There are many streets with claims towards being the "Main Street" of Brooklyn. Perhaps the avenue with the best credentials would be Flatbush. It pops into being downtown, nearly touching the East River and within eyesight of the Brooklyn Bridge, and manages to cut a fairly straight path almost all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Along the way it manages to cut past several of Brooklyn's major cultural institutions, runs through several different ethnic enclaves, and, at perhaps its happiest point, flows past Junior's all-night restaurant – the place where good cheesecake goes when it dies.
    Flatbush's claim would seem indisputable and, to anybody but a resident of Brooklyn, there would be no need to discuss it. However, in a borough as dominated by neighborhood loyalties as "the land of homes and churches," no issue is considered closed when you can argue out of a position of near religious faith in the superiority of your own little chunk of BK. Only the dead, we're told, know Brooklyn. Though this, I'm convinced, is true because the dead are the only Brooklynites who won't continue to argue.

    In keeping with the borough's, um, "tradition of spirited inquiry," every section of Brooklyn feels the need to make the case, be it ever so unlikely, for their stretch of blacktop. One of the most vociferously defended stretches of these deuterocanonical strips of asphalt is Atlantic Avenue. Unlike Flatbush, which is strictly Brooklyn based, Atlantic Avenue cuts north and south. For detractors, this means it makes the egregious error of cutting into Queens, though it then becomes discontinuous, appearing as random slivers of roadway here and there. A product, oddly, of the arrival of electricity – though that's probably a different story. For Atlantic Avenue's defenders, this cross-borough existence is just a sign of the street's intra-borough magnanimity.
    And Atlantic is not without its notable advocates. The band Hem's "Where the Atlantic Meets the Pacific" isn't about the Panama Canal, but about the intersection of Atlantic and Pacific Avenue in Brooklyn, a corner that boasts a computer repair joint and a small public garden.
    What Atlantic might lack in scope, it makes up for in diversity. Within Brooklyn, Atlantic cuts through several housing projects, across the heart of hipsterville at Smith Street, past Brooklyn's only operational jail, through the heart of New York's largest Islamic community, a stone's throw from the poshest section of town (Heath Ledger used to live but a few short blocks from the avenue), and short walk to the borough's administrative center. It's this density of cultural crossroads that serves as the basis for Atlantic Ave's claim to representativeness.
    This one street also houses what might be the longest running drinking hole in America. Despite being able to trace a history of alcoholic commerce back to the days when whites first introduced the red man to firewater, the site that is now home to Hank's Saloon does not qualify on any sort of national register because it hasn't been in constant operation. It shut down periodically throughout its long life to change management. These irregular breaks in operation, and the multiple re-designs that have accompanied them, have served as a loophole for local developers and, as of this writing, Hank's lot is up for sale. Most likely, it'll become a bunch of condos.

    Every year, Atlantic Ave throws itself a little party called the Atlantic Antic.
    For those who though Hem was a bit obscure, the Beastie Boys drop the name of the street fair in their song "Shadrach."
    This particular party stretches the length of Atlantic, from the Terminal Mall near the previously mentioned intersection of Atlantic and Pacific to just a few blocks shy of the docks, at the hospital center (where Dean got his elbow replaced with cyborg parts, for anybody who reads this diary regularly).

Dock

    This year, while watching a pair of go-go dancers shake their things in front of Last Exit, I somehow got distracted and, looking down the avenue, noticed a set of three yellow metal masts docked at the Atlantic port.
    I could only think of a single ship in NYC that sported three yellow metal masts tall enough to spot from so far away – the Peking, now permanently docked at the South Street Seaport across the East River and north of these docks.
    "Maybe," offered Dean, who did not take his eyes off the go-go dancers, "They sailed the Peking over for the festival."
    "I didn't think civilians were allowed in the docks anymore. National security."
    "Hunh. You know, wearing a leotard is daring shit. Other than the tits, the thighs must be the most unforgiving jiggle-area on a woman."
    "You want to check out the ship?"
    "Like a mini-skirt, it shows a lot, sure, but you don't realize how much gets covered until you see one next to somebody who isn't wearing one."
    "Is that a no?"
    "Ahhh. Okay. Real quick. Then we come back here."
    "Deal."
    "And you buy the next beers."
    "Sure."
    "And I'm feeling like pulled pork sandwich."
    "You don't look like a pulled pork sandwich."
    "That was pushing it. Sure. Let's hustle."
    We started to make our way down the avenue.
    "Though, if, like, just out of the goodness of your own generous heart you thought I looked like famished or something and you wanted to get a sandwich, so that I don't die of malnutrition right here, in the middle of the street."
    "If we get you a sandwich before we get to the docks, we might not get back in time to see the dancers finish their set."
    "You know, it's a sick sick man who plays another man's love of women against his love of BBQ. Cruel and sick."

    As we got closer, I saw that the boat was much smaller than the Peking. White hull. Couldn’t make out the name of the boat. As we approached the entrance to the doc, we noticed a young man standing next to the auto-gate: white sailors outfit, the round hat I equate with Euro-sailors, gold lettering around its band. The kid had a baby face and looked, at most, 20-21. We said hello and he answered in German-accented English.

    We couldn't enter the docks. A sign helpfully informed us that the docks are "security level 1," which, whatever else it may mean, apparently means two semi-drunken Brooklynites aren't allowed to stumble their way about in them.

    We asked the kid what ship it was. Turns out it was the Gorch Fock, a training vessel for the German Navy. Apparently, kids in their officer corps get put on this tall ship to build a connection to the history of the Navy. While this evokes a whole romantic "Age of Sail" vibe, the history of the Gorch Fock's history is strictly 20th century.

    The first Gorch Fock was one of three training ships built by Nazi Germany during the officially "demilitarized" era of Germany. While they were not armed, their hulls were exact mock-ups of the hulls of German u-boats. In this sense, the Gorch Fock was one of the three nurseries for the cubs that would become the wolves Hitler's Wolf Packs. It was named after a poet and short story writer who wrote about the life of deep-sea fishermen in Low German – think of Gorch Fock as the John Clare of German deep-sea fishing. She was built after the plans of the first Gorch Fock, a ship that had served the Nazi's as a training ship. Hitler himself. Ultimately, the first Gorch Fock was scuttled in an attempt to prevent capture by Russians. In the long run, it didn't work. The commies raised her and the ship was recommissioned as the Tovarishch in 1951. (The two other sister ships ended up sailing under other flags – one's the Eagle, the United States Coast Guard ship, and the other is a museum ship after serving time with the Brazilian and Portuguese navies.)

    The current Gorch Foch was commissioned in 1957. The hull was built following the plans of the original Gorch Foch and the rigging was taken from the Herbert Norkus – named after the Hitler Youth "martyr" who died in a street fight with German communists and became a icon of Nazi propaganda. The Herbert Norkus was never completed and the unfinished hull was sold to Brazil. The Brazilians never got around to finishing her either. They ended up using her as a toxic waste receptacle: they pack her full of toxic gas grenades and then sunk her.

    We shot the shit with the kid for a little while and then staggered back to the festival.