Since the Supreme Blogger is out of town, doing the opposite of
hibernating (summering?-simmering, cooking up those succulent scoops
she ladles into the ethernet) at the Oracle’s cave on Blog Island, I
jumped at the chance to put up a post or two…then I jumped back.

What
on earth was I thinking? This blogging business takes: 1. time, 2. the
ability to sit and type your thoughts fluently on the glowing screen,
3. a lot of gathered information, or heartfelt musings, or just plain
something to say to the next unsuspecting straggler into the blog…

The next thought was "What the heck, it’s going to be buried shortly in
the long scroll of daily info, people can skip boring bits and find the
exciting headlines that Hepcat will strategically place next to
his on-the-mark photos"

The first thing that reminded me why this OTBKB blog is so vital, is
that some of our favorite things about Park Slope are changing, as they
are wont to do, and LC, AKA Smartmom, is usually one of the first
people to pick up on the significance of these ongoing transformations
and events, and bring them to our notice.

Walking down Ninth Street from
an early morning workout at the Y, I saw that the nearly-secret
discount clothing store Scene, has finally finished it’s going out of
business sale…

I for one will miss the colorful skirts and funky
window displays on headless mannequinns… and that the Paris bakery is
still having its show-down with the overly cranky city HD.

Thank
goodness it’s still possible to pop into Perch for a little bit of
heaven on earth–the awesome Veggie Reuben…for avocado and sauerkraut
fans everywhere.

Originally I was thinking to describe how when my boyfriend/husband and
I moved (back, for me) to Brooklyn from Manhattan 19 years ago, we felt
like we had arrived in adult summer camp: walking down Seventh Avenue
in shorts and sandals in the summer, stopping in at Soundtracks to hear
Thom or Carlos play the latest records then cds…and seeing everyone
out strolling, eating, biking, doing whatever it is Slopers do in the
summer.

It was all we could do not to look for the camp counselor to
see if we could get candy from the canteen.

Now our son is doing the camping-enjoying the awesome Berkeley Carroll
summer camp run for the 25th year by the amazing Marlene Clary–how
does she keep this thing getting better year after year???

And Kim
Maier, at the Old Stone House in J.J. Byrne Park, hosting plays, films,
concerts, speeches, blogfests… how did we get so lucky, to have so
many fantastic people contributing so much to one little
neighborhood-OTBKB’s top 100 must have been so hard to put
together-where do you set the limit for the list?

O.K. time to jump back to the real world….Louise, your blogging shoes are way, way big, or as Webster’s now has it–ginormous!

Love, Gilly Youner