Streetside Sights & Scenes: PLG - Flatbush

Well well well, if it isn't time for everyone's favorite feature of any store group, the Streetside Sights & Scenes. Okay, I really do it only because I like it. If you're not interested, come back Sunday for our first Staten Island store tour. For reference, I'm putting these in the order that I took them (because my day's circuit was a little different from the order I posted it in).

Here's a shot from my crossing of the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn. A beautiful spring day to visit grocery stores (and walk many miles)! As always, I was not driving at the time of the picture.

I was able to get some free street parking for the whole day, without needing to move the car, in a beautiful residential strip in Prospect Park South right near the Cortelyou Market. This cat was having a relaxing morning on a porch near where I parked, but was not in the slightest interested in saying good morning to me. Clearly, I love Brooklyn cats (and any cats at all).

I'd assume the houses in this part of the neighborhood are many millions of dollars. It's a very quiet, slow-paced residential area. My first stop was a coffee shop on Cortelyou Road, for a morning beverage and bathroom break; at that time I texted one of my friends jokingly threatening to send her a picture of every last grocery store I saw that day (don't forget that the store total was 56). She, knowing that I was joking, agreed. And that's why my phone battery was in the single digits by the time I got back to the car.

Cortelyou Road subway station.

A beautiful (and functional, extra bonus) clock tower along Cortelyou Road.

A construction site immediately next door to the Key Food at 786 Flatbush. I love construction equipment, and have since I was a little kid. This particular construction site was the location of the Flatbush Caton Market before they moved next door to the former Key Food on Clarendon Rd. I just loved the way this (very nice, by the way) excavator fit perfectly into the window in the construction wall.

Parkside Avenue subway station, right next to the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside. Parkside Avenue continues to the west and, in the next block west, runs along the southern border of Prospect Park, a 526-acre park that anchors central Brooklyn.

Another gorgeous historical residential neighborhood at the northernmost section of Prosepct Lefferts Gardens, shown here at the corner of Bedford Avenue and Maple Street.

Two blocks south at Bedford Avenue and Rutland Road. Five blocks north of the Ideal Food Basket.

A very different type of row housing fills the residential center of East Flatbush, shown here on Brooklyn Avenue just north of a different Ideal Food Basket.

And yet another type of row housing on Albany Avenue just to the north of the Pathmark. Hopefully that gives you more of a sense of the neighborhoods we've been seeing. Up next, we're crossing the Narrows to Staten Island, stay tuned!