I heart NY parks

Some say nothing is free anymore, but if you look hard enough, you will find....

NY parks are fortunately, all over the city, and all offer free activities or facilities to be taken advantage of during the summer. Here are some of Brooklyn's finest that I often take advantage of.

Park # 1: Red Hook Pool

The Red Hook pool has helped ease the pain of the scorching sun coupled with the thick heavy air that I happily breathe and soak up all summer long. Some of the beauties of the Red Hook pool include but are not limited to; the strict rules (only flip flops, water bottles, towels, and sunscreen allowed on the deck, obviously keeping it very clean), the big pool and kiddie pool are both Olympic sized, free lunches are given to every child after they swim, and every Saturday, food stands line the sidewalks  offering what I have found to be the "best Mexican food" in the city. My only gripe with the pool is with those strict rules, comes the no camera rule, hence no current pictures.

I was however able to find this picture of the pool during the 30's. This pic might give you a better idea of the actual size of the pool, although the occupants  differ in their size and diversity.

Park # 2: Brooklyn Bridge Park

For a year now I have been hearing talk of the "floating pool". The Brooklyn Bridge Park, also home to "movies in the park", (side note, every Thursday this park shows free movies on the water front, next week "Muppets Take Manhattan"), just opened a free pool on a floating barge. Sounds too good to be true right?  well unfortunately it was.

Katie, her girls, Luke and I, all gave it a shot last Monday. We were supposed to meet some friends there but just barely missed the cut off time for the first session. We luckily were able to pass the hour and a half time frame by playing in the hot sand and baking under the heat of the sun. For Katie's account click here. It pretty much sums up my feelings as well. But on a positive note, I will post some pictures that give you the an idea of how much fun it could have been if you minus the hour and a half wait, the over priced umbrellas and water, the 30 minutes we were able to swim because someone puked in the water, and that fact I couldn't pry Luke away from the pool ladder without him throwing a tantrum.

:Perception:

:Reality:

:Boarding:

:Luke enjoying the few minutes of pool time he got in:

:After they evacuated everyone, so sad:

Park # 3: Prospect Park

My favorite of the free parks is Prospect Park. I take advantage of this park approximately 4-5 times a week. As I have mentioned before it has a great running loop that sometimes makes you forget that just outside it lies thick smog, loud horns, and lots of people. Every year the New York Philharmonic travels each of the major NY parks and puts on a concert. This year, I organized an Enrichment group to meet there for food and music. I was especially delighted to find that the second number on the program was the Mendelssohn Concerto. The Mendelssohn is my favorite concerto, I learned it in high school and then in college perfected it. The solo artist played it beautifully, much more so than I would have, especially being that I have the worst case of nervous bow arm ( actually,I just made that  term up, but really, I can't control my arm and bow when I am nervous, luckily I take a magic pill right before I play that does the trick).  After the show, they put on a great fireworks show which Luke especially enjoyed, he missed the 4th of July show. I have to say, this is probably one of my favorite NY activities so far, and it was free.

:A clip of one of my favorite phrases of the Mendelssohn Concerto. You can't actually see the person playing unless you look very closely, but you can listen, which is the best part. I clearly don't play it as well:

Comments

[Tara]

Oh my fraking gigantic poolness.