By Adam Chimera

by sight, paying virtually no attention to street names. School was at most a short bus ride away, and to this day I can find just about any place in Manhattan, but would be hard-pressed to give directions to anybody else. In my pre-high school mind, the distant land of Brooklyn was more a name than a place.

Even now, having had something like a teenage love affair with Brooklyn (or the parts I came to know), and presently residing there, large swathes of the borough remain unknown to me. When presented with the task of taking a walking tour of Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, I thought it wise to print out a map. Definitely a good move.

Exiting the train at Atlantic Ave., I enter Boerum Hill from its northeast corner at around 3:30 p.m. on a Thursday. With low-standing townhouses and relatively narrow streets, it immediately presents a considerable departure from the chain-link fences and wide-open commercial environment of Atlantic Center. I am almost surprised to see the avenue still there when I look back over my shoulder.

With the neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens now being packaged by realtors as “BoCoCa” (a name I enjoy because it’s sort of a fusion of bobo and cocaine), and rumored to be the spot where the cool kids are headed, I am expecting the area to be somewhat overdressed; perhaps there will be lots of small cafes, with skimpy and outrageously priced sandwiches. And women. To my surprise, the first couple of blocks are almost entirely residential, with a demographic mixture that might have existed in one of the relatively safe but not terrifically expensive Manhattan neighborhoods of my childhood.

I turn south on Bond St. and pass into an area of tall, monolithic, brown-brick apartment complexes. On this extremely balmy and clear January day, the people on the streets are unexpectedly few. I see that I am heading for an industrial zone, heralded by the huge and latticed Kentile sign which looks like it’s a little more than a half a mile ahead. I didn’t come to do factory inspections, so I head west on Baltic St.

Within about a block, I find myself among men standing near the curbs and shouting their conversations across the street. A 30- or 40-something guy stands outside a corner laundromat on crutches, dressed in an urban commando get-up, complete with black army cap and visor-style sunglasses, repeatedly yelling variations of, “Get your ass out here! Get the fuck on out!” while gesticulating wildly with one crutch at a time. I give him a lot of space.

I have made  it a point to come hungry, with the intention of checking out the local victuals, but so far, I have only passed a few delis and convenience stores. 

At Court St., I find myself returned to the old New York townhouse style of architecture, with the series of low roofs punctuated only by a verdigris-covered steeple. Here there are shops, so I turn north in search of snacks.

I pass on the only interesting eatery that I notice, a pizzeria, on the basis that pizza is a total crapshoot, its quality not necessarily indicative of anything. Being in an area with good pizza only means that some places won’t suck, but you can find stinkers anywhere. I go west on Warren St. and into Cobble Hill.

Now I’m seeing more of the picture I expected, as I come upon a young-ish and attractive woman in comfortable clothes with a stroller, out of which a copy of Brooklyn Parent prominently protrudes. Winding my way through these tree-lined streets that are physically reminiscent of certain pockets of the West Village, I pass a man who looks about 40, but is dressed like a fashion-conscious high-school boy. 

Even this sort of thing is a bit of a surprise. It doesn’t look to me like the cool kids are headed to BoCoCa but, rather, that they came here a while ago and got all old.

In fact, I find myself wondering how anyone is pushing this as the next Brooklyn hot spot. Williamsburg makes a certain kind of sense. The area around the Bedford stop on the L may now have reached such a supersaturated point that it feels like a sound stage buzzing with extras for some doubly shoddy Rent spin-off, but, you know, some people, that really floats their boat. More importantly, it’s a 15-minute train ride to Union Square.

This part of town, pretty though it may be, looks like it must already be expensive, is creepily desolate in the late afternoon on a gorgeous day, and is mostly a pain in the ass in terms of transit.

I head down the western border of Cobble Hill, alongside the B.Q.E., and go east on DeGraw, the northern edge of Carroll Gardens. 

A few blocks later, I’m annoyed with myself for having failed to acquire a cheeseburger. I head toward Park Slope on 3rd St., and stumble into an experience of blinding gorgeousness that stops me in my tracks on a bridge over the Gowanus Canal.

Looking to the southwest, beyond huge cylinders of concrete jutting out of the black canal for reasons unknown to me, past the Kentile sign (which is now majestic), beyond junkyards and elevated trains passing by, I see the kind of sunset that reminds you that stars are, in fact, nuclear explosions. Behind me is what appears to be a full moon, visible in the daytime, hanging over a solitary vivid red building. On one side of the bridge are the quiet streets of Carroll Gardens and, on the other, the 3rd Ave. traffic, and the cornices and stone facades that nobody makes anymore and everybody seems to want to tear down.