(The “Vagina Tree”)

My apologies for the radio silence, but these past 2 weeks have been filled with weddings, breaking a Guinness Book record, experiencing earthquakes for the first time, and of course, overly preparing for Hurricane Irene out here in Greenpoint, Brooklyn – which also happens to be located in Evacuation Zones A and B.  I didn’t evacuate, but I did follow the advice of Blooomberg and filled up my bathtub, taped the windows, and, like every other New Yorker, stocked up on tons of booze and snacks. Luckily, everything went very smoothly out here and it almost felt as if NYC got a free pass to camp out in living rooms and watch chick flicks (our so I did!).  The hardest part seemed to be trying to avoid the scary news channels, which were so addictive to watch, but made me feel crazy and paranoid after a while.  After the “eye” of the storm passed (i.e. 11am), we went for a walk to survey the damage along West End Street and down Kent Avenue towards the East River Park.  Besides some flooded apartments and clogged sewers, I’d say the broken trees were the highlight of our quasi-adventure.  Speaking of trees, Brooklyn lost a good one today due to Irene, one in particular who has been a Williamsburg landmark for as long as I can remember, situated in McCarren park and best known as “The Vagina Tree”.  It was most commonly used as a meeting point and I can remember many sunny days sitting under it drinking “liquid gasoline” (frozen margarita’s) from the Turkey’s Nest.  There were quite a few people gathering around it today taking pictures and sharing their favorite vagina tree story, a few even created a candle shrine on it’s freshly cut stump.  It will surely be missed.  I hope you survived this past week with minimal damage, I’m wishing for a sunny Labor Day weekend where I’ll be sharing good times with my beautiful extended family, living up what will be the last few warm weekends of the season.