Shadows in Vane

Flawless curves fall against Brooklyn’s boxy imperfection. These arches represent all that Brooklyn is not. Brooklyn is tough, and Brooklyn is home, and though its landscape is not the Midtown skyline, it is what it is. Boxy and all, it is beautiful. People love Brooklyn for the same reason they love goofy-looking dogs: heart and originality.

And sometimes, they are more cost effective.

In most Brooklyn neighborhoods, like mine, where Starbucks and Duane Reade have yet to creep, fast food giants are really the only places open past midnight aside from the bars.

And the bodegas, but Vane doesn’t hate on bodegas. We love breakfast at all hours of the night.

Brooklyn is not shiny. An elevated loud and dirty highway snakes through it. There is an oil spill underneath my neighborhood, seventeen million gallons strong thanks to an Exxon flub in Newtown Creek. But Brooklyn doesn’t give up.

If we survived the BQE, the ‘80s, the oil spill, we’ll sure as hell survive MacDonald’s.