Rather an odd coincidence today: an old friend called, with whom I hadn’t spoken in quite a while. He asked how I was; I said that while I was well, generally, I had had a bit of a rough time the past few weeks with my knee-replacement surgery, and now with the prospect that it might have to be re-done.
Wanting to lighten the mood after all that complaining, I cited the old quip:
“Yes, but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
My friend paused, and then said that the reason that he had called was that his daughter had just been walking around in my Brooklyn neighborhood, and had texted her father a photo of a funny sign she had seen in an apartment window. My friend was calling to ask if I recognized the location. (I did not.)
Here’s the picture:
9 Comments
“Whoa.”
–some famous dude
What happened to “in the Matrix”? In the movie, any “glitch in the Matrix” was called “a dÁ©jÁ vu” because of its stutter/echo properties, so I thought your original title was apropos given the mental echo that your “Mrs. Lincoln” line created.
Isn’t Brooklyn one of the communities under going the much hated “gentrification”?
Kevin,
Since you asked: just after I published the post I remembered that “glitch in the Matrix” referred, just as you say, specifically to dÁ©jÁ vu. This wasn’t that, exactly, but I was too lazy to think of a different title altogether, so I just trimmed it.
Robert,
You bet it is. With bells on. When I first moved here in 1982 Park Slope was a very different place: it was all old-school-Brooklyn Italian and Irish families, and the neighborhood was just emerging from a couple of pretty tough decades. (The first thing I noticed when we rolled up to look at the apartment we were about to rent was a .38-caliber bullet in the front areaway.)
Now it is very, very different indeed: Property values have increased tenfold or more, and it’s all affluent young families, trendy restaurants, and shops like this one.
Olive oil and balsamic vinegar on tap. That is truly high end and a long way from just a few decades ago. I like the oils but could never manage the vinegar even though we do have some. It always tastes like burned wood to me. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. A very impressive shop there.
Robert,
It is an acquired taste. My go to dressing used to be ranch; now, it’s balsamic vinaigrette. I hated green olives as a kid. Now, I must have them, especially in a martini.
Henry, I suspect the martini is the key to everything and then you kind of work back from that.
Robert,
To paraphrase Kipling, “And a woman is only a woman, but a good Martini is a Drink.”