This past weekend I declared REST. I had a headache that persisted on and off into Monday. Saturday I enjoyed sleeping for a couple of hours here and there. Sunday was relaxation and escape day and as you know, I never leave without you.

My father was born in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in the early nineteen-teens. His family was poor. His father was a tailor and if memory serves me correct, they lived behind the tailor shop. At one point there were nine children or births, six of them made it, my father was the oldest and lived the longest. If he were alive today he never would believe what his neighborhood looks like now.

In the 1970’s I was a new teacher of the deaf. There was a problem with the building’s structure and it had to be closed for a few weeks. Our students lived all over the city in some of the poorest neighborhoods. I teamed up with another teacher and rode the subways to Brooklyn and The Bronx. I spent a few days in Red Hook and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, visiting students’ homes that were so meager I cringed, yet were so clean and warm and inviting, I gleamed along with the spotless floors. That was a lesson for me, along with the lesson I learned growing up in Stuyvesant Town, facing the East 14th Street side where one saw color: of skin, of clothes, of sky and history. In some photos, you will see Stuyvesant Town from another eye, across the East River.

As I walked the crowded streets of Williamsburg, I wondered where my father and his family lived, where they shopped and what they ate. The streets are unaffordable to most of us now, they’ve been gentrified, they have absorbed the creative Manhattanites who lost their leases to the wealthy, who needed six roommates to make the rent; here maybe they only needed five.

New York City is expanding its waterways and shores. It’s been a long time coming. After all, we are five boroughs housing over eight million diversified people and what seems to be a trillion cultural sites and restaurants.

Walk to the East River and you can catch a commuter ferry that connects Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. See >
New York Waterway East River Ferry.

East River State Park/Williamsburg Flea is at the foot of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You can delight in great food sold throughout a cool flea market. Don’t forget your hat and sunscreen. This is Williamsburg Flea. You’ve already seen my journal of LIC Flea further up on the Queens’ shore. There is a connecting bike path and at some point I hasten to add, I be the whole New york City shore will be connected. (Bike paths are appearing all over the city).

Here we go.

Click to enlarge.

Freedom Tower looking southwest

Manhattan background

Buying ferry tickets

Food and more food at Williamsburg Flea

Eat in, eat out

Stained glass, curved glass, copper

Old and new

Fleas and more fleas

Fleas against buildings

Looking west toward Stuyvesant Town

Oprah at the flea market. She looks happy and well-fed.