Pickled Brothers

Living 2 blocks away from the Brooklyn Flea has its perks. Any Sunday the feeling suits me, I can roll out of bed and check out the artisanal fare at the hippest flea market I've ever been to. From bracelets made out of old vinyl to hand-drawn postcards, the Brooklyn Flea is a veritable goldmine of what Sam Han calls "the temptations of pop culture, consumerism, decadence and the desire for bourgeois ideals" wrapped in the trappings of a medieval fair. Unable to resist these temptations, I still marvel at this 'flea market' and what it has done to the traditional notion of a meeting point where inexpensive second-hand goods are sold (or bartered). You won't find too many bargains here - one could walk to the Salvation Army just a few blocks east, but there is a sense that the hip vendors have already done this, found the coolest shirts and skirts and it is sooo totally worth it to buy the vintage fill-in-the-blank from them for an astronomical mark-up. Nowhere in Fort Greene is there more evidence of what Frederic Jameson describes as "the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods"*. And most of what's for sale is thoroughly part of this commodity market.

But I digress. While I don't deny my own susceptibility to this culture, I will say that by far my favorite thing at the Flea is the food. They have brought some of the famed Red Hook vendors here to sell their Papusas and Huaraches. And it is these in which I most indulge (more on them some other time). Yesterday, however, my attention was focused on the McClure's Pickle stand and its fine selection of samples. McClure's Pickles was started up by two brothers who now stock numerous fine food emporiums across the country, including a personal Boston favorite of mine, Formaggio's Kitchen in Cambridge. Their pickles come in two varieties: Spicy and Garlic Dill. And along with the jars of pickles, they also sell relish. I'm happy to say that yesterday I bought a jar of spicy relish for 5 bucks and will be applying it liberally to sandwiches and omelettes henceforth.



*this is what y'all get when I read Navigating Technomedia on the train to work