Because my body ignores my wishes to stay asleep, my eyes popped open at 9:00, fortunately it wasn't my usual 7 am. We were fortunate enough to visit the weekend of the The Mermaid Parade, a yearly event held at Coney Island. I generally strongly oppose parades of any sort, but if you're going to go to one parade a year, this is the one to see. People watching is one of our favorite past times. You see, it's a parade of people dressed up as mermaids and other creatures of the sea. There was a long line of classic cars decked out for the occasion, floats included live bands being pulled along,then came the boobies. People, if you're going to expose yourself to the world, at least have the body for it. We saw many sagging nasty breasts with tiny seashell pasties and plenty of "fried eggs" as Mark referred to them. I can't even begin to fathom how uncomfortable the folks who had full body paint: several pink people on bicycles, a green naked man with a golden gourd, and multiple folks in metallic silver. Even though it was armpit hot, it was bearable because of the cool constant steady breeze coming in off of the ocean. We had designs to walk up to the water and dip our toes in, but there were far too many people there. The beach was packed with humanity and so deemed the trek not worth the effort. Two hours of fantastic freaky people watching in the blazing sun was enough so we headed off to Manhattan. First order of business, food, Patsy's pizza to be specific. This was seriously the best pizza ever. Thin crispy crust, fresh mozzarella, light crushed tomato sauce and fresh basil leaves. We topped ourselves off with beignets from the F&B. People watching, walking around town, shopping. We didn't have a plan. I love seeing a city with friends who are local, or in this case one who grew up here. The last time Mark and I were here five years ago or so, I wondered the city alone and had public transportation mishaps while he was at a conference for work. During that visit, this city made my skin crawl, I felt as if I were in a hive, I didn't feel particularly safe or comfortable. This visit had a completely different tone and flavor. I still prefer my smaller city, with it's easy escapes into green places, but this visit makes me want to return in the near future. We picked a good weekend to be in Manhattan, for it's Gay Pride Day, which added to our people watching pleasure. In Pittsburgh, same sex couples walking down the street holding hands is a statement, but for New York, it just is what it is, the rainbow flag is more of a cliche there and it's refreshing. And why can't we have a shop that has even a fraction of the variety their favorite home store provides. We only ventured into the first floor to admire the hundreds of chandeliers suspended above the eclectic mix of fabrics and dinnerware. We certainly would have found something to our taste there during our "search for interesting dinnerware" of a couple years ago. Back to Brooklyn for the night where we hit the restaurant that deep fries everything the ChipShop. It was too hot of a day for actually eating something fried (although that didn't stop Mark), I opted for the Korma. We did share the deep fried peanut butter cups. Which happened to approximate what we've been trying to achieve with a recent culinary experiment of ours: a grilled peanut butter and chocolate sandwich. Crispy and a little salty on the outside with gooey goodness on the inside. Walking the streets of Brooklyn and people watching, you see a pattern here, we popped into The Total Wine Bar to partake of their deceptively advertised AC. The one thing I miss about the neighborhood where we currently live is that there is no place to walk to, no coffee shop, no restaurant, nothing. Brooklyn is cute with its surprisingly quiet side streets lined with Brownstone houses and the main Avenues packed with shops, bars and places to eat. Even the tiniest nook of space had something different, like The Total Wine Bar.