 |
| hello, blue skies... |
Saturday's first stop was the taco shack on Beach 96 street, followed by parking our bums in the sand along Rockaway (more populated by kids and umbrellas than where we normally go further down the shore to Jacob Riis). We lounged in the sun, I had a nice luke-warm Mike's Hard (a summer delicacy which is normally frowned upon by my friends of higher taste), and swam in the breakers.
At around 5 PM, we hopped the train back into Brooklyn because Lucy and Devan had convinced me to check out this new outdoor art mall of sorts, Dekalb Market. It's a collection of shops that sell handmade or small press items out of repurposed railroad cars. There's also a giant dancefloor boardwalk in the middle of the mall area and loads of amazing food vendors. The place was hopping with a diverse range of young, hip, and very friendly people and actually: an amusing interaction happened while I was waiting near a juice stand for Lucy and Devan to return from the ATM. A guy came up and asked if I was in line, to which I responded that he could just go ahead, but surprisingly he started chatting me up and we talked for about twenty minutes while our food was being made. We mused about Brooklyn weekends, my being from Montana, his Jamaican heritage, and kale juice, of course. He pulled one of those sly moves where he complimented me (I was more than a tad embarrassed to be drawing attention somehow in my half-sun-dazed stupor with sand in my hair and sunscreen on my dress) and he said "your boyfriend's a lucky guy", which led to a flippant shrug by me, after which I suppose he sensed the all-clear to ask for my number. I invited him to join Lucy, Devan and I at a picnic table as we ate our veggiedogs and drank the magic juice, curious to see if he'd be game for that, and he was completely friendly and stayed with us for half an hour until he had to ride his motorbike over the bridge to a party in the Meatpacking District. We found out that he's a lifelong Brooklynite who just started his own architecture firm, he's 30, owns an apartment in a neighborhood he hopes will bring a great investment eventually, and that he did a brief modeling stint down in Miami after graduating college (haha, don't we allll). Despite my skepticism over the circumstances (beach scuzz outfits should by all means be repulsive) he asked if he could take me out for dinner some night in the next week. I'm looking at it as a fun social outing and a chance to get to know somebody new and different. More to come on that, then...
After winding down DeKalb Market, Lucy, Devan, and I, plus two of Lucy's pals who had joined us, went to the soft-opening of the new Gowanus area bar called "Lavendar Lake". There were free cocktails and snacks until midnight ~ and the drink named "Lucy Ricardo" was a fantastic strawberry + jalapeño infused tequila number. I got to catch up with Lacy, Patrick, Eileen and Tyler while the bar's rowdier patrons danced to rockabilly music and occasionally christened the outdoor deck with smashed shotglasses. At midnight we all raised our champagne to the sky and toasted the giant yard gnome and then headed back to our respective apartments after walking through the most gorgeous tree-lined Cobble Hill neighborhood by the light of the moon. If only I could have a brownstone apartment with a yard full of roses out front...
Patience, I know. For now I have beach days.
No comments:
Post a Comment