When warm weather comes, the Brooklyn Flea moves outdoors. Saturdays, its in Fort Greene. And on Sundays, it’s the waterfront in Williamsburg.
For a pretty perfect Sunday at the Williamsburg Flea, arrive early to beat the crowds – the market opens at 10 am – and head straight to Milk Truck Grilled Cheese,
where you will order an All Day Breakfast Sandwich without the grilled onions (OMG….)
and while it’s grilling, grab a cup of iced coffee from Brooklyn Roasting Company. Gape at the Manhattan views while you eat your breakfast, and begin to understand the allure of living in this trendy section of Brooklyn.
But enough gaping, there are treasures to seek.
Lucky for you, your friend Amy is with you – she has the artist’s eye for flea marketing. After you passed through the best stall there – Dan’s Parent’s House (how much do you love that name?) – without finding a thing, she zeroes in the very coolest things there. Like these colored metal coils (she’ll use the big red ones for Sabbath candle holders, and make a necklace out of the rest)-
and these red saws (She found the two best and will hang them on her wall in some cool arrangement)
But don’t be jealous, because you found this – a real working NYC parking meter! Timed baking will never be the same in your kitchen…
Spend another couple of hours wandering, trying on clothes, wishing you needed a new dining room table because that one with the metal pipe fitted legs would be so perfect in your apartment, and in Amy’s case, regretting that you didn’t grab that red typewriter when you first saw it because now that nice young man is carrying it away (and at a great price too…)
Consol yourselves by leaving the now crowded market to head up the street to Artists and Fleas,
a place where the uber-hip artists have taken what the rest of us miss and turn it into treasures. Like these game board journals at Another Work in Progress-
and this gorgeous dress that had me wishing I were 18 again.
When I say uber-hip I mean it. This place even has a DJ spinning vinyl jazz and samba –
Too cool even for me.
Which means it’s time for lunch – in our case a delicious lobster roll at nearby Rosarito Fish Shack.
Of course, you could have headed back to the Flea Market to one of the many restaurant booths there, but a comfy seat and a cold drink under a spinning ceiling fan seems more in order on a warm afternoon before heading back home to Manhattan.
All in all, a pretty darned near perfect day.
I say darned-near because of the one thing we did not do, but which you must do when you go to the Williamsbug Flea, and that is to take the ferry there.
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The Brooklyn Flea Market on Sundays is in Williamsburg. (And now in Philly!!!) On Saturday’s, it’s in Fort Greene. In the winter, it’s indoors at the Williamsburg Savings Bank.
