Who's Taller?

Who's taller, Ducknik or Isabella?

So Plotnik wanted to cook for the family last night, and the default meal of choice in a meat-deprived household is salmon. On the way to pick up Isabella at school Plot and Duck stopped in a little deli slash cafe for a snack, on the corner of Greene and Grand, where they had a fresh fish counter.

It is still amazing to Plotnik that a deli slash cafe could possibly be where this deli slash cafe is. A still-hot transmission chop shop, yes. Man, someone is sounding old around here.

They had nice mozzarella and basil flatbread sandwiches and an olive bar and a young guy at the fish counter fish guy who admitted that their wlld salmon, which looked like it had been in there awhile, had. And it was quite pricey for several day-old salmon. Plot bought some olives and a sandwich, passed on the fish.

On the walk back to Clinton Ave. they stopped at the Famous Anise -- you will only know that that rhymes if you remember Plotnik's adventure buying herbs there the last time -- actually it's an Associated Supermarket and you've got to go a long way to imagine sorrier looking fish. They were dirt cheap, but you'd be better off eating the dirt. The salmon looked like they'd taken the Chinatown Bus from Topeka. Plot bought some spinach and an apple for Isabella but no thanks to the fish from Kansas,



Then he remembered a very nice market he and Duck discovered the first time they came to Clinton Hill, and it's not too far down Lafayette, just past the Emmanuel Baptist Church where they heard that wonderful music on the morning of the New York Marathon. At the Pioneer Market they had, to Plot's joy and amazement, just received fresh wild salmon filets for not too much money and they looked great.

He knew they were fresh because the fish man stuck his nose down onto them and said "Oh, yeah! This here's what you want!"

But the deal is that in this part of Brooklyn they must have people shoplifting fresh fish, because Plot had to order the fish, watch the fish man weigh the filets, then he gave Plotnik a plastic number and Plot had to go through the line with his other groceries and the plastic card. When the checkout girl had collected the money, she called a guy over, gave him the plastic card, and the guy went and picked up the fish. It was like buying shampoo in Chile. Complicated. But that salmon was as delicious as anything Plot ever gets in S.P.

At the Walgreen's on Myrtle Avenue all the razor blades are under lock and key. You have to call a store manager over to unlock the razor blades. But, then again, it's exactly the same at the Safeway on Mission. Razor blades and film, the film that nobody ever buys anymore, still are under lock and key in Saint Plotniko grocery stores and drugstores in Clinton Hill.

That great looking old Revolutionary War-era home on Lafayette is still fabulous-looking and somewhat older then when Plot was here last. You can say the same thing for Plotnik.



He and Duck are hoping to spirit The Great Dance-Nik to the NEW FIND, the pizza parlor in Bed-Stuy that is supposedly as good as DiFara. But when Plotnik thinks of pizza parlors in Bed-Stuy he sees Danny Aiello as Sal and Spike Lee as Mookie and John Turturro and a young Samuel L. Jackson in "Do The Right Thing," one of Plotnik's favorite movies ever. Spike will never do a better one, and that sound track!

In Brooklyn, Plotnik hears the sound track in everybody's voice. This morning B-Bone was talking to Bobo and wanted to make her point, so she said: "Hold on, Bobo. Here's da deal!"