Brooklyn, New York, cradle of tough guys and Nobel laureates, fourth largest city in the United States, proof of the power of marginality, and homeland of America's most creative diasporic culture. Brooklyn Botanic Garden From 1010 President Street:
First, add an "s" to the end of Garden like everyone else does; then cross the street from one candy store corner to the other; walk the long block past P.S. 241 and Clara Barton High School; cross Washington Avenue; walk left for a bit and turn right into this extraordinary place. Prospect Park From 1010 President Street:
You can get there from here, but it's not terribly likely, since both terrors and temptations stand in the adventurer's way. Go via Eastern Parkway, and there's a candy store and two delicatessens on Franklin Avenue to make it past; the Brooklyn Museum, with its scatter of Egyptian sarcophagi perfect for an afternoon of hide-and-seek; the side entrance to the Botanic Gardens, with its offer of a second chance to choose it as your destination; a playground on the prospect between the Gardens and the Children's Library; then the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library; Grand Army Plaza; the ganglet-guardians demanding fifteen cents' tribute on the long walk down Flatbush Avenue; and, at last, the Zoo. Further on, if the day is long and you're with friends, spurred on by their and your own rather wan bravura—it has been a long journey, after all—you might just reach the Carousel. Whatever money you once had in your pockets has gone toward Good Humors, tribute, and peanuts for the elephants, but you can always watch. No traveller from 1010 President Street has been known to venture further into the Prospect woods than the Carousel, though we've heard tales of secret paths, paddle boats, sheep, and long meadows. Who knows how to make love stay? Tell love you are going to Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay." Tom Mullaly offers additional advice, but none as tasty as the above. From 1010 President Street:
Ask your father to stop the car on infrequent family forays down Flatbush Avenue toward the Manhattan Bridge and "the City." He won't: Junior's is for visitors from the City, crossing your path in their quest to recapture their own Brooklyns of old—no more retrievable at Junior's than, in the end, on the Internet. Had they continued a bit further down Flatbush Avenue, they might have come closer to what they'd been longing for.
