Brooklyn Flea, Junktique New York Style

I love it when family and friends visit us with an agenda.  Like when daughter Katherine and her husband, Andy, led us across the Brooklyn Bridge for coal-fired, brick oven pizza at Grimaldi's, then for maple bourbon bread and butter pickles (and more) at Brooklyn Brine, then for a round of beers at Brooklyn Brewery.

All places we would have never scouted out on our own. We haven't been back to Brooklyn in the six months since, until our daughter Elizabeth and granddaughter, Ruby, visited last week.

Elizabeth is a fan of "junktiques," items which are not quite junk and not yet antiques.  Rare, and not so rare ( 70's avocado green glassware) finds are peppered throughout junktique shops in central Arkansas, where they live.  Elizabeth is a pro at spotting high quality - low price treasures, so the Brooklyn Flea was high on her agenda.

According to its website, this weekly market is "one of New York City's top attractions" with everything from furniture to "a tightly curated selection of jewelry, art and crafts," plus a smorgardsbord of food.

We learned shortly after entering the Flea's Fort  Greene location, that what might be considered "junk" in Arkansas could be "tique" in New York, or vice versa.


The area was packed with people and vendors, a festive way to spend a leisurely Saturday morning.  We meandered from booth to booth with the flow of the crowd.
I was intrigued by what, if anything, in this collection of collectibles might "speak" to me.                                                                                                                                                           

Black Statue of Liberty,  pink flamingo, perhaps?

Used typewriter for the writer?

 Silence.

Then at the end of a rack of vintage clothes, I see it.  A golden dress. 

The writer in me immediately hears the words and imagines the beginning
of a story. . .  

Allie rushes up the steps to her family's fifth floor Brooklyn flat. In her hand an invitation.  A dance, her first.  She knows there is no money for a dress, but she runs anyway. Her mother, hands rough, red from scrubbing the floors of other women, unwraps her fingers from the cooling teacup.  The door opens. Her daughter's flushed face. The piece of paper clutched, hopefully, in her hand. She walks to their only closet and pulls a flattened box from the darkened top shelf.  From a torn corner of the worn cardboard, Allie glimpses the edge of a ruffled hem.  She gasps.  Golden! 
    

  Years later it hangs waiting.  

I smile

 pass by 

on my way to a younger girl, 

waiting, 

 dreaming, 

perhaps of her own golden dress?

More likely, her puppy!