Tuesday Morning on the Upper East Side: Bernadette Peters at the 86th Street Barnes & Noble

(Video courtesy mattnyc78)

Late Tuesday Afternoon on the Upper East Side: Cast of "Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812" Celebrates Album Release at the East 86th Street Barnes & Noble

(Video courtesy sepirts3)  

Monday Afternoon in Dyker Heights: Picnic Lunch at Dyker Beach Park and Golf Course

We took a picnic lunch from our apartment and walked over to Dyker Heights on this gorgeous afternoon to enjoy the greenery at the Dyker Beach Golf Course and Park.

It was about 60 degrees and sunny, rare for December in Brooklyn, but of course the climate is changing enough so that there's now this palm tree across from the golf course at 7th Avenue by Parrot Place.

But Dyker Beach isn't a real beach, with the only sand being in sand traps.

Still, we enjoyed the time we spent there, admiring the great views on this pretty day.

Dyker Beach Golf Course is one of the oldest golf courses in the United States

and in the 1950s and 1960s, when we were a kid, it was the busiest one in the country.

It was fun to walk around, but after a while we had to get back home to work.

But the beautiful weather made us dawdle and we walked down 7th Avenue past the Poly Prep campus with its Georgian buildings down to the entrance to Fort Hamilton, where we had our Vietnam War draft physical 43 years ago. There we caught the B70 bus for the quick ride home.

Saturday Morning in Bensonhurst: Breakfast by Gravesend Bay at Bensonhurst Park

Due to spring break, we didn't have to teach our Short Story class on the Brooklyn College campus this morning, so we decided to have an early breakfast by the waters of Gravesend Bay in Bensonhurst.

Back in the late 1880s, when William Merritt Chase created his pastel Afternoon by the Sea (Gravesend Bay), Brooklynites enjoyed the view too, though they could see the traditional catboats back then.

We got here by taking the G train to Fourth Avenue/Ninth Street, where we changed for the D train to Bay Parkway. There we got the B6 bus at 86th Street to the Ceasar's Bay (yes, that's how it's spelled) Shopping Center on the other side of the Belt Parkway.

We came to this shopping center by car in the '60s and '70s, when the department store E.J. Korvette (along with Macy's, the best customer for our father and grandfather's Art Pants Company fine men's and young men's slacks, designed by Marc Richards and Jon Scott [us, our brothers and cousin]). There was later a KMart here, and now there's a Kohl's, a Best Buy, and other big-box stores, in addition to several banks and a Wendy's at the intersection.

Some fish must have gone shopping and left their cart by the rocks.

It was a glorious spring morning, and lots of people were out: mostly older ones, but a few young'uns too, running,

walking,

doing group calithenics

and individual tai chi

or just resting after a bicycle ride around the Belt Parkway.

Every garbage pail we saw was filled to the brim and even more, which was kind of disgusting.

In 1973-74, when we were in the master's program in English at Richmond College, we'd drive over the Verrazano-Narrows to classes and back to Brooklyn four days a week, sometimes more.

In the evenings a lot of times, we were still immersed in what we did in class that we'd find ourselves on the Belt Parkway

without having any memory of going over the bridge.


Two adult children, a brother and sister, were scattering their mother's ashes into the bay. We thought that was too private to take a pic of, but they left some flowers by the rail.


On the railing were reproductions of the sea life in the estuary,

which of course is where the sea water of the Atlantic Ocean meets the fresh water of the Hudson River and creates an incredibly vibrant ecosystem.

There's a tennis court and gym by the shopping center. People who don't know any better pay for parking meters here when they could just park for free at the lot just off the Belt Parkway (of course they may be coming from a different direction).

We had a nice couple of hours at the park

and then walked up Bay Parkway and across 86th Street, past where we used to help out at our family's old Pants Set store,

and back to the Starbucks near the 20th Avenue D train stop of the West End el.

It wasn't running into Manattan so we had to go to Coney Island and get the train home from there.