A Brooklyn state of mind...

So I spend a lot of time in Brooklyn. Shore Fire's here of course (that's the view from the window to the right), and I live a block away. Sometimes it just feels like my entire world axis is an area within a 100 yard radius of Remsen and Court Streets, Brooklyn Heights. I also necessarily spend a lot of time thinking about writing, especially music writing -- hey, I'm even writing now. See what I mean?

So it was interesting this weekend to stop in and see a few things at the (first ever) Brooklyn Book Festival across the street. I'd say the area's becoming quite a writer's bastion, but given Heights residents like Walt Whitman, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer perhaps "becoming" is the wrong word. I got to hear a bit of the Saturday readings with Jonathan Lethem, Carl Hancock Rux, Rick Moody, and quite a few others -- but what was most interesting was to see the great turnout, a plaza full of people sampling author / publisher / bookstore booths like it was the Union Square farmer's market.

Many props to Shore Fire friend and deft music scribe Eric Demby, now working in the Brooklyn Borough President's office and one of the guys that made it all happen, and I look forward to the next one.