an interesting trip, yesterday....

cityboy departed from his usual Sunday path--that is coffee and hanging out at Cobra, and then usually taking the DeKalb avenue bus into the BAM area, then hanging out (and watching free television) at the Gotham Market, and more importantly, at the Fiction Center.
  But yesterday he was not satisfied with this journey, so instead, he expanded his horizons. He got off the DeKalb bus at Marcus Garvey boulevard, and switched to a southbound B 15 bus, which goes from Bed-Stuy into the far eastern regions of Crown Heights to Brownsville and finally into Queens.  Passing Fulton Street, where he could easily catch the C back to BAM, cityboy remained on the bus as it went south on Albany Ave,  then further east, until it finally hit Ralph Avenue, then crossed Eastern Parkway, and finished at the Sutter Avenue---Rutland Road station. Although this is just one station east of the Utica Avenue station on the 3 train, the area is completely different. The half block that cityboy walked from the bus stop to the train station was run down, and then on the Sutter Avenue station, cityboy was the only white person waiting on the platform. Cityboy was the only white traveler on the 15 as well, but somehow that did not seem to matter. At Sutter, the train back into the "established" world arrived quickly, and we were back in Crown Heights, a racially mixed (at least in the last few years) neighborhood. Cityboy got off at the Brooklyn Museum, visited the place a bit, then stopped for coffee (he was yearning for some) at Lincoln Park, a coffee shop space on Lincoln Place and Washington Avenue. It was there that I tried to put the whole thing together. Outside and inside the coffee shop were all white people (mostly young). Twenty years ago, this would have been mostly a black and Carribbean  neighborhood, and definitely a place like Lincoln Park would not have existed. Outside the coffee shop as well, mostly white young people passed by, the only people of color that I saw looked indigent. When I left (I liked the vibe, felt comfortable there) I walked north on Washington Avenue to Fulton, about eight blocks. If I did not know it before, I know it now, the street seems to be almost completely white---about six new bars have been added---I guess I was shocked at the scene. This must be what change, or gentrification looks like.
  Yet at the coffee place I felt very relaxed. I actually did some "personal writing" on the napkins that were available. I felt a kind of liberation, was it because I had stretched my vision by taking the bus further than I had before.
  So what must there be? More and more trips, discoveries, voyages throughout Brooklyn. And in order to write, do I need to be "freed"? Let's see how it plays out.