Thursday, September 12, 2013

Beautiful Brooklyn

My recent trip to the antique shops of the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn was technically a success - I located not one but three old-school style desks, all for $200 or less. But then I couldn't decide which one I wanted, and then I started thinking about the cost of schlepping a heavy desk back to Astoria, and then the proprietor of the shop, Yesterday's News, was too engrossed in her conversation about local politics to take my money. So I gave up and headed over to Prospect Park.


The neighborhood between the Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music and Prospect Park has some of the most beautiful streets imaginable. Just amazing. Unfortunately my iPhone camera is crap so I didn't bother taking any photos. But I had some photos hanging out in my iPhone from the Spring, when my iPhone lens was just beginning to get scratched up.

Just look at this door. Amazing. And there were plenty of
other amazing doors just like it in the neighborhood

Entire blocks of amazing brownstones.

And architectural whimsy

 The BQCM is also housed in a beautiful old building - it was once somebody's private mansion, and then a Masonic club house. Check out the stained glass door.



And fancy vahses and stuff.



The subway station in the neighborhood is nothing special. But it does offer
good advice. You do not want to lose your "Blumpkins."

I have to confess that my latest foray into Brooklyn had me thinking, for the first time ever, about moving there. I've already lived in all the other boroughs except the Bronx, if you count the month I lived on Staten Island at my ex-boyfriend's apartment while transitioning from the Philadelphia area to the NYC area. (Is it really fifteen years ago?)

Of course I'd want to live in one of the more beautiful neighborhoods. No sense in schlepping to Brooklyn only to live in an ugly one - I could get that here - there's even a tumblr devoted to the visual charms of my current neighborhood - Astoria Ugly.