th Avenue and 39th Street, going to 10th Avenue).

However, the most wonderful thing about it is that it is a true flea market. You want dishes, glasses, silverware, watches, furniture, records, cds, DVDs…whatever? They got it.

This guy is not for sale (but I guess you could make an offer).

The displays were pretty spread out, but there was a central area that was chock-a-block with stuff.

I have to admit that I was startled by one item. A “secretary”.

“Startled” only begins my emotions on it. I inherited a near exact version from my grandmother. It sits in my little Manhattan co-op even as I type away.

But the flea market version is in better condition. And it has a real lock, and it has little supports that pivot out to support the desk top when it swings out, and it has FOUR drawers (mine has three). Mostly, it seems too….inexpensive. Not that I would ever sell mine (family would kill me if I did), but $295 seems awfully little for something I treasure so much. Who knows how much I could have knocked the price down to?

-H

Categories: Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, Mid-town, Wanderings

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A Battery Park Ankle

October 15, 2007

Battery Park is southern Manhattan. That is, it’s south of everything else in Manhattan. You can say it has several parts: the wooded and pathway-rich park, a section of monuments including the battery itself, and the waterfront.

I don’t know quite how large it is, but it’s a very cozy park with relatively little noise and the only traffic one typically notices is the boat traffic.

Typical of NYC parks, there are lots of trees.

And some interesting statues and monuments. The most recent one is probably “The Sphere”.

Its a remnant from the World Trade Center. It was in the WTC’s plaza for nearly 30 years and was badly damaged at 9/11. In 2002, an eternal flame was lit (not a good picture of that, but it’s at the lower left).

There’s a nice traditional statue of John Eriksson, the inventor of the screw propeller and the designer of the Union Ship “Monitor”, the Union’s iron-clad. That’s a model of the Monitor in his left hand (it’s nickname was “the cheesecake on a raft”, which just goes to say that the word “cheesecake” is very different 140 years later).

The namesake of the park, the battery, is a circular structure that was being used to issue ferry tickets when I was there, so I didn’t get inside. There are spots for the large cannon, as I recall.

There’s also a huge monument to World War II’s soldiers, sailors, and marines that died “in US Coastal waters.” the names of those that died are listed by their military branch (Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Marines, Army-Air Force). This picture captures only about half the monument.

Here’s a closeup of one of the stones. You can see that it’s a lot more than just names.

In the center of this stone monument is an eagle statue.

The text at the bottom reads “1941 * * * 1945 Erected by the United States of American in Proud and Grateful Remembrance of Her Sons Who Gave Their Lives in Her Service and Who Sleep In The American Coastal Waters of the Atlantic Ocean INTO THY HANDS, O LORD”

Now that’s an inscription!

Finally, there’s the waterfront. It’s very nice, lots of seating, and a view worth traveling for.

Here’s the walkway.

And a couple of pictures of the view. First, the Statue of Liberty.

And Ellis Island.

-H

Categories: Battery Park, Manhattan, Wanderings

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Ankling to Herald Square in Manhattan

October 13, 2007

Just a short post to point out a famous landmark in Manhattan: Herald Square.

You know it from “Give My Regards to Broadway” by George M. Cohan and the line that says “remember me to Herald Square” sung by Jimmy Cagney (okay, that was in the movie “Yankee Doodle Dandy”). But, what’s the deal behind it?

Most of Manhattan is laid out in a grid with the streets going east-west and the avenues going north-south. There’s the one big exception: Broadway. Broadway goes mostly north-south, but with an east-to-west drift. The grid makes square blocks, but everytime that Broadway crosses an avenue, it causes one of more “splinters” of the blocks to be left over and those bits and pieces are called “squares”. I’ve yet to see one that’s square, and most of them are pretty much smallish islands. Of course, Times Square is the most famous (where Broadway crosses 7th Avenue), but Herald Square is probably second (where Broadway crosses 6th Avenue).

Here’s a picture of it from just north.

Nobody would call it big, but they have put some effort to making it look good.

The square is named after the old newspaper “The New York Herald”, just like Times Square is named after The New York Times. Well, the Herald is long gone, but the Times is still around (however, the Times is moving its operations a little more distant from its current 43rd Street location to 41st Street and a bit further west from where it is now).

Anyway, Herald Square does have a famous neighbor: Macy’s.

The square’s tower is a monument and celebrates…the New York Herald (actually, its founders).

A closeup of the plaque at the bottom.

You may need to click the picture to be able to read it.

-H

Categories: Broadway, Manhattan, Wanderings

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Ankling Brooklyn’s Smith Street

October 6, 2007

I watch a number of the local TV shows such as “$9.99” and “Cool in Your Code” that detail interesting areas around NYC. Brooklyn is a subject in a lot of these shows and they tend to call every area that they are reviewing a new sort of hipster haven. And it seems to be true. New Yorkers are always looking for the new and the unique. And that tends to mean artists, restaurants, and nightclubs. Recent times appear to have really driven out the artists from Manhattan and they keep moving to Brooklyn (and I’d be remiss not to mention that some of them go to The Bronx, too). Brooklyn’s big and sprawling, but the attractive areas tend to be near the East River. I’ve mentioned places like Park Slope (not particularly near the East River), Brooklyn Heights (right there), and Williamsburg are all those sorts of places. But, I’ve also been aware of another area: Smith Street. Technically, it isn’t an area at all. Instead, it’s a street that seems to go through three significant neighborhoods and all three are on the “cool” radar: Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens (also known as the BoCoCa district). The odd thing is that I seem to spot “Smith Street” mentioned all over the place, but the BoCoCa area is thrown in almost as an afterthought. Well….not that extreme. I’ll hear something like how good the restaurants are in Boerum Hill, and the address is almost always on Smith Street. Or, I’ll see an ad that mentions Carroll Gardens and the ad will mention Smith Street. Or, I’ll read an article on some new celebrity that’s chosen to live in BoCoCa and I’ll see Smith Street mentioned as a celebrity spotting area or something. In any event, the place just seemed to be asking Famous Ankles to wanders its length.

And so I did.

The furthest south part of the district is Carroll Gardens, so it’s appropo that I got off the subway at the Carroll Gardens stop and started heading north.

First of all, remember that this is Brooklyn. That means lots of things to me. First, it means low buildings and then it means lots of trees. There are tons and tons of brownstones and oodles of restaurants and vintage clothing places. Smith Street is absolutely typical of that. The one item it doesn’t seem to have a lot of are churches. Brooklyn has lots of churches, but I don’t remember seeing anything on Smith Street itself, although there were a number of them when I wandered off the main path.

But, the three-story buildings? Check. Here’s Carroll Gardens.

Oh, yeah. It’s got a nice little farmers’ market on Saturdays. Apparently a very long tradition for the area. The nearby sign said it had been going on for 30 years.

Nowhere near the size of the Union Square market, but not bad at all.

The side streets have lots of nice little brownstores and row houses.

The below is on Wyckoff Street.

I don’t know the prices, but I did see a note in a nearby realtor office that had a 3-story place on the market for $1.3 million. The street on the flyer wasn’t any of the streets that I walked on, so it’s just a rough guess for the above.

As I wandered the area, I did note a significant Hispanic influence just by hearing conversations in Spanish and such things as the following picture. (It isn’t necessarily Hispanic, but something about the area seemed to be very Hispanic although I can’t recall or describe it. I can pretty much tell you flatly that it ain’t Protestant.)

Now, I will say this about Smith Street: you wanna eat? Smith Street has it for you. That is, unless you want fast food. I didn’t see a single McDonalds or other mainstream fast food place anywhere. It warmed my heart.

And, in the distance, loomed Borough Hall.

I finally did decide to stop and eat at a local place.

It’s the Pacifico Restaurant on Pacific Street. It is a little odd why they would name a street in New York after the Pacific Ocean. (They can’t mean “calm street”, hey! It’s Brooklyn!) The place is absolutely, marvelously Brooklynesque. It’s well kept up, but not fancy. The tables and all are cheap, but not horribly so. It wants to say that it is a down-home family kind of place, but who knows about that? In any event, the eating area was in the open area in the middle of the place and I ordered the fish tacos. I’m not a real trustworthy source for food picks, but I liked it. Not real cheap, but not bad.

Overall, Smith Street is a great walk with wonderful amenities and pretty nice people. You can do worse than visit or live in the area.

-H

Categories: BoCoCa, Brooklyn, Wanderings

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