"Brooklyn's good. Brooklyn's funky. Brooklyn's happening." - Waris Dirie

Really boring mall. But nice architecture

Today I slept in a little bit today, woke up at 8:30am. So I had some time to actually catch up with some blogging and posting. I was so many days behind! To actually put it into perspective, I'm writing up this blog post... on Wednesday night. This is meant to be a post from Sunday. "Today." I spent most of the morning writing up blog posts and then watching my go to Netflix series, Malcolm in the Middle. Afterwards, I decided to head out, but I was a bit early since the tour started at 2 but I was pretty much done all the posts I wanted to and decided to head out at around 12. 

The metro to get into Williamsburg

I headed out and walked over to the "Mall of America" on Broadway because I always wanted to see
what a mall in America is like.

Honestly, it was amazingly underwhelming. It was like every other mall I've ever been to so I hopped on a train over to Brooklyn! 

Beautiful graffiti on the streets

The train ride was kind of horrendous and to all the parents and other people who care about me reading this right now - I am okay. Nothing is wrong with me and I did the right thing by getting away.

So on the train, Some creepy guy followed me off the train. I was a bit suspicious so I stopped to look at my phone. So he stopped and sat down. So then I started to walk towards the exit...he got up and he followed me but I stopped and looked at my phone again right before the stairs. He kept going I left and took a different exit. Later on, another guy tried to grab my arm while I was walking and when I looked back with disgust he just looked at me and winked. It was a bad first impression of Brooklyn, I'm not going to lie.. but like I said, I came out okay. And it was an "Experience" right?

Found this on my
walk and made me
think of my mom

Well, when I left the subway it got significantly better. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon andever). I walked around for a bit since it was so beautiful out and checked out the area. I wanted to see if Smorgasburg was up but it wasn't. Turns out it's actually put into a different place.
people were out - there were SO MANY people!! And even better, there was a company giving out yogurt so I had a nice light snack to go with my day (don't knock free stuff -

So as I was walking back down, I ran into my friend who I was supposed to go on the tour with and we walked around for a bit, grabbed a coffee and waited for our tour guide...who showed up with a Kylo Ren light saber. Classic. 

We started off with a bit of the history of the area, which included learning about where the name Brooklyn came from - It was actually named after Ben

Imagine how big a house is. That is
how big this graffiti was.

Franklin's grandson! I finally figured out the names of most of the Boroughs in New York. How awesome is that? I also learned a lot about the history of Brooklyn as well and how Williamsburg really started to expand and grow out into what we all know and love to be Brooklyn now. 

The bakery

We started the walking tour by talking about how the area used to be predominately very Polish. So we stopped at a Polish bakery and outside there were a bunch of little old Polish ladies sitting around and talking to each other. The tour guide waved quite a few times, talked to the ladies and really talked up the bakery. 

Fresh and DELICIOUS

While he was explaining the history of the neighbourhood (which I can't really recall right now), one of the little old ladies came up to us and actually opened up her bag of freshly bought bread and offered it to everyone of us. 

Yes. She walked around and she offered every one of us a freshly baked slice of bread. It was delicious and amazing. And then she went back to sit with her ladies. What. A. Sweetheart. 

But that was the sense of community they had. Much like Chinatown, Little Italy, Little India, there was a huge sense of community and family there. It was awesome to experience first hand.

Cool graffiti

As we walked down, the tour guide pointed out various pieces of graffiti and artwork that was spray painted everywhere. In particular, he showed us some artwork that was done on walls by famous artists! Beautiful. He told us that around the area, there are a lot of advertisements around and many times, those advertisements aren't done through posters or pre made, they're actually spray painted on - it's the Brooklyn way. 

With the apartments, many of them are actually done up with graffiti on the side because it gives it a bit of a really "cool" twist on it, makes it edgy and cool to live in. So landlords will let graffiti artists spray paint whatever on the side and graffiti artists will have an opportunity to expand their portfolio! Win-win. 

This was built in the last two decades.
Also the same street with the
Italian festival.

As we were walking through the city, he stopped to talk to a lot of locals on the way. One person in particular struck a chord with me. He was born and raised in Brooklyn but the only one of his friends who could stay there because it had simply gotten too expensive to live there. Once it got trendy to live there, rents skyrocketted and people were forced out. He said that the Brooklyn that exists today was not the Brooklyn from 15 years ago and not the Brooklyn he knew. The Brooklyn he knew was gone.

Russian Orthodox church

It was a bit sad to hear how much the neighbourhood had changed and gentrified but in a way it's also interesting because it is the way that life is meant to go - change is a constant force that no one can go up against. Sometimes change is for the better and sometimes it's for the worst. I would, personally, find it sorrowful if neighbourhoods never changed and things were never different. Not because having no change is boring - but because it would mean that there is no progression. One motto that I have always gone by and always go by is "Destruction leads to a very rough road but it also breeds creation." I love that line and live by it.

In the back they have an olympic sized
pool. 

We walked by this big main street where the tour guide started talking more to us about areas and how when ethnic areas come in, much like the Polish, they still worship the same gods as before, eat the same foods, do the same things... it's not like when they came to America, they would drop everything and become Americans - no, many were still set in on their old ways and many miss home. Doesn't matter how much you want to go somewhere to live a good life - you will always miss specific things from your old life. So they brought this festival called "The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola" in Williamsburg. It is a huge festival where they bring up a tower that is taller than 20 stories high (Dont quote me on this) and they celebrate with music, performers and most

Playing baseball. Used to be beautiful
park view but now all these buildings
are coming up... 

importantly - food. It's in the summer time so I'll keep in mind that I should check it out!

As we kept walking, we found this beautiful Russian Orthodox church. One way to know that it was an orthodox church was because of the way the cross was. As I found out, the top "bar" was there to represent Jesus. The second is normal, in the shape of the cross and the third, which runs diagonally is there because when Jesus was crucified, to his left, there was the person (do I call them the person?) who believed and accepted Jesus into his heart, and so lead his way to heaven, hence why this side of the diagnal points up. To his right, there was the person (???) who rejected jesus and hence the other side points down to the ground (to hell). It was also apparently the church from Seinfield.

The building that used
to make ink for the US
dollar bills

We headed next to the park where we heard a bit more about the history of New York and learned about how New York really was a gang city with the Serpico family and others. It was a bit scary to hear about. We had two New Yorkers on the tour who said that New York, back in the 70's was a dump. It was horrible - there was corruption and at one point, during one Commission, about 75% of the cops were actually found to be dirty and corrupt. How terrible is that?

We also learned about the pool that was build - Olympic size - back during the Depression. During the summer, people were poor, angry and jobless. To keep them from striking, the city build a pool! How smart is that? Instead of going out and picketing, they could go to the public pool, hang out with their families and enjoy. However, the poool turned out to be too much of an upkeep and ended up going down the drain. People demanded the city do something about it but they city refused. It ended up just being this gigantic waste of space until the 2000s when

The coolest bar ever, where they film
Daredevil and have the sketchiest of
people. 

people would actually, to protest the waste of public space, hold pool parties IN the pool. I wish I could get an invite.

We found out more about the different buildings in the area, such as one specific one that was recently rebuilt, it used to produce all the ink for the US bills! It's now more residential, however, I would never live in there because as I found out, there's actually a lot of uranium (or something to that affect) in the basement. Scary. They went bankrupt and were sued when the people found out that the waste from the factory was leaking into the river... the building had a "mysterious fire" and built something new. 

Heh. 

Wen found this out because there was a bar owner on the other side who found this stuff out from his customers. 

And this is one of the coolest bars ever - it's actually where they film some scenes from Daredevil (Never seen it, heard it's pretty okay). It's probably one of the best dive bars I've ever been in. There were quite a few "characters" inside the bar. I heard a lot about the area and what it was like before, how cheap the rent was and how NOBODY wanted to live there. It was called "Turkey's Nest Tavern." They actually give you alcohol... in a to-go cup with a lid and straw so that you can just take it and go.

How.

Awesome.

The Brooklyn Bowl. At one point they rented it out to the
SwedishRoyal family to hang out while they were in town. 

The place itself had a lot of character within it and I really really loved being in there. I will go back sometime I'm sure. They gave us some tasting of Brooklyn Brewery beer (Since the actual brewery would be so busy with so many people). 

We headed up the streets later, walked by the busy Brooklyn brewery and found out a lot of stuff with the beer scene. Actually, during the digging up of the aftermath of 9/11, the found crushed beer cans of beer that had not been produced for years. They realized that it was because the workers who were building the buildings originally... were drinking on the job and just throwing the crushed beer cans down into the pit to hide the evidence. Interesting.

Also found out that Brooklyn beer is the #2 selling beer in Sweden. People just absolutely love it there. Really they love anything that is "Brooklyn." 

Life quote right here

Actually the tour guide told me about his niece and how when she wants to say something's cool, she'll say, "that's Brooklyn." I want to bring this over to Canada.

We kept walking and ran into a place called "Brooklyn Bowl" Which is this REALLY awesome super
duper cool, gotta go back again bowling alley/concern hall/bar/cooler than wendy place. We were lucky enough to be able to go in as a group and on that day, there was actually a motorcycle show so we got to see a lot of motorcycles! And a live band play. It was pretty sweet. Going to bring all the cool kids there. 

Tru

We kept walking around and saw some really cool places - such as where original signs come from and graffiti advertisements!

We then headed over to the coolest, COOLEST, bookstore/CD/casette/Vinyl place ever. It was called "Rough Trade" and everything was kind of like the inside of a factory with factory carts. In the back, there was a small intimate place where bands could play and at the same place, there were ping pong tables where you could play ping pong. Yup. I meant cool. And the books were pretty unique and hipster too.

Afterwards, as the tour was coming down to a slow down, we headed over by the river and took some very nice photos. It was very casual so the tour guide was just telling us about stuff and having conversations. He actually said I was a pretty funny person and complimented my hair (I made a braid)! :) 

After the tour, my friend and I went off to find RAINBOW bagels and boy did we find them (Holy

Concert venue was small, they had everything, ping pong, music
books, good vibes, great building

crap thuogh $4 a bagel WITHOUT the cream cheese). So we waited in line for a bit and then had to wait about 30 minutes. So we decided to go for a walk.

As we were walking down, we saw the neighbourhood, which is by Williamsburg bridge really change. I mean yeah, there was one beautiful restaurant, Peter Luger (Holy crap there was a guy working for the restaurant holding the door for guests, and when we asked for the menu, the 'steak for two' was about $110, heart attack pls stop. He also told us that if we ever came back we would ahve to have a reservation). But we got into a much poorer area where you could tell that some people had just not grown up with the same opportunities or possibilities as though who are more well off. 

People called this an "abomination"

Even as we went into the McDonalds to use the washroom, the washrooms auto-locked and there were no mirrors or tissues in there.. It was not the most pleasant place. 

My thoughts exactly

However, we walked back to get our bagels and our moods definitely changed. We grabbed them and went on our way. They were beautiful and actually not too bad - very salty and sweet and spongey. As we were walking out, I heard some guy say "only tourists would get something like that." 

But it's an experience.

Right?

yum

After that little snack, we headed over to find some Mexican food and found this really sweet Taco place, Dos Toros which was amazing. For about $4 I got this taco that was just slathered with good delicious food. Meat was moist, veggies were fresh and the shell was the bomb. 

We sat for a bit, talked and people watched before we headed home. Unfortunately, the train was stopped for quite a bit. When I finally did get home, it was quite late in the evening and my roommate came back with KEY LIME PIE, FRESH KEY LIME PIE and it was the most delicious concoction I had ever had my whole life. God it was so good and fresh and just done right. I ended up working a bit on the blog and just pittering around. I watched the newest episode of Game of Thrones and then cried. 

That was my day. Long but good! 

Friends by the New York highline :)