I'm in a Brochure!

it's the AMERICAN dream



Something remarkable has happened.



A few years ago I flirted with the idea of restaging the Battle of Brooklyn, the obscure (but huge) battle of the Revolutionary War that sent scampy colonials running for the Bronx via Manhattan -- a huge, potential war-ending victory for the British before the war really got started.



The problem is, someone already was 'restaging' it, more or less, at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. So I went. (Read about it here.)



This week is 'Battle Week' in Brooklyn, with a host of events linked with the battle. I happened to grab a brochure today, and noticed something shocking: I'M IN IT.



Check it out:







See the guy in the background? NO ONE but me wears green shorts like that. And the reenactor in question is someone I talked to too (footage also made this video). Here's my photo of the same bloke:







Getting accidentally included in a brochure due to bad photo-cropping skills? Check that off my list. So no matter what happens next, I got that going for me.



For more on Battle Week, go to www.theoldstonehouse.org.

NYC's East River Ferry: Free to June 24

This week the East River Ferry has brought back regular ferry service to the 18-mile East River, which is a nice reminder that New York -- down deep, away from skyscraper canyons -- is a river city.

New York was founded not because of the chunky rocks that glaciers pushed to present-day Central Park, but the Hudson and the East Rivers. The first ferry to cross from Brooklyn to Manhattan began in 1642, back when the colony was Dutch. In 1776, George Washington fled with 9500 troops after the disastrous Battle of Brooklyn -- escaping from wig-wearing Brits at night through Manhattan; the war was saved, and all because of the ferry. By 1870, 50 million annual passengers took steamboats across the river. That service ended in the mid 1920s.

Run by NY Waterways, East River Ferry's rides are free through June 24. Afterwards, visitors can buy a day pass for $12, nice considering MTA recently suspended the one-day 'fun pass' for New York subways and buses.

To help plan a day, I put together this planner for some of the main ferry stops for Lonely Planet. Just a $4 ride from Wall Street to Midtown sounds better than the subway too.

I also got to speak on all the new ferry fun at a New York Waterways/East River Ferry event at Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn last night... right after Brooklyn mayor Marty Markowitz.

Hope he's not mad that I said I live/work in Queens.

Brooklyn's Historic Subway Tunnel Tours Close

Bob Diamond is a classic New Yorker. Snubbing naysayers to discover, at age 19, the world's oldest subway tunnel, under Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue in 1980. Two years later Bob started leading tour down there -- raw tours, often peppered with fiery jabs at city officials. (I enjoyed one in July.)

Last month the city closed them down, alas. Hopefully they'll come back.

Here's my story for Lonely Planet.

76-Second Travel Show: "Bed-Stuy, Do!"

Episode #020
F E A T U R I N G * 1 1 4 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

"You're a photographer?"

I had just snapped a shot of New York's only living landmark, a four-floor-high magnolia tree that was moved to Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1885 from North Carolina. I put away my camera and looked up. A guy leered across the street towards me, knit cap, gray eyebrows, and... a smile.

I told him I was, sorda.

"Do you know what this is?," he asked, pointing to the building hidden by the magnolia.

And so began a lengthy talk with the executive director Dan Durett of the Magnolia Tree Earth Center, the building beyond the tree. (The center hosts community events; email durett@optonline[dot]net for more info.)

Welcoming experiences like this happened to me all over "Bed-Stuy," a neighborhood still trying to shed its "Bed-Stuy, Do or Die" 1970s image as a crime zone of drugs and violence. It hasn't been that way in a while. And visitors can easily enjoy a day -- combing it with a couple sites in nearby Crown Heights (including the Brooklyn Children's Museum and the fascinating Weeksville).

At the cafe Bread Stuy, one of the handful of lively neighbor-run businesses on Lewis Ave, I met with TRUE, an artist who moved from LA to New York, and to Bed-Stuy's historic Stuvyvesant Heights in 1999. He told me there's so much creative energy, and too few places to put it, that "speakeasies" have been set up in basements -- for art, jazz trios, drinks, dance. "It's a great place to go, get drinks for $3, shake your ass a bit, then wobble home at 2am." (One example.)

In nearby Crown Heights (a short walk via Utica Ave), Weeksville is a fascinating site. An 1830s African-American community set up a decade after New York State abolished slavery. The term "Weeksville" fell out of use after the grid system of streets replaced it, trams and subways came. By the 1960s it was a mystery to professors at Clinton Hill's Pratt Institute, who flew over Crown Heights looking for it. Guide Kaitlyn Greenidge told me they saw the "pointed rooftops" in a lot behind Bergen St, and a long restoration project followed. You can visit the three original buildings Tuesday to Friday afternoons, and on July Saturdays the site hosts free concerts.

For food, Peaches on Lewis Ave is the local favorite -- good for shrimp and grits or po' boys.

Staying in Bed-Stuy is another option. Akwaaba Mansion is my favorite New York City B&B, an 1860s Italianate villa, with its own yard, and set back from a strip of brownstones by an iron fence. Another consideration -- and a deal from $175 per night -- is renting a fully contained brownstone apartment from the artist TRUE.

#ratspotting

REPORT THE RATS



A few months ago I started reporting rat spottings -- all rat spottings -- on Twitter under the hashtag of '#ratspotting.' I invite you to do the same, wherever you may find them.

After 11 years in New York, I had my first on-subway-platform viewing recently. One woman seeing it dropped her coffee with a shriek. I had my FlipVideo handy for the scene (but missed the coffee spill, sorry).

Travel Animal of the Month

Links:

• Info on the walrus
• Walrus Islands State Game Sanctuary, Alaska
• New York Aquarium -- home to Tuusaq, who turned two on June 12! 'It's up to the dentist when Tuusaq returns,' the Aquarium tells me.
• New York Times on walruses