McCarren Picnic

McCarren Park is the park closest to us, and even then it's a bus ride (or long walk) away. It's a beautiful, big space and I don't spend nearly enough time there, which is a shame, because now it's almost too cold to spend the afternoon reading in the grass.

It was a beautiful day last Monday, the last day of 70s weather, so Tyler and I decided to have a picnic dinner. We brought turkey roll-ups, brie and crackers, apples, chips and salsa, and a thermos of apple cider, which may or may not have had whiskey in it.

We even had a blue-and-white checkered blanket to match! How quaint.


It was so nice to be surrounded by trees.


I pretended (that word sounds so weird in the past tense) I wasn't in the middle of hip Brooklyn. Willful suspension of disbelief: I can't see the towering brand new condos over yonder, or the silhouette of tall buildings in the background.


I'm not in a city of millions of people. Nope, we're just having a picnic in the country.


Ha! Country.


I saw a matching couple cuddling under the tree...

And their child barking at them, pretending he was a dog.

And other kids just hanging out.

Once the sun started going down, it got a little chilly.

But it was so hard to leave.


I mean...it was so hard to leaf. Hee hee.

Get it?




What's interesting is that ten years ago, this park was scary. McCarren Park is old. It's mentioned in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and in 1939 a pool was built in the park, one of the largest pools in the city. Its capacity was 6800 swimmers. That's more people than many town populations in Nebraska!


But the pool closed in 1984 and sat unused and forlorn until 2005, when Williamsburg was reaching the peak of hipness and was no longer a sketchy hood with cheap rent.

I found these pictures on a couple of McCarren Park websites. Look at what this park used to be like!