Exercising In Brooklyn

Things at the grill house have quieted down as the summer is ending and kids are going back to school. This evening Thor Equities has given churches vouchers for free food and rides for the children of the ghetto. Now everyone at the Grill knows that Joe Sitt is trying to warm the community up to his ideas about how Coney Island should be developed. But most of the kids who get these vouchers are only interested in the free rides and food. This year was a good summer for the lingering vendors on the Coney Island boardwalk. Nearly every weekend was a good one. Tourists have also been visiting in droves and they spend lots of money. Tonight I cracked a raw clam and put some extremely hot homemade sauce on it and devoured it. My rule is only one clam a week... The Grill House does not lean towards healthy foods. All the workers generally bring their own food because of the calories in anything you might get there. However, that said, I love a good grill house hot dog. Just a little hot mustard and you have a delight. Now if I really want to die soon, there is the sausage sandwiches. The girl who makes these is my friend and she knows which sausages are least likely to kill you. I am not sure which one she gives me. (remember you can click on the pictures to make them larger)

Now that brings us to another part of Brooklyn. Exercise. Not to many people exercise. I mean not to many people exercise in open public places. They mostly go to gyms where they line up with headsets on and walk fast or do other things with machines that seem very unnatural. For all of this they pay about $70 per month. One noteworthy thing is that kids really don't exercise in Brooklyn. Ok, they have soccer and Baseball teams that meet during church on Sunday, but really, kids don't exercise in Brooklyn. I guess all of that catches up with you and by the time you are 60 you realize that exercise is a good thing. Each morning near the walkway along the narrows water front there are groups that exercise. These groups meet from 6.30am till about 7.30 every morning. There are different theories with regards to which exercise is the best to do, and this collection of exercisers tend to be very interesting. Generally the groups divide between the Russians and the Chinese. Now sometimes when I pass by them I will whistle a nice tune that corresponds with the gracefulness of the aerobic moves. Even though the melodic whistle adds a wonderful flavor to this moment, no one will even turn a head to see where this music is coming from. However the leaders who are either a Russian man in his late 60's or a Chinese man can see me and often acknowledge me with a gentle smile. At the other end of the bicycle path some 5 miles away is another site. Every morning a lady and her female trainer labor away with the task of getting this pretty lady toned up. They use the bench at the end of the path as their launching pad. The trainer is brutal and has her doing all these seriously painful tasks. I often stop to remark how nice the lady looks, hoping that her effort might not go unnoticed. For all this pain she pays her trainer $100 per hour. Now her trainer has taken a liking to me and often comments how nice I am looking after so many miles of riding. So recently I have been riding with my shirt off to show her exactly how toned my body is. She persists with her evaluations. If Brooklyn is at the center of the universe, and if people who live outside of Brooklyn have the same exercise habits as we do, then you can imagine how much trouble we are going to be in when our obese children reach adulthood.

And by the way, the price of gas suddenly dropped this summer to below $3.75 a gallon. I guess we all showed the gas companies who was boss. Everyone stayed home and they got stuck with all their expensive gas.

Well that is the news from Brooklyn, where some of the people are a bit abrasive and chunky, the beaches are wonderful and the cost of living is below average.