So my friend Lynda had this notion in her head: She wanted to walk the Brooklyn Bridge. And when she first brought it up a few years ago, I was all "bleah" about it, for reasons I cannot explain now. (I wonder who that lame-ass was, frankly.) She'd been scheduled to come up to Brooklyn with a then-paramour a few months ago; in the end, I had to go home to Maryland that weekend and the plans were scrapped.

But we were determined this time to make that bridge our goal. And with the paramour now scrapped, Lynda came up to visit for the Labor Day weekend and thus began a lot of walking (she brought a pedometer, which had us checking our steps the whole time) and a lot of eating. Of a lot of junk food. But boy, was it good....

Shit, though, it was so humid. And gray. And generally not a beach weekend, shall we say. Our hair was frizzed out as if it had been electrified before we even got to the bridge. In a superbly classic case of mismatched sock syndrome, I had worn an old black bra which did not fit properly under a tight-fitting pink shirt and felt as if I needed to be smacked by the fashion police. I also felt like I was falling apart. Lynda was very excited and peppy despite having taken a 6am bus from Baltimore. She dropped her items at my office and we chatted; she decided to see Ground Zero and then come back up to my office by quittin' time so we could do the bridge. She does not take pictures. I, however, cannot stop.

We headed to the bridge. And it is really quite something. As you can see in the photo above, a pedestrian walkway on-ramps directly to the center of the bridge, and after the pavement peters out, it turns into a wooden boardwalk complete with benches. 

At the center of the bridge were plaques detailing the various pinheads and hardworking construction men who'd put together the bridge; no notation that I could see of the (reported) 12 who died while constructing it. A very nice raised-brass picture-and-word display ringed the four corners of this expanded mid-section (in the plaque above, that's only half the bridge; where the woman on the right is leaning over makes more room for walkers) discussing the history of the bridge and the surrounding dockland areas. Elevated subways and horse-drawn carriages were once the bridge's main traffic, which runs below this walkway area (see below).

The bridge is really quite lovely in a logical, orderly way; all those cris-crossing cables form beautiful geometric shapes that can't be captured on film. Apparently in the 1980s a cable snapped and killed someone. Made me step a little more lively.

Getting off the bridge proved a little more challenging than I thought it would; the off-ramp makes you walk at least another quarter-mile, surrounded (now on the same level as you) by four lates of traffic before you get to an intersection. Before we disembarked, Lynda noted that a friend of hers had said there was a diner on the Brooklyn side of the bridge that served damn fine pie. She tried calling him to get the name of the diner, but he wasn't in; we decided to see what chance brought us. Meanwhile, we passed an out-of-season purple plastic Easter egg dangling gaily from a yellow ribbon tied to the bridge. It was held closed with masking tape on which someone had written: "Open me!" So we did. Inside, a scrap of paper invitation to a happening in Central Park the next day that sounded like a lot of fun, but we had Coney to think of. So we put it all back together and left it for someone without Labor Day plans.

And then, at the first intersection we came to: a diner! Surely, this was the pie place.
 
 

The other side of the bridge was not very promising. I knew of a cool, hip, arty community known as "Dumbo" ("down under Manhattan Bridge"), which should have been easy to walk to -- we could see Brooklyn's neighbor Manhattan, just off to the north, but walking to it proved impossible -- too many ramps for traffic and seedy neighborhood areas ("look, it's Brooklyn trash!") -- so we asked a traffic cop where the nearest subway was and took it to where I knew Dumbo resided. Unfortunately, Dumbo is much more exciting on weekends when the arty people aren't scrambling to make a wage as messengers, and it was dead, dead, dead there. 

But not too dead. New-ish dog owner Lynda discovered that a lot of arty Brooklyn-ites own and love dogs. We ran into this little bug-eyed wonder and she made a friend.

Next day was Saturday and it remained pretty humid, gloomy but generally not too cool or hot, so it was off to Coney! We'd decided this was an excellent way to spend Labor Day weekend for just the sheer Americana of it -- but also because this woman at my work (Gabby) who lives in my building (or, rather, I live in hers, since she was here first) organized a bunch of minor-league baseball tickets for several of us at the job for the 30th. So we were going for the game anyway, why not for the day? Even luckier, Gabby and her boyfriend were driving there and we were able to pile in, thus saving an approximately 2 hour ride in a subway. It's actually faster to take the F to Coney from where I live, circling through the city, than it is the 3 trains you'd need to cut through Queens into Brooklyn otherwise. So, we happily accepted a ride.

More food! That's my fish sandwich; I suppose I should break down and have a Nathan's dog at some point in my life, but, just can't do it yet. That's lemonade in Lynda's cup -- as Dennis Miller (when he was funny) would say: It was so much liquid it had its own ebb tide.
 

The main strip is filled with these various arcades and shops and entertainment places; across from The Cyclone roller coaster (did it once, never need to do it again; Lynda chickened out) there was a series of tiny, narrow shops that called themselves a "flea market"; we went into one and quickly circled out. It had that Alfred Hitchock feel -- you know, this is the place where you find the magic disembodied hand or the lamp that tells you your future. We bugged out and discovered we could Bump our Asses Off. But this was an indoor "game" of bumper cars, a place where you could ram up against total strangers in near dark with music blaring. You know, I don't mind missing that. Besides, Lynda really wanted to see the freak show. 

So there's this one barker who's up there entreating everyone, barker-style, the way barkers have done it through the centuries. He should have had a flat-top straw hat, though. Anyway, behind him to the left is the contortionist woman, who was very charismatic and cool with all her piercings and bare feet. She also swallowed fire. The guy in a hood in the middle lay on a bed of nails and had another big fat guy step on a second flat of nails placed on his stomach. He also had a lot of tattoos and a very bad stage patter. The really preeny guy on the right did odd things with his stomach and swallowed fire and was fairly frightening. He also stuck implements in his nostrils. We got there when they were having a special -- $3 instead of $5 -- so damn, that was worth it. In we went. It was unairconditioned (and needed it) and the benches were kind of hard, but for a half hour there was non-stop "entertainment," some more entertaining than others. The first guy was a magician who also swallowed swords and stuck implements in his nostrils; Lynda wondered to me if I thought the performers got a lot of "tail" because they could do these things. 

And then my camera batteries died and it rained on us and I got screwed by a dart thrower guy who gave me a "free" one and failed to inform me the next five were not "free" and I had to pay for a stuffed animal -- $20! -- which I immediately took home and gave to Ciara. But I digress; we also went on the wonderful Wonder Wheel and played skeeball and bought tacky T-shirts and ate a lot of bad food like funnel cakes and cotton candy.

The ball game was to start at 7; when we got there it was strangely in the 5th inning, which made no sense since we were there before 7. Turned out they were rained out the night before and they were doing a doubleheader; I was still ticked from being schtupped by dart boy and sulked for a while as it began to drizzle. But things improved when the gang from the office arrived and we enjoyed most of the game (even got a free Mets matchbox car) while eating further bad food (dots ice cream!) until Gabby and boyfriend wanted to go home. We were so crashed from the food we were happy to do it. 

A woman from work took this one; hair is a sad thing on me when I've been rained on all day. Lynda remained in good cheer, to her credit.

Sunday we hit Katz's on the Lower East Side for brunch; Lynda invited along two people she'd met from a knitting group online. They were very nice and fun, but oh, so young. We were that young once, I know it. Afterward we had a few minutes and played around in Toys in Babeland around the corner. It is a relatively rare phenomenon to find a foursome of people who don't know each other all that well who'll be willing to hang around fondling rubber dildos and suchlike mere minutes after meeting one another. But we're that kind of gang.

Lynda got matzo ball soup and latkes and I brought over pickled tomatoes and regular pickles. It was all very delightful.