Todd Terwilliger

For the past few weeks, I’ve exchanged my morning subway ride to work with a walking commute. Even though the time spent in transit has not changed overmuch (on average walking takes me ten to twenty minutes longer), the experience is a completely different animal. Without having to worry about practical matters such as jockeying for subway car position or perfecting proper platform placement for an incoming train, my mind can wander to more esoteric planes, asking questions like, for example, why is that woman screaming in the middle of the street?

I spent most of last night ensconced at the Brooklyn Public House which is, depending on who you talk to, either the best or worst new edition to my home turf of Fort Greene/Clinton Hill in Brooklyn. That it is a sign of the times for the neighborhood, no one questions. What it means, on the other hand, is up for debate, fierce debate. This is the chief problem with divination, ever since the first disheveled Homeric sage squinted his eyes into a muddle of thrown bones or a strange bird formation: one man’s vision of a divine face is another man’s vision of a lumpy Abe Vigoda. What the devil does it all mean? Everybody sees something different. This only is beyond a doubt: the neighborhood, it is a’ changing. You don’t have to venture inside the latest gastropub to see it, it’s there in the street. Just look at the cabs.

Brooklyn’s edition of restaurant week begins in a mere eleven days. I am fairly certain that preparations at the participating restaurants are well underway all across the Burrough: colored chalk stockpiled, chalkboards prepped, special menus printed on special menu cards with special menu typefaces. The excitement, if not quite palpable, adds a certain unidentifiable odor to the air. Yet, beneath the surface, there is a black tide sloughing across the gastronomic landscape. There is a war coming. Make no mistake: it will be a war.