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2004-04-29 - 6:43 p.m.

Marie hits brooklyn

Thursday afternoon. Amazing day. My all-time absolute best friend Marie arrived from Oklahoma and onto my doorstep at 10 this morning. Weird to see her, here at my place in brooklyn. but so NICE to see her here. It's so odd to have been here for almost a year and for her not to be able to "picture" me as we talk on the phone. she loves the apartment. she loves the neighborhood. too bad she's moving to tokyo, might could have convinced her to move here. good chance. oh well. next time 'round.

we spent the morning dawdling around the neighborhood. up court street and into Carroll Gardens, pointing out or popping into all my favorite places... Thrifty American beer store (which has helped me to discover that beer can be like wine�unique and scrumptious. i guess i'm just not into Bud Light. I like the random-seeming, intriguing options...) and the health food store just past Body Elite... and all the italian bakeries...and butchers...

and then we came back into Cobble Hill along smith street... finally stopping for lunch at Panino'Teca. I just love that place, a little italian panini place. so cute, so european, so delicious and cheap and TRANSPORTING. marie had the arugula salad with big-ass shrimp, and a transparent orange-y dressing that was clingy and light at the same time. I had the tomato bread soup followed by a smoked ham - cheese - mushroom panini. and we downed two martini glasses of Prosecco each. and it was probably around 70 degrees, and we sat at the table at the opened restaurant front, watching the passerby and having the sort of conversation that only best friends have. it was so nice. and very un-american feeling. there's nothing like a weekday off to make a person feel vital and human...

then we walked around some more, until we hit Uncle Louie G's (yes, like Luigis), the neighborhood's shining star of Ice Cream and Italian Ice. the ices are really something to marvel at. There must be thirty-five flavors of ices alone. things like Chocolate peanut-butter cup that I never thought could be so icy and not too heavy. amazing. we slurped those back to my place, and changed into shorts for the park.

cobble hill park was, at four on a weekday, swarming with babies and nannies and people fortunate enough to not be in the office. it was glorious. we sat in the sun for a good half-hour and discussed marie and eric's struggle to get eric a visa (marie's sponsored through a fellowship and is leaving for Tokyo in august). and then off to Sahadi's food market.

Sahadi's is the bomb. i love sampling the crazy-elaborate bulk foods, from nuts and chocolates and dried fruit to who-knows. we wandered around for a while, and I ended up with frozen pumpkin ravioli, smoked almonds, mushroom spread, and a deliciously stinky cheese (they only count if you can tell through the saran-wrap, not an easy feat).

on the way home, we stopped into this bar at the corner of Henry and Atlantic (SW corner). I've always felt like it would be OUR PLACE if marie was here, so we stopped in and fell in love. Emma, the bartender, is amazing. She owns the building and lives with her cousins and great aunt, i believe. like a sorority of 70- and 90-year olds. she has lots of young women from afar living in her 2br apartments upstairs, and has so much love for them all. She was so kind, and a great listener. we told her about me and adam, and marie and eric, and their pending move. she offered her advice on marriage (a good idea�ya never know) and family (staying close is nice) and was just generally ADORABLE. and the craziest thing; she reminded me of a younger version of my grandma lucille, my dad's mom who passed away a couple of years ago. i sort of love her. we each had a glass of white, and then I asked if we could split another (of course, she filled them almost to the rim.) Emma told us about one of her granddaughters, and invited us to her jewelry opening this weekend in the Heights (of course we're going.) about an hour later, we had to leave since marie has plans now in manhattan. honestly though � i could have seen staying there for HOURS more. it was so great. we reluctantly left, promising to come back while marie's in town and hopefully bringing adam (who she promised to make some tea, having been told he's not a drinker.)

adorable. i could live a life in there, picking Emma's brain. why am i so charmed by old bars run by old people? one of our favorite bars at home in Norman OK is a bar run by and serving mostly older Native Americans. Granted, there are few places with free shuffleboard and two empty pool tables, but it's more than that... where is the SOUL?

which is something else I talked about with marie at lunch. I never realized that people liked chain restaurants (chili's, outback, etc) for the sameness. You can go to a chili's in San Francisco or Mobile, Alabama and the food is the same. but who wants the same, generic f**king food? Why not try something new, something that can transcend and speak to YOU and those brave enough to try a unique, local place? It's like eating at wal-mart, going to Outback. People are just making a huge conglomerate company richer and keeping minimum wage low and helping to eliminate any "local flavor" or "soul" that's not pre-packaged and marketed. Drives me nuts.

ANYWAY I think that's the reason i'm drawn to local, old-man dive bars. I like that feeling of local camaraderie that big chains fake and never get quite right. Like all the independent Mexican restaurants in OK and Texas... they're all GOOD and Unique and have this awful/wonderful decor. I miss that up here, and when I find something resembling, like this bar, It makes me so happy...

Happily... Schmarkey.

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