New York City, Part Five

Spumonis was kind of a fun spot. It was clear that this is the area where the families of Brooklyn lived. Families with kids in little league uniforms were eating outside on the warm day. Lots of the folks were Italian, and I heard some Italian being spoken there. One guy that sticks out in my mind is a fat guy treating three little girls to ice cream. It was the perfect, stereotypical Brooklyn picture.

At Spumonis, we ate lunch with a couple of gals who lived together in Brooklyn. Nice gals. They lived near the botanical gardens. One was an occupational therapist who worked in Manhattan. I can’t recall what the other gal did. We gabbed a lot about San Francisco, where they had vacationed in the fall. They also said that while that had lived in Brooklyn for four years, they never came out toward the area where Spumonis was, and had no idea that this sort of stuff living went on out there.


After Spumonis, we were back on the bus, and riding out to Coney Island. Coney Island is in the American consciousness, even if you have never been there. I recall reading a book, It’s Like This Cat, about a kid who rides his bike out to Coney Island to meet a girl. I always wanted to go there since reading the book. And now I was there.

Unfortunately, not much of it is there any more. There’s the ferris wheel, and the Cylone roller coaster, a few restaurants, but little else. Someone has apparently purchased the area, and is planning to bring it back as an amusement park.

We headed through a section of Brooklyn which is now largely populated by Russians. We then went down a street which seemed to change ethnicity block by block. At that, we crossed the bridge back into Manhattan, and our tour was over.

Walk stats: Yesterday, I walked 13,909 steps. Overall, as of this moment, 6:09 p.m. on Monday, June 22, 2009, I have walked 970,030 steps. Note: The picture is of the Coney Island Boardwalk.