MNN - Mother Nature Network

Likes many of my friends and neighbors, I returned home this morning to survey the damage left behind by the historic pre-Halloween s'nor eastercane Frankenbeast monster known as Sandy. (Technically, she came ashore near Atlantic City, N.J. as an unholy mess of damaging winds, crashing waves, and torrential rain that, in more manageable words, is being dubbed by the meteorological community as a post-tropical “superstorm.”)

 

My home of well over six years, the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, has received a hefty amount of pre- and post-Sandy news coverage due to its low-lying, flood-prone geographical location in Upper New York Bay. And then there’s the semi-isolated, semi-gentrified neighborhood’s scrappy n' salty — yet stroller-friendly — bohemian-in-a-longshoreman-cap vibe that, for better or worse, has made it a popular drinking destination, art and design enclave, and a buzzy darling of the New York Times real estate section over the past couple of years (the Times' National Editor Sam Sifton’s Twitter feed over the last 48 hours has been a decidedly Red Hook-centric affair ... apparently, he's a resident).

 

The waterfront village is most famous for an organic farm, waterfront park, and the tastiest key lime pies known to mankind (and IKEA, of course). And given its insular, hard-to-be-anonymous nature, it's a neighborhood that knows how to pull itself by its bootstraps when the going gets rough.

 

The NYT described the scene in Red Hook just hours before high tide rolled in, Sandy's winds picked up, and things got real ugly: “Throughout the day, the pioneer spirit that has brought chicken coops, beehives and funky bars to a once-desolate industrial stretch of Brooklyn was on full display, with residents hoisting Brooklyn Lager and goblets of red wine.” Cringe-y as it is, that's pretty much the Red Hook mythos in a nutshell.

 

Me? I decided not to stick it out and obeyed the mandatory "Zone A" evacuation orders on Monday evening, long before the National Guard rolled in, Van Brunt St. was transformed into a fast-moving river complete with floating cars and oversized planters (Red Hook is home to a couple of excellent garden centers), and horrifying images like this began to emerge from the close-knit community.