Sunday Morning in Glendale: Breakfast at Atlas Park

We took the Q54 bus from our corner to Atlas Park in Glendale at 8 a.m. on this sunny summer Sunday to have breakfast. Atlas Park isn't really a park any more than Williamsburg Park is a park; instead, it's a shopping center, the kind of "lifestyle commons" we've seen in Calabasas, California; Weston, Florida; and Gilbert and Desert Ridge, Arizona.

We used to like to come here -- it's a one-stop bus ride down Grand Avenue in Brooklyn, then Metropolitan Avenue in Queens (and since Atlas Park opened a few years ago, the Q 54makes a short detour to let passengers off in front of the shopping center) -- but then Borders Books & Music closed, so now we usually just come in the mornings because it's one of the few Starbucks in New York City that has a nice outdoor space you can sit at and read the Sunday New York Times in peace and quiet.

That's because Atlas Park doesn't get a lot of people, it seems to us.

But it has a nice Sun Belt feel, and it's clean and suburban, and sometimes,

although you love the gritty urban feel of Williamsburg and Bushwick and the Lower East Side, sometimes you want something different.

So we're grateful to have Atlas Park close by.

Buy stuff at the wonderful stores there, join the health club there, open offices there, just make sure it stays in business for our sake! Thank you.

Saturday Morning in Brooklyn Heights: Breakfast on Montague Steet

Sunday Morning in Brooklyn Heights: Breakfast at Brooklyn Bridge Park and a Look at the New Pop-Up Pool

e At 8 a.m. today, before it got too hot and humid, we left home, took the J train over the Williamsburg Bridge one stop to Essex, went downstairs and got an F train two stops back into Brooklyn for York Street, walked down Front Street to the Dumbo Starbucks and got a venti iced tea and a multigrain bagel, and kept walking until we got to our breakfast destination: a bench at the waterfront at Brooklyn Bridge Park. We read the Sunday Times, as we have been doing for, oh, 48 years, and at 10 a.m., we walked over to see the cool new and popular Pop-Up Pool,

which can hold sixty people, although only one or two seemed to be in the water at such an early hour.

It was so beautiful we walked all the way down to Pier 6 and walked along Atlantic Avenue until we started getting sweaty enough to want to go home. We're grateful for Sunday mornings when we don't have to work, especially when they are this pleasant.

Friday Morning in Park Slope: Breakfast in the Backyard of the Seventh Avenue Starbucks

After getting our flu shot at the Rite-Aid by Methodist Hospital on Seventh Avenue this morning just as the store's pharmacy opened, we walked down to the Starbucks to have our breakfast -- oatmeal and iced tea -- in their pretty backyard.

Friday is our only day off this semester in our six-day, seven-class, four-colleges schedule, and we're grateful for it and are particularly grateful today was sunny and mild enough to have our breakfast outdoors.

Soon, as the cold weather approaches, doing this will be just a memory.

Sunday Morning in Stuyvesant Town: Easter Breakfast by the Oval

We were so excited to see the sun actually come up this Easter morning that we got out of the house by 7 a.m. after exercising to Classical Stretch on NYC-TV and took the L train a couple of stops to First Avenue.

At Starbucks we got a free iced tea thanks to our Gold Card rewards and bought some oatmeal with dried fruits and nuts and took them over to Stuyvesant Town, where we found a comfy couch just waiting for us.

Actually we sat at a bench by the Oval, which will open to residents in late May once the grass is all grown in beautifully.

One of Stuy Town's many officious gray squirrels came over and threw us for a loop when he asked to see our ID.

Luckily we have pull with this kindly one-of-a-kind black squirrel, who gave us permission to hang out. What a pal.

We'd put up a statue in his honor were there not one already.

On our way back to Brooklyn to get ready for church, we admired the cityscapes painted by fifth graders decorating the Oval Study.

We're grateful to Stuyvesant Town for letting us trespass. It won't happen again. Definitely not.

Friday Morning in Brooklyn Heights: Signs of Spring on Montague Street

On a wintry, overcast morning -- with temperatures only in the mid-forties -- we were happy to see, as we came out of Starbucks, at least a small sign that actual spring is coming in the trees flowering on Montague Street near Henry Street.

We kept that thought as we got on the R train on the corner of Clinton Street; as we transferred to the A train at the next stop, Jay Street/MetroTech; and as we transferred to the G train home at the next stop after that, Hoyt/Schermerhorn.

Friday Morning in Long Beach: Breakfast on the Boardwalk

Early this morning we took the G train to Fulton Street and then, at the LIRR Atlantic Terminal at 7 a.m., we just managed to catch a train to Long Beach so we could have breakfast on the boardwalk on this short sunny and mild respite from a long, hard winter.

SALUGI AT STARBUCKS by Richard Grayson now available at Amazon Kindle Store

Richard Grayson's Salugi at Starbucks is now available at Amazon's Kindle Store for 99¢.

Here is the promo material for the 124-page $7.99 paperback edition from Art Pants Company:

In this quartet of stories about late 20th century gay relationships gone awry, Richard Grayson's young male characters are always looking in all the wrong places. As The American Book Review wrote:

"They are young gay men trying to survive in a hostile or marginally accepting world. They conduct themselves with manic cheer. They possess a grace and courage that have to substitute for the acceptance and love that most people look for. Their successes in this sphere are meager; their disappointments, many.

Yet, despite a seeming similarity in their drives – and palpable coincidences of character and action – Grayson rarely palls. His young men are imbued with a sweet, endearing nuttiness that serves both to energize and individualize. He depicts our cyberspace and e-mail age, so convenient for rapidly dissolving and re-forming associations, invariably against a backdrop of the search for sincere love and the deaths that ravage gay men and their partners."

Monday Morning in Brighton Beach: Breakfast on the Boardwalk

We were at the Brighton Beach boardwalk around 9 a.m. today, when the day seemed fresh and pristine.

Our early breakfast on the High Line on Friday made us decide to go out early again, to one of the spots we love - admittedly, more in summer than in any other season.

The B train got us to Brighton Beach Station pretty quick from Atlantic Avenue. We started taking the Brighton Beach line in the mid-1960s when the express was the Q and the locals were the QB (bridge to Manhattan) and the QT (tunnel to Manhattan). The express eventually became the D, with the local the M and sometimes the QJ. Now the express terminating at Brighton Beach is the B, and the local, going on to Coney Island, is the Q. We miss the double-letter locals.

Back around 1971 at a Brooklyn College peace rally, one of our friends carried a sign that said ESCALATE THE BRIGHTON STATION, NOT THE VIETNAM WAR. There actually is an escalator today, though going down you have to take the stairs.

We got our oatmeal, banana and iced tea at the Starbucks on Brighton Beach Avenue, which is one of those owned by Magic Johnson's Urban Development Corporation, one of the only ones we've been in around the country that's not in a largely African-American neighborhood. Brighton Beach, of course, is very, very Russian and has been since the '70s.

The neighborhood was more mixed (though quite Jewish) thirty years ago when our first book With Hitler in New York came out in hardcover. The title story, originally published at Washington & Lee University's literary magazine Shenandoah in 1978, features a scene in which his American friends take Hitler here on a summer evening:

After our eggcreams, we go on the boardwalk. Ellen tells Hitler that there are many old people and Soviet Jews in Brighton Beach and cautions him not to talk German. Hitler nods.

We join a circle surrounding a fiftyish woman in shorts. She is very animatedly singing a Yiddish folk song. All of the old people are enjoying it. It seems like it’s supposed to be funny, or maybe dirty. Hitler is listening intently.

“Farshteit?” I ask Hitler.

“Ja, ja,” he says. “She is telling about how not to have children.”

An old lady next to us smiles. She seems glad that Hitler understands the song. We walk away before she can recognize him.

Libby and Mike are sitting on a boardwalk bench, talking about old times.

Hitler and I are leaning against the rail, watching the dark ocean, the dark sand, talking about this and that.

“Giscard d’Estaing is so funny,” Hitler says. “The things he does to make himself popular.”

I nod.

I tell Hitler I can name all ten states of West Germany. He counts on his fingers as I name them. I can only name nine. I know the other one has a hyphenated name, but it is difficult.

“It’s where Stuttgart is,” Hitler gives me a hint.

Now I remember. “Baden-Württemberg,” I tell him, and Hitler smiles.

I wonder if I am beginning to fall in love with him.

This story has been reprinted in I Hate All of You on This L Train, our new little book from Canarsie House.

Brighton Beach wasn't our beach. That was always Rockaway, where we grew up in the summers. Later, when we went to the beach with friends in junior high while school was still in session in June or after the bungalows were torn down, we headed for Manhattan Beach, closer to the neighborhoods we lived in and seemingly more teen-friendly and remote.

We'd come here in April and May, on cool but sunny days, to a place off the boardwalk called Sun City, where other tan-freak degenerates like us sat in chaise lounges that were metallic reflectors. To make it worse, we used face reflectors. No wonder we have wrinkles.

But we did go to Brighton Beach with friends sometimes in college, as this diary passage, dated Wednesday, June 11, 1975, in our book Summer in Brooklyn: 1969-1975 shows:

After hanging up with [Vito], I dialed Mavis's phone number; she was just on her way out, to meet Helen & Grace at Brighton Beach. I told her to stay up & I'd be right over to pick her up. Mavis went to Washington over the weekend to visit Phyllis, who's working there over the summer, & she saw the Univ. of Maryland & was favorably impressed, as that about makes her mind up about grad school. She said graduation was one big bore, & as we drove she took photos of me with Bob's camera.

We finally found a parking space & then met Helen & Grace on the beach; they were sitting with Grace's grandmother, who only speaks Spanish. It was great to see Helen again; she's gotten thinner & I noticed she bleached the hairs on her chin. Helen also seems very mellow, as befits a Californian; she was very interested in my MFA program. From her conversation, I gathered she was seeing a great deal of Mason -- she & Grace were planning to go to his house this weekend. I know that Mason's always been terribly fond of her, & that's understandable. Grace was her usual sprightly & quirky self; she's going to summer school at BC. Her abuela is funny too. We sat out on the beach for an hour or so, then Mavis & I left, as she had to meet Bob in the city at 4:30.

Today we sat and walked on the boardwalk for about 90 minutes. It started to get busy around 10:30 a.m. We like it best when it's early and almost empty.