A Walk on the Island

This summer I've decided to try to get to know Brooklyn a little better, especially my neck of the woods. So on Monday my boyfriend and I decided to take a little walk around Mill Island, just a few blocks from my house.


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Now, in the almost ten years I've lived around here I've never had cause to go there, except to go to Gil Hodges Lanes, or there was that one time I fell into a drunken sleep on the B100 and missed my stop. That was an odd experience - it was after my company holiday party and I woke up to see a side of Kings Plaza I don't normally see.

First off, it's not really an island anymore, I know, it's actually a peninsula, sort of the way Coney Island isn't really an island anymore. But the skinny little piece of land that attaches it to the rest of Brooklyn is misleading, as walking the perimeter took a lot longer than I thought.

The west side of the island is just a view of everything that lines Flatbush Avenue - the mall and the marina. We walked down Mill Avenue instead of Strickland, so I don't have any photos of that right now.

Once you reach National Drive there's not much to see. The houses are somewhere in the middle range and they block any view of the water beyond. Which is okay, because all you would see here is Flatbush Avenue and the Belt. Beyond that is Floyd Bennett Field, so there's not even anything to look forward to after that.



(I used to live next to the Belt, but in a place where the Belt is actually right next to the water so there was something to look at. I kind of miss it, though I do not miss the sound of traffic.)



For some odd reason people like their houses to look like doctor's offices. I didn't see any signs indicating any, but lots and lots of these glass doors. There was even a house that was entirely mirrored.

There's a little split in the middle, and then the houses really start to fancy up.



Dude, that's awesome. They even had stained glass in the garage and everything. And then there's the basketball hoop.



This house apparently belongs to a Russian industrialist.



The backsides of the houses we passed before.



Now that's nice.



I jokingly referred to some of the houses as "Beetlejuice Houses", because if you remember how they renovated the house in that movie? I saw a lot of that as we walked. This one was probably the weirdest, what with the sculptures and the neon. I think I actually saw this house before, at night, when I passed it on the bus. I thought I was imagining it.



I'm going to assume this is the "secret" door to their docks below.



This house had its own guard house in front and a Porsche parked in the driveway. And you thought things like that only existed in Beverly Hills.



And finally, Whitman joins into East 66th, where you get to reenter reality, as evidenced by this lovely view of Bergen Beach.