A walk in Brooklyn

 The stars came in alignment and we've had 2 days' run ashore in Brooklyn around the Brooklyn Heights/Dumbo neighborhood. 

 The last two days I have gone ashore at 0630, to walk the Brooklyn piers, which they call Brooklyn Bridge Park, and then uphill through Dumbo, back to the Heights, and then downhill again to the Brooklyn piers and our lay berth. 5 miles. It's warming up here in the northeast, so I have been leaving early but not too early to get drinks at a couple of the stores along the way in the 2nd half of my walk. 

        When I was a kid, it was not unusual for us to walk a mile and a half to get a bottle of soda. As a teen we'd do a 5 mile circuit of my section of town, which passed by several convenience stores in the landward part before getting to the waterfront where there are no commercial businesses. 

 So it goes. Old habits I guess. These days I'm buying seltzer water on my walks to keep the blood pressure between the goalposts. I still take in way too much caffeine but I have limits. 

      Yesterday's walk was actually very pleasant. There were not many people out and I had moments to myself while I was around Brooklyn Bridge park. Just me and  some joggers going past. Mostly people younger than me, so likely these were upwardly mobile professionals trying to keep fit.

      I look down on the locals, for their choice to live in poverty conditions once they step outside their massively overpriced apartments. There's a shit ton of money in the area, but it's a massive dump on the streets.  The park, which is 95% concrete and steel with some pretty nice tree stands here and there that give you a momentary illusion of privacy... well, that's all they have.  I go a half mile west of my house, I have the Everglades, and the next paved road is 40-50 miles away.   Granted, immediately to my south and east is one of the most densely populated regions of the US, but leave me my illusions. 

   But yeah, after walking under the Brooklyn bridge I cross into Dumbo, which is White Brooklyn, and it still looks like a steaming turd, but there is slightly less dogshit and homeless to step over, which is pleasant. There's also the on and offramps around both the Brooklyn and Midtown bridges, so it's back to full cityscape and honking cars, but I can get a drink from one of the stores, and the stores are stores, not bodegas reselling obviously stolen merchandise. It's also a vaguely uphill part of the walk, and drops me at Brooklyn Heights or maybe downtown Brooklyn, I dunno. By then I'm back in the hellscape and I just march through and back towards the familiar neighborhood uphill from the lay berths. 

       The Last Store was a non-bodega bodega, a little latin-owned store with a deli-counter that is the last (or first) place to get a drink or hot food before you hit Brooklyn Bridge park and out lay berth. I liked the store- It was obviously family owned, and always spotless with wide aisles and open space, and smelled good, like familiar food smells, kinda homey. Place you could get a sandwich and bring it back to the HQ and not spend the next 3 hours with painful spicy diarrhea.    

        Recently, as arab-owned smoke shops move in, literally 3 to a block, and middle easterners buy out all the stores that are starting to struggle as the neighborhood starts to go to shit (I defy anyone to identify a smoke shop that does not destroy local property values), I came to value The Last Store more. In general I don't like bodegas- they're dirty, claustrophobic, and generally promote petty theft, as many or maybe most of them receive stolen goods taken by douchebag smurfs who steal from other stores on a professional basis. The Last Store wasn't like that. 

    I say 'wasn't' because I walked in there yesterday, there's middle eastern music playing, the deli menu overhead was painted over, and it smelled unclean. The 3 aisles had been increased to 5, with not enough room for me to walk without hitting shit with my shoulders. I'm fairly broadshouldered, but not exceptionally so... and of course, theress the disorganized, dusty stained packages of OTC meds, boner pills, weird foreign potato chips and all the other shit that I've come to identify as a likely mix of stolen and low class bullshit. 

   Still, with the low density of people, yesterday was a good day. Did me well I think, and I got back on board mildly sweaty but relaxed.      Today's walk on the same paths and roads had a LOT more people, which was a bummer, but  still more satisfying than they've been in a long while.  I think that after so many years of associating a daily walk with the same racetrack patters on a 300x50 foot deck perimeter, I have come to resent it. With opportunities to go ashore being so much less than they used to, the quality of life at my work has really gone to shit... and so days like yesterday and today, having an unusual and pleasant component, take on new meaning, perhaps more positive than they'd be otherwise to a guy who normally views interacting with locals here as punishment.