Sunday Morning in Fort Greene: Breakfast at Fowler Square

Early this morning we took the G train to Fulton Street and got an iced tea and a whole wheat bagel -- we eat it plain, like a donut, and throw away one-third of it first to cut down on calories -- at Connecticut Muffin, our refuge during many years of going from the subways at Atlantic Avenue terminal to the G line.

And we took our food and our Sunday New York Times out to the new city-provided free tables and chairs where they've closed off Fowler Square, just like they did parts of Times Square, Herald Square, and Madison Square in Manhattan.

There were a few other people out, and the mood in Fowler Square was relaxed and almost small-town-like. Of course Fort Greene, like a lot of Brooklyn neighborhoods -- and this is something non-New Yorkers never get -- is not that different sometimes from a small town (only with a better class of people).

Even some lifelong Brooklynites aren't aware that the intersection of Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue is called Fowler Square, and some of those who are still don't know who Fowler was: Civil War General Edward B. Fowler, a Manhattan-born son of Brooklyn who commanded New York’s famous Fourteenth regiment, the “Red-Legged Devil,” and he looks jaunty and confident in the nearby statue.