Leon Freilich, the Oh-So-Prolific-One/Verse Responder, brought an article in this weekend’s Newsday to my attention, a guide and loving tribute to Park Slope with more than 100 photographs. See if your house is pictured or your favorite store or restaurant. The dining out section includes 45 photographs. Quite a few restaurants pictured are no longer in business, including Beso, Bistro St. Marks, Minnow, Cocotte, The Red Cafe, Surreal Cafe, Two Little Red Hens and Mirimam. It’s actually a great record of extinct restaurants. Complete with pictures.

Park Slope
is a fine mixture of late 19th century elegance and 21st century cool:
Brownstones and limestones complete with bow windows, bay windows,
turrets and cupolas vie for space along its tree-lined streets with
up-to-the minute bistros and bars.

Built to compete with the upscale neighborhoods of that borough across
the river, its own version of Fifth Avenue — Prospect Park West — was
meant to be every bit as opulent as its more famous competitor. It
never quite succeeded on that level, but it did draw its own plutocrats
and merchant princes.

The main difference is that, even today, many of those mansions remain
while much of Fifth Avenue has long since been turned into faceless —
if internally lavish — apartment houses.