in bocca al lupo

Granted, I haven’t spent much time in New York and I’ve spent even less time in Brooklyn, but I promise that if I lived there with my sweetheart you can be sure that you’d find me on Saturdays at the Brooklyn Flea. Even the scaled-back winter version in the stunning Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower is a fantastic maze of precious and beautiful things. The Flea is a combination of antiques, small scale Brooklyn artisans, and great food. Speaking of food, how cool is this vintage milk cap for raw milk?

I’m especially drawn to paper ephemera, which I’m guilty of collecting into little stacks and then not knowing quite what to do with them. I love postcards, recipes, labels, advertisements, magazines, sheet music, you name it.

I love the type faces and the illustrations and the color. I love how significant it all feels. Take this collection of old bingo cards, for example. They’re just bingo cards. Imminently disposable, but lovely just the same.

I could have dug through these boxes of papers alone for hours, exclaiming over every one. Zach, on the other hand, has more patience for the tables of small objects; bins of keys and buttons and money clips.

It was our second trip to the Flea together and it was funny to see how we each gravitated towards the same objects as the first time. A little brass horse. A shell full of different colored dice. Pretty leather gloves that are far to small to ever fit.

We agreed on the beauty of these thermoses though.

And on the heavy old seltzer bottles.

But, and this shouldn’t surprise you, my most pressing weakness at the Flea are the snacks. There are hot dogs topped with kimchi and nori flakes, buttery lobster rolls, golden pupusas, and pillowy pretzels. If you want one of Milk Truck’s golden grilled cheese sandwiches, the Flea is the only place to find it.  I got into trouble with some apple cider caramels, a cacao and coconut bonbon, and I would have taken a homebrew kit home if I could have possibly brought it to Italy.

The truth is that I love old postcards as much as I love caramels and pretzels, but at the Flea, I never wonder what I’m going to do with the pretzels.