NYU Student Comes to Brooklyn, Doesn't Feel It

We stumbled across this post, which is compellingly funny in a weird misadventures and ranting sort of way, as long as you resist the urge to take umbrage at the digs at Brooklyn and, particularly, at Red Hook. It's from an NYU student's blog called I Don't Do Due Dates and the entry is Brooklyn (Ad)ventures, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook Edition. We're going to present a couple of excerpts without further comment:

There is a reason I rarely venture into Brooklyn, independent of the unrealiableness of the subway system in that borough. No, every time I go to Brooklyn, I seem to have to experience something that simply scares the shit out of me. And, no, I'm not just talking about a run-in with hipsters.

First, I took the F last night to Carroll Gardens for Jess and Stefan's birthday party. I've been on the F before; hell, I've even been on the F going to Carroll Gardens before. So that wasn't a big deal. What WAS a big deal, however, was when I took a photo of the approaching station and heard a short, older woman called me a terrorist. Uh, what? Then she FOLLOWED me out of the station, down the street, and then walked up to a brownstone and WATCHED ME walk further down to Jess's place. Because I really look like I want to blow something up.

What is interesting is the walk we took to get from Jess's place in Carroll Gardens to a wine bar in Red Hook, which is aparently "so cute". Oh, yes, Red Hook is adorable if by "cute" you mean "ghettos filled with people who look like they would knife you over a piece of unbuttered toast". Then it's like puppies and rainbows and children dressed in blue bonnets bouncing happily to nursery rhymes. Alas, I'm not particularly fond of this definition of "cute", so walking to this wine bar was, in a word, terrifying.

(Apparently, today I'm bolding words that start with 'terr'.)

Besides the tall blocks of projects, the idle cars parked along the sidewalk, the junkyard dogs lunging at us, and gangs that looked like they belonged in West Side Story, sans the flashy dance numbers, there was the random creepy man who pulled up alongside our group in his van and said, rather casually, "Where are you guys going?" Now, any sober person would continue walking, and the sober individuals in our group did such a thing. Except we weren't all sober. So, suddenly, I heard, "WE'RE GOING TO RED HOOK!" and this creepy man, who had red-crayon-colored signs saying "Hook" taped to the windows of his van, began enticing us to "get into his van" because he was the "free shuttle".

There's more to this long ramble, but as we said, we're just presenting a sample.