St. Teresa. But Which One?

 

We took our usual Sunday neighborhood crawl. We pick an area to see in New York, get on some shoes, and take a good 8 mile walk.

Today, we did a C shaped tour of Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Fort Greene in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn is confusing. You kind of think you really want to live there because there are these extremely beautiful neighborhoods and some of these neighborhoods have the sweetest stores and restaurants. But then, it all looks a little bit like Downtown Disney and you want to, maybe, run.

Carroll Gardens, an old Italian neighborhood, is now incredibly gentrified. We ran into a parade today. The Saint Day parade of Saint Teresa. It was like something out of deep Sicily. We saw the saint statue coming down the road and I asked one of the old Italian lady paraders (matching in all black with a gold sash like all the others) which saint this parade was for--she responded, happily, with a big smile, "Teresa."

I went to Wikipedia. Apparently, there are six Saint Teresa's, so I have no idea which one this parade was for. But, these old Italian people, they want their saints, their traditions, their parades.

I find Brooklyn confusing, but mostly because I haven't lived in New York and was not around to watch it happen. The transformation. It is sort of fantastic that Brooklyn has been so violently gentrified. It is understandable. The housing stock is past charming. It is romantic and beautiful, practically Southern and Gothic. So, of course, the world moved in.

But, frankly, it's too South for me. I want to be able to escape to Canada, if necessary.

The Gowanus is going to be the next thing. It is going to be like the 10th arrondissement in Paris, with it's barge canal, all industrial-turned-arty. You can see it about to happen. And YOU WANT neighborhoods to get safer, better, richer, with better food and stores and to be colorful and delicious and well maintained. And then it happens. And then you get a little sad about it.

Because it's a kind of sameness. A wine bar, cheese store, gourment burger kind of, Northern Italian cuisine, Asian fusion kind of sameness and you have to ask yourself, "Is it really all about ME and MY comfort?"

Or something. And forget the strollers. As targets, they are too easy. But too big, too. I mean, these babies come at you like Cadillacs on the sidewalk. You just don’t know if you are going to survive. But at the last minute, they swerve.

But man, o-fancy man-o , S. Portland Street in Fort Greene. It is the most beautiful place on earth. Just go there. The trees. The parlor floors with their original stamped and decorated ceilings. The lights. The whole thing. Dark and light, at once.

But back to Carroll Gardens. I am struck by the Italians In Carroll Gardens. Being half Italian, but never really caring too much about it, even feeling alienated from it as my family did everything they could to become "American", it was quite something to see these old Italians in the streets with their idoltry Saint I-Don't-Know-Which-One-Teresa, a drum beating, and everyone marching along, oddly miedeval, with the statue up high. It was joyful, sure, for them. But to me, it was also sort of scary and pagan and irrational.

These must be Sicilians.