Dumbo

We went to Crown Heights today to meet one of Michael’s old school pals who’d left England in the 1990s to become a Lubavitch rabbi out here.

Crown Heights is a very low-rise area compared to Manhattan where nothing is less than six storeys high, and most of the buildings are considerably taller. The Main Street, Utica Avenue, is incredibly wide and totally tree-lined. It actually reminded me of some of the roads out in Mile End.

The temperatures were pushing 90 degrees today, and that’s the type of heat that can make me feel a bit panicky. I suddenly noticed how slowly we were walking. Nothing is important enough to hurry in that sort of heat!

We ate in a kosher deli and I had a delicious - if a little stodgy - plate of spaghetti. Michael’s friend, Haim, was very lovely. He arrived with two of his children who were as good as gold.

After eating, Haim took us to the main shopping street for the Brooklyn Lubavitch community, which is called Kingston Avenue. It’s got a lot of charm to it. It feels quite run down and tatty - this is not a wealthy community by any means - but I loved the fact that shops were blaring Klezmer music out onto the streets and all the posters and shop signs were in Hebrew. It reminded me of Washington Heights (if you swapped the Latino community with Jewish people.)

It’s the sort of highly orthodox area where you hear a lot of Yiddish being spoken and the men are almost exclusively dressed in black and white, with homburg hats and big bushy beards. The women all wear sheitals (wigs.) They take great pride in them, and I’m told some can cost up to £2000. 

This area is known as quite a hot spot for tension between the African American and Jewish communities. There were actually quite devastating riots here in 1991. The police were apparently so overwhelmed that they actually decided to withdraw from the area and let the two sides continue to fight. They have subsequently apologised for this decision.

We ate doughnuts on a step and watched the world going by. 

We took the subway down to the East River, at the point where Brooklyn looks across at the bottom most tip of Manhattan. We ended up walking along the most wonderful and quiet little road called Joralemon Street which is lined with mid-Victorian, brick-built, characterful houses. There are trees everywhere, and all the houses have little front gardens which the residents have filled with fragrant flowers. There are cafes with massive windows selling vegetarian food and speciality coffees and, nearer the river, the houses are covered in clapper board.

The Brooklyn pace is more relaxed and much slower than Manhattan’s. People sit by the river on benches and wooden deckchairs, quietly contemplating the view, and many of the piers have been converted into nature reserves and sculpture parks.

The wonderfully-named DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is the brick-built, gentrified-industrial, triangular area of Brooklyn underneath the roads and train tracks leading away from Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge. No film about immigrants in New York would be complete without a sequence shot in DUMBO. If it weren’t for the throngs of tourists, ice cream vans and flea markets, it would be a magical and highly atmospheric location. As it stands it’s rather similar to Camden Market: lots of warehouse spaces selling artisan shite at vastly-inflated prices.

We went back into Manhattan en route to Queens for dinner with Ian and Jem. As soon as we pulled into the first subway station on the island, everything became frenetic again. An announcer on the tannoy system was blowing a veritable gasket, trying to get us to listen to what he had to say. You’d think we were being round up to be shot! It’s clear I’m getting older because I find the high-octane pace of Manhattan less exciting and increasingly irritating!

As we pulled into Jackson Heights, a storm started. Just a few drops of rain turned the air into thick soup. We exited the subway and walked out into a world of exotic Latino fruit and food stands, all nestling underneath the shabby subway arches. The most amazing smells of barbecuing meats, curious spices and caramelised peanuts blended with the evocative aroma of the first drops of rain on a hot summer’s day.

By the time we’d reached Jem and Ian’s the rain was falling heavily, and by the time we’d sat down in their living room, it was absolutely tipping it down outside.




Dinner was with a lovely crowd of Brits, Aussies and Yanks, and food was, as usual for Jem, delicious. Top marks have to go to the coffee and chocolate cake which was coupled with cream into which Jem had folded mixed berries doused in rum.




Heading home in the sticky, muggy air was a bit of a trial but we changed trains at 42nd Street which is on the 1 line, and therefore air conditioned, so everything improved enormously!