things i think about while powerwashing 182

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Red Hook occupies a strangely large part in my heart. Maybe it's due to my fondness for port areas, but this small neighborhood in Brooklyn brings me joy every time I'm there. I don't know whether it's the lack of a train station close to it or what. It has the quiet serenity of a beach town combined with the signature streets of brownstone Brooklyn.

Joined by esteemed subscribers Alisa Reynya, Carolyn Xu and Seth McFarlane after a morning of coffee tasting, our merry crew took a series of buses towards the coast. I somehow knew that we had reached out destination when I saw a skate park populated with mostly middle-aged white guys, some with their kids. Something about that description just captures which side of Red Hook we were on.

The first stop on our small list is High Beam Coffee. Doubling as a roastery, the cafe is nice and quiet — probably making for a nice place to read a book. I drank an espresso (as if I had not had enough coffee that day) and subsequently bought a bag of coffee.

High Beam's interior is a more jovial take on the recent distressed concrete many shops have taken on. There are hints of a lighter mood with the wooden stools and tables, but maybe we just happened to miss it.

Our next stop was considerably more raucous. Hometown BBQ lay just a few blocks toward the pier and as soon as we entered the twangy vibrations of what seemed to be a bluegrass cover band kicked us into gear.

My favorite part about BBQ spots in NYC is that they all tend to be in very inaccessible parts of the city (Astoria has some I like, as well as this one in Red Hook) and they all seem to understand that we need space to eat. Hometown occupies a warehouse-like footprint on the block, even moving to block off the street its entrance is on for seating. Somewhere, the meats are smoked and the sides are assembled so when people like us come in to order brisket, ribs and a few sides they are ready to go at the counter.

Good brisket, ribs and sides. The brisket was quite tender and the mac-and-cheese has a depth of flavor, like how you don't expect the smokiness of smoked turkey. Our collard greens were exception as well, which left a fairly divisive potato salad (it did not contain chunks of potato merely mash).

Full of meat, we wandered around the rest of the point. Meandering through a series of parks we ended up in front of Steve's Key Lime Pies, the purported purveyor of one of the only key lime pies in America that actually uses key lime.

My key lime tart was fine. I forgot to take a picture of it though.

The rest of the day was spent wandering through the streets towards IKEA to catch our bus home. We stopped in a used bookstore with homemade shelves on casters and red curtains shielding most of it from street view. Red Hook Books, a later Google Maps query tells me.

I think if you're looking for a local vacation, Red Hook seems to be a great place. There's enough there for a day: some coffee, and nice lunch and a series of parks that look out across the water at the Statue of Liberty. A nice place to wind down.

museum of the week

Remember when I went to that place called Saratoga Springs like ... a month ago? Well when my esteemed subscribers and I were checking out the racetrack we noticed there was a museum ... for racing.

Not Formula 1 though. We're talkin FORMULA HORSE. One horsepower, two living machines (one really just along for the ride). And when we passed the little dudes and entered the atrium, we were greeted by the smooth-talking JOHN.

John is an older man wearing a three-piece suit in what has been a bit of a muggy day. He speaks in short sentences, serving a deadpan humor as he cajoles us into buying tickets and – thankfully – adds a bit of a free tour on top.

"What is this guy doing wrong?" John looks at us, as we ourselves look at the jockey statue. I don't know what he expects from a mishmash of city guys like us but we're clearly not giving him anything. Esteemed subscriber Matt Jewison offers up an earnest answer: "He's looking forward?"

The real answer was that the poor jockey's mouth was open, John said, a bad way to get an extra diet of bugs, dirt and whatever else is on the track. The tour quickened considerably after that.

The real reason for John's pace was so we could make it to a screening of a pretty hype horse racing documentary and honestly gave a lot of context to the rest of the museum. Post-film, the fellas made our way to watch esteemed subscriber Leo Liu try his hand at being a horse-racing announcer (very much recommend), and we all learned a little about animal husbandry in what seemed to be the kids section of the museum.

Highly recommend if you're in Saratoga Springs and near the race track — well worth the price of admission!

anonymous subscriber news

Was this candle-making endeavor done in a class or at home? Is this easy? Is this worth doing with a cat at home? Where do you get the wax? So many questions

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• anon enlightens themselves: going to make a candle for the first time
• anon congratulates: congrats to the subscriber who bought their first car!!
• anon catches them all: Had fun playing pokemon go T pier 39
• anon corrects: that is a woodchuck but in michigan we call them groundhogs

animal of the week

My sister and esteemed subscriber Carolyn Chen brings us to Ireland with some cows!

Irish cows in Galway county Ireland

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