Friday night, Julia and I went to a UChicago young alumni reunion at a place where the music was excessively loud as though to encourage us to spontaneously grind against each other. An odd choice for a U of C event. However, Chicago's newly-acquired immense wealth means that there was an open bar to ease us into the evening. I was able to strike at least one person off my I Know Everything About You From Your Blog Even Though We've Never Met list though, which was nice.
The next afternoon, we toured key areas of Brooklyn--Park Slope, Williamsburg, and Brighton Beach. Babies and puppies were omnipresent, though not in Brighton Beach. I do not fully understand the phenomenon of Park Slope. Julia says that it's not a new thing to raise children in the city, and Phoebe says it's an outgrowth of the Upper East Side, which ran out of space. I, on the other hand, am inspired by my recent discovery of the shocking republicanism in FDR's New Deal speeches (ask, and I will expound), and think this is some new manifestation of civic republicanism. Think about it--the public-ness (ok, in the form of stroller socialization, but still), the civic engagement (ok, in the form of recycling, but still), the effort to restore an idealized past of the location. (These might also be signs of incipient totalitarianism, but let's sideline that possibility for now.) The emphasis on raising children is key to all this. (Whereas the obsession with buying stuff to represent your lifestyle is a problematic outlier.) Anyway, the theory is still nascent and unformed (uninformed?). I really don't understand how such a baby density arose.
Brighton Beach was an extremely discomforting alternate reality--my life had my parents moved to New York instead of Chicago. It was a little too intensely Russian for me. We had a difficult time finding lunch in Brighton Beach, largely due to the fact that everything looked either filthy or offered such delicacies as "boiled cabbage and potatoes" on the menu.
Or, "scrambled eggs with stuff." We did end up eating at this place though, and allowing for our decision to pass on the veal tongue and the "rock of lamb," what I did get was pretty good:
Compot.
And blintzes with caviar. (Julia was disgusted by this, but this is because her tastes are underdeveloped.)
Then we wandered around some more, and discovered some other excellent culinary options we'd missed:
And a bookstore boasting the following neighborhood niche:
The rest of the trip was spent variously eating, partying, meeting up with a high school friend, and schlepping back to Penn Station. Now I'm back to work and worrying. Life is good.
8 comments:
devon ave in chicago used to be a small replica of brooklyn when we came and some time later. the compot looks awesome. it's probably made of fresh fruit. caviar and blintzes are available in russian restaurants here too. next on your list should be the exploration of russian eateries in our nation's capital.
Mother: Yes, but Devon's Little Russia spanned about three blocks. Brighton Beach is many more blocks of much greater concentration. I haven't seen any Russian restaurants, or any Russians for that matter, in DC.
Actually, I checked for you and discovered this: http://www.russiahouselounge.com/. Except all the food looks too good to be Russian.
yeah, except for a couple of names, it's clearly not russian. and even those, i am not sure how authentic they are.
and the chef's name is clifford?? that's very russian indeed, ha-ha.
Well, Mother, consider what the chef has to work with that's actually authentic--boiled potatoes?
Apparently VSOP Napoleon Brandy is more expensive than Napoleon Brandy VSOP. This is no doubt due to the higher quality brought about by bringing the intialism to the front of the name.
Park Slope has nothing to do with civic republicanism -- it's people who found a nice batch of brownstones and a good park. It's the children of the scared white people who fled New York in the 1950s and 1960s now coming back b/c they realized what was left behind was too nice for the poor to keep. P.S. has lots of children b/c children are a luxury item in NYC -- the middle class can't afford to have them, and the rich can -- the rich live in P.S., so there they are. Get ready for the phenomenon to spread to Prospect Heights.
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