flea at laff #4: the good fork.

snack: meatloaf sandwich
drink: d&g jamaican ginger beer

oh brooklyn flea. would it kill you to learn about the concept of turnover? this past weekend i made my fourth trip this season to the flea & let me tell ya, it gets sadder every week. see that bitchin guitar up above? i first mentioned that guitar back in back in late april & every week for the past month, i've gone back & it's been sitting there on that table, just waiting to be bought by the reincarnation of ronnie james dio. i tell you what...i believe the ouija board behind it is a relatively late addition & if it's still there mid-month, i'm going to go all tawny kitaen, buy it, summon the ghost of dio & get that guitar bought quicklike. you just wait! summer taunt-the-guitar-shredding ghost party at my place!

but really, seeing the same things over & over again week in & week out is totally lame/depressing. i enjoy the couple of tables that have art, but it's starting to be like going to the museum & knowing that the same paintings will likely be there when you return the following week. it's just a lot of the same stuff over & over again. at least it was a beautiful saturday afternoon weatherwise, a pleasant surprise considering that the weatherjerks said we were supposed to get lightning-filled rain storms around noon on saturday. that shit never happened. speaking of things that never happened, i'd also caught a rumor (confirmed by "no parking" signage on light poles) that the food network's "great food truck race" was going to be stopping by the flea between 2-4pm. i tried to hang out until they arrived, but i have a short attention span, so i eventually left just before 2:30. i'm assuming they arrived some time around 2:35.

since the flea market goods were depressing me & felt like a waste of my time, i went for the food shortly after arriving. i initially gave some serious consideration to red hook lobster pound's double-digit-dollar lobster roll, but eventually opted against splurging & went to the booth for the good fork, a restaurant based on red hook's van brunt st. the ny times review of their physical locale mentions that they have skate. i friggin love skate. after trying it a couple times a decade ago, i'm slightly obsessed with it & while i don't see it on their current menu, i've decided that if you're a meat eater & can't find something you like on the menu, you should probably go to the surgeon & have them remove your tongue, because you don't deserve it. on saturday, what really drew me to their booth (other than the lack of line) was the slightly-old timey record player they had on display with a copy of ozzy osbourne's bark at the moon leaning next to it. well, that & the words "meatloaf sandwich."

it sounded intriguing even though i've never been a huge fan of meatloaf. to be frank, my mom cooks a lot of good food, but growing up i never dug her meatloaf. like with a lot of foods, i really struggle with the texture. if the meatloaf's too lumpy and/or dry, you can forget about me enjoying it. as for the good fork's meatloaf sandwich, it's neither dry nor nasty-textured. if i'd had them as a kid, i would've been asking my mom to make meatloaf. c'est la vie. anyway, on a good day i could eat like a full animal's worth of them. what you get is a half-inch thick patty of meatloaf meat on a toasted roll with caramelized onions on top & bacon-infused ketchup on both sides. the meatloaf is slightly juicy & done just right & each individual part of the sandwich does its part to make it work, especially the bacon-infused ketchup. if you ask me, ALL ketchup should be bacon-infused. so yeah...it sort of changed my views on meatloaf.

i paired my meatloaf sandwich with a cold bottle of d&g jamaican ginger beer, a beverage imported from jamaica. i sampled d&g's champagne kola way back in one of my first ever posts & wouldn't say that i enjoyed it or would ever buy another, but things have been a bit rough for jamaicans recently, so i decided to give d&g another chance. it's not awful. i'll give them that. i won't say it's good though. HFCS is the second ingredient (after triple filtered water), which helps bring the sugar content up to 56g per bottle. that's ten grams more than mountain dew. after that, the next ingredient is ginger. i'll eat gobs of pickled ginger between bites of sushi, but when ginger's the overwhelming flavor in my beverage, it always leaves an unsettling aftertaste in my mouth. i just can't get behind it. what i can get behind is the sunglass-wearing cat on the front of the bottle. at least they have that going for them. he's like the dictionary definition of "cool cat." next to him, garfield's a noogie-worthy nerd. too bad mr. cool jamaican sunglass cat has poor taste in sodas.