New York City, Part four

First, the statistics: Yesterday, I walked 10,816 steps. As of this moment, 1:01 p.m. on June 16, 2009, I have walked 896,815 steps.

Now back to New York.

As we walked around Union Square, we came across the Falun Gong group performing a public display. Rows of men sitting on the ground doing exercise movements. One guy–must have been a new recruit–kept going the opposite way of the rest of the folks on the square. We became intrigued watching whether he would get into following the rest of the group. Never did, as he kept his eyes shut. I would have peeked. Maybe that’s why I am not on the ground in Union Square doing movement exercises with the Falun Gong group.

We walked over to where our tour–the Slice of Brooklyn tour--was supposed to depart just off of the square. A few people were already there, but no bus was present. We waited, not very long, for Tony and the bus to arrive. We left on time.

Tony was a great guide. He grew up in Brooklyn and has an affection for it in only the way that a native can. Several years ago, my aunt Linda, who grew up in Salt Lake City, drove us around the town one early Sunday morning. She kept pointing up sites--places that had meaning to her that she was able to impart to us. That's where the polygamous family lived. That's the house where the man shot his wife. It was a wonderful trip.

Tony was just like Linda with Brooklyn. We passed a theater, and he told us about sneaking into the theater to his first R-rated movie, Saturday Night Fever. We passed his high school, and he told us about making out with a young gal. He made Brooklyn come alive for us.

We started by taking the bus from Manhattan to Brooklyn, crossing the Manhattan Bridge. We drove through the Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge overpass) area of Brooklyn, to the Brooklyn Bridge Park. There we were able to obtain views of both the Manhattan Bridge, with the constant El train crossings, and the Brooklyn Bridge, with its view of the Manhattan skyline. We then hopped back on the bus, and went to a waterfront area, and up the street to our first pizza joint, Gribaldis. It was a Neapolitan pizza, with a thin crust baked in a coal burning brick oven. A nice pizza, but both Dorey and I agreed that it wasn’t Freddies.

At lunch, we ate with two couples from Louisiana. Dorey mentioned that we would be going there in September. One of the women, who was, I suspect, completely drunk, started giving us all sorts of recommendations for the trip. She would have been nice, but she was so loud and pushy that I wanted to push back. Her husband and friends were embarrassed to be seen with her.

We then hopped back on the bus, and drove through Brooklyn, seeing some of the sites of Brooklyn. Mostly this was a site seeing tour of nice homes. After an hour or so, we stopped at our second pizza place–Spumonis. Spumonis made a Silician pizza in pizza squares. It’s alleged secret is that it puts the cheese on top of the bread and then puts the sauce on top of the cheese. The sauce was sweeter than Gribaldi’s, and hence I liked it better. Best of all would have been to put that sauce on the beautiful thin crust of Gribaldis.

End of this part. The picture is of a guy waiting on the Brooklyn Pier.