New York City (Fodor's, 2012) - Fodor's [281]
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Exploring Fort Greene | Where to Eat in Fort Greene
One of Brooklyn’s most diverse neighborhoods, Fort Greene has long been a home to writers like Richard Wright, Marianne Moore, and John Steinbeck, and many musicians such as Betty Carter, Branford Marsalis, and even rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Architecture buffs will see many great examples of Eastlake and Italianate styles, especially in the facade of BAM, Brooklyn’s performing arts powerhouse.
Today the city has built on the success of BAM by creating a cultural district around it. Here, you can take a modern dance class at the Mark Morris Dance Center (3 Lafayette Ave. | www.markmorrisdancegroup.org), see African diaspora performances by 651Arts (www.651arts.org) in various venues around the neighborhood, catch avant-garde theater at the Irondale Center (85 S. Oxford St. | www.irondale.org), or spend a weekend learning to blow glass at UrbanGlass (647 Fulton St. | www.urbanglass.org).
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EXPLORING FORT GREENE
Fodor’s Choice | The Brooklyn Academy of Music.
BAM is a comprehensive arts anchor for the borough, with diverse and cutting-edge offerings in opera, theater, dance, music, film, and more shown in a 1908 neo-Italianate showpiece. Late choreographer Pina Bausch, director Milos Forman, and composer Philip Glass have all recently presented work here. The BAM Rose Cinemas shows both art-house and mainstream films. The season’s biggest annual event is the Next Wave Festival each fall, which showcases work by emerging and established artists.
BAM holds performances in the Beaux-Arts–style Howard Gilman Opera House and at the nearby Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St.), a 1904 vaudeville house whose renovation purposefully retained some of its crumbling beauty. | Peter Jay Sharp Bldg.,30 Lafayette Ave., between Ashland Pl. and St. Felix St., Fort Greene | 11217 | 718/636–4100 | www.bam.org | Subway: C to Lafayette Ave.; 2, 3, 4, 5, B, Q to Atlantic Ave.; D, N, R to Atlantic Ave.–Pacific St.
The Brooklyn Flea Market.
Quirky, inclusive, and full of unclaimed treasures—that’s Brooklyn in a nutshell, and it also aptly describes the Brooklyn Flea. This little market that could is now one of Brooklyn’s most popular shopping attractions, luring locals and bargain hunters from afar with vintage finds, hip crafts, and crazy-delicious eats.
The Flea is a hybrid of traditional flea market, garage sale, and crafts fair. It’s a tumble of the expensive, the cheap, and the strange. Some vendors hawk high-end items like antique doors refashioned into tables, rescued fixtures from prewar houses, or midcentury lamps identical to those in Mad Men.
The most “Brooklyn-y” component is the local artisans, and buying their one-of-a-kind handmade wares gives shoppers the altruistic feeling of supporting arts and crafts, whether that’s silk-screen T-shirts of giant squid, tongue-and-cheek charm bracelets with little daggers, or hand-stitched stuffed elephants. You’ll also find not a small number of oddly specialized booths. Exhibit A: the vendor who sells nothing beyond oil paintings of bicycles. Why not? Finally, there is plenty of bric-a-brac to sift through: great stuff that may not be practical (mink stoles, nonfunctional alarm clocks, Star Wars collectibles), but it makes for fun browsing.
When you’ve exhausted the shopping side of things, the Flea boasts some fantastic food options. You’ll find fat pretzels from Sigmund Pretzel Shop, funny franks from Asia Dogs, cold cuts and sandwiches from Mile End delicatessen, organic ice cream from Blue Marble, even the popular McClure’s pickles, all with plenty of Crop to Cup family-farmed coffee to