flea at laff #8: red hook lobster pound.

snack: "connecticut style" lobster roll
drink: maine root blueberry soda

...& we're back. so some three saturdays ago, it was friggin beautiful outside. the sun was out in full force, but it wasn't uncomfortably hot, the air was dry without the typical NYC summer stab-me-in-the-face mugginess & there was a pleasant breeze about. it was one of the first days this summer where i stepped outside of my apartment & thought to myself "hell yeah, summer. this is where it's at," making me wonder why summer chose to treat us all so cruelly over the last two months. it was a perfect day to venture out & spend part of my saturday afternoon cramming food into my face at the brooklyn flea.

as usual, i met up with my flea partner in crime, miss jessica, and when i arrived at her apartment, i was treated to a few unexpected special guests. the first special guest was her cute/interesting librarian compatriot, a girl who goes by the name of "haas." the other two guests were a tag team of sorts. after talking about getting cats for a while now, jessica finally took the plunge & on the previous day, finally picked up two boy kittens, a set of tiny, scrappy brothers who now go by the names "emerson" & "whitman." i guess librarians like literary names or something. on this saturday though, they hadn't been named yet, so they just went by the collective name "the fur babies." sure they're relatively cute, but as a WICKED UBER MALE, i eventually got overwhelmed by all their fluffy, kitty cuteness. i guess i'm just programmed to get my kitty cuteness from youtube.

eventually jessica, hass & i left the fur babies behind & sauntered over to the flea. for most of the summer, i've been awaiting the weekend where i finally stifled my cheapness & forked over fifteen bucks for a lobster roll from brooklyn's very own crustacean hawker, red hook lobster pound. given the pure awesomeness of the weather that day & the influence it had on my mood, i figured there was no better time than the present, so i decided to go for it. the folks behind red hook lobster pound are ralph gorham & susan povich, a husband & wife team who, one day whilst in their brooklyn apartment eating lobsters they'd brought back from maine, hatched a plan to bring tasty maine lobster to NYC. last year alone, they sold 15K pounds of lobster. that's like six dozen lightweight class sumo wrestlers worth of lobsters!

with red hook lobster pound, you've got two options--the "maine" lobster roll & the "connecticut" lobster roll. the maine's made cold with mayo, celery & some spices and the connecticut is made warm with nothing but lobster & butter. though i love maine & would even consider settling down in portland, i opted for the connecticut roll, a sandwich named for a state that i hope will be accidentally nuked off the face of the earth by confused NYC-bound terrorists. the choice was simple, really, as my years of memories of lobster revolve around lobster covered in butter. jessica joined me with the connecticut & haas went the maine route. as i expected, it was badass. it's simple, made up of big, juicy, buttery chunks of seasoned maine lobster packed into a lightly toasted, buttery roll (which apparently comes from maine as well). i absolutely LOVED it. i mean, it was fresh, well made, buttery lobster for crying out loud. how couldn't i? jessica, who tends to get a lobster roll every time we go to the flea, felt that hers was a bit rubbery. i think she's crazy. mine was all that & a pickle wedge. as for the maine roll, haas had zero complaints.

since red hook lobster pound's all maine-inspired, they also have sodas from portland's maine root, whose root beer severely tickled my fancy late last year. since i'd yet to try their maine root blueberry soda, i chose it over the root beer & the mandarin orange one. while it could never compare to their root beer, as a soda, it's top notch. twenty-three skidoo, if you will. it's all organic & stuff and made with nothing but pure water, fair trade organic cane juice & spices. that's it. the result is a soda that's sweet but not overly sweet. it's got a nice, blueberry scent to it as well, so if you're as into sniffing things as i am, you'll likely enjoy that aspect of it. bonus: it continued to provide me with guilt-free refreshment well after i had consumed my lobster roll & moved on to checking out the rest of the flea.

when we were done with our lobsta, we split up & while the girls checked out flea market girl things, i went wandering. maybe it was the weather or maybe it was the lobster in my belly & the bottle of blueberry soda in my hand, but either way, after weeks of convincing myself that the flea has nothing of interest for the cheap, straight, white, single man in his thirties, my wanderings were actually pleasurable for once. as you can tell from the below photos, i came across some interesting (but ultimately useless) items. there was that thingy that looks like it's made out of lite-brite lights. there was that mirror with the charming, dapper man reflected in it & a slightly territorial, slightly yelpy dog behind it. there was that happy wooden dude guarding all those random flea items. there was also a booth with tiny paintings for $12 and i totally would've got one, but i wandered away & when i thought about going back, i couldn't find the booth quickly, so i gave up.

all in all, it was a lovely day at the flea, my favorite thus far this summer. i guess the trifecta of sunshine, yummy lobster & a positive outlook on random crap tends to have that effect on people. it still can't get me to buy any of that junk though.