Every third Wednesday, in the middle of the afternoon, the ghost of my Great Grandfather stops into to my favorite bar in Prospect Heights. Inconveniently for everyone, he always sits at the center stool, creating gaps on either side of him as nobody likes getting wet from the splashing beer falling through his translucent body.
As much as Annabelle hated to admit it, the neighborhood really had changed. More progressive types had moved to Brooklyn in the past few years and their liberal antics sometimes made her seriously consider moving back to Montana. Annabelle wasn’t from Fort Greene originally, but she’d lived in the neighborhood a hell of a lot longer than these yo-yos. She was taller and longer than each of them, by at least a foot in both directions. Her tail and claws were much more serious too.
Throughout the five-boroughs, the aliens leveled all apartments, condos, townhouses, brownstones, high-rises, and houses systematically with top-of the line laser death-rays. Afterward, new buildings were constructed, and nearly everyone was relocated to a new apartment; a 10-foot by 10-foot living space with an incredibly low ceiling and a sliver of a window. That is, except for a few railroad apartments in Bushwhick.
In those days, the best place to drink for free in Brooklyn was in Red Hook at one very specific little art gallery on the night of an opening. It was (and still is) a little shack located at the end of the Van Brunt Street right off the water in the shadow of those big cranes that loom like prehistoric monsters in the mist. Called WORK Gallery, it was painted a deep red either as a reference to its neighborhood, or the result of mild insanity on the part of its owner. In any case, the party was always there.
The photographs covering our kitchen table all share a singular theme; they’re portraits of the various stadium lights which surround the perimeter of McCarren Park on the edge of Greenpoint.
