Dear Diary:
Paris
A friend from Paris will be visiting at the end of the week. Regular readers of both our sites know perfectly well whom I’m talking about, but I’m feeling a wave of discretion at the moment — there’s no need to name names. The great thing is that we’ll meet for dinner here at the flat on Sunday night. Just the three of us (Kathleen included!) — and my cooking. Our friend may wish that we’d met at a restaurant, because God knows what silliness will beset me as I prepare my first meal ever for a genuine French person!
Au beau milieu de l’hiver
Prenez l’âne et le cerf,
Et, tout en remuant,
Y jetez la bonne.
Qu’est-ce que ça donne?
Gracie et Lucy dans la cuisine!
(That rebus’s actual last line is, of course: “bonne—âne—hiver—cerf”: bon anniversaire, or Happy Birthday)
More interesting than dinner here, however, will be our treks through Parts Unknown — parts, that is, as yet unknown to me, such as Williamsburgh. I decided about fifteen years ago that I was already, even then, too old to discover Williamsburgh. I think that I had been at Pedro’s, the preppy bar that used to be next to the Post Office, the night before, and there, in a moment of inebriated epiphany, I had seen that nobody over the age of 35 ought to be caught dead in a preppy bar. You could get arrested for pedophilia! Williamsburgh, I hadn’t even been to, which made it all that much easier.
Megan and Ryan, my daughter and son-in-law, spent Sunday walking around Williamsburgh. Do you think I ought to ask them for tips? I’m inclined not to. Megan tells a wonderful story about an ill-advised visit to a Polish polka party in Williamsburgh. She knew that it was ill-advised (being my daughter and all), but her good friend, who was, at the time, the companion of a now-famous novelist, had boundary issues. Let’s just say that the girls never got to dance.
Red Hook has also been mentioned. Red Hook used to be terra incognita, but now Ikea has a store there, I think. Why does the mention of Red Hook fill my ears with the lorelei cry of City Island? (Which is not exactly next door.)
If nothing else, these great expectations are easing me over the body blow of bad news that I had today. Nothing material; nothing to worry about! My loved ones and I are all in place. The bad news was, so to speak, entirely optional: I could legitimately put it in a box and say that I didn’t care. But I do care, and I wish I understood. That’s probably all it is, when you get down to it: a knowledge worker’s need to know. If I knew why someone decided that I was not good friendship material, then I’d be fine — which may just be the someone’s point.
Meanwhile, Sunday’s soufflé (and don’t say that you didn’t see that coming)? Mushroom, corn, or tous les deux?
Prime : curious about the 99 essentials, I went on to the Amazon site.
One smallish item was missing : the composers. Clicking on the descriptive link did not help. Amazing. And shocking.
There’s still nothing in Red Hook but Ikea. In fact, after Ikea tore down half the cool old buildings, there’s even less to see.
Williamsburg, where I live, has exactly one cool street . . . and, er, it’s not that cool. Save the trip across the river and take your French friend to St. Mark’s Place. (And MOMA, and the Gugg, and Chinatown/Canal Street, and Soho, and the Lower East Side. . . . )
I’m ringing in late, I realize, but this erstwhile Brooklynite concurs with RomanHans. Except, he forgets the admirable Fairway market at the tip of Red Hook. I used to drive from Bed Stuy there once a week for food shopping. (There is no food in Bed Stuy.)
more appealing to me than yoitsmoho, as much as i like hermore hard-edged, while smooth, cinematic quality included, urban landscape contextualized and content-ualized even betteramong the ‘best of’ of your posts dear