End of Summer Serenade. Ten Minute Day Trip to Brooklyn Heights.

If your summer vacation (like mine) is over, maybe you could use a refill. If your vacation is yet to come maybe you would like a warm up. If as awning, deck, four season sun room, and pool companies extol, you spent the summer in your backyard, this website will take you to fun and exotic places with simply a click of the mouse. The City of Bloomfield Hills is intended to be a travel blog that in addition to discussing the people, places, and happenings of our great city will on occasion take you to the other half of the world.That is why on the Oakland Press blog page you find us first under the heading "Life" then "Community."

On the right hand  side of the this page directly under the Oakland Press News Box which will instantly take you to an important or interesting news story, you will find links to three cities on three different continents. You may have wondered what they are doing there. Like Carl Sagan said we are not alone and as the the author of a "city blog " I scan the Internet looking for life in other cities. My standards are high. I want life, not the chamber of commerce, the ministry of tourism, a newspaper, or view point from someone with an ax to grind. I like pictures. I want to know what it is like to live there. Probably no city blog including the one you are reading will ever live up to my exacting standards but I keep looking.

So as an end of summer swan song, with the aid of of my fellow bloggers  from around  the world  and You Tube, I will in ten minutes or so to take you to each of the three. Then we will return to City of Bloomfield Hills for a very special event. Each stop on our journey will be covered in a separate blog post. First stop Brooklyn Heights.

Back east city blogs are big deal. In Brooklyn even the neighborhoods have blogs.Fort Greene/Clinton Hill  residents  can read The Local which is published by CUNY(City University of New York) and the New York Times. In Bensonhurst, the childhood home of Carl Sagan and fictional backdrop for the 1950's TV show The Honeymooners, you can read the Bensonhurst Bean. Of note to travellers and students of  linguistics  the last syllable of Bensonhurst is pronounced "Hurst"  which rhymes with  a coffin conveyance. "Benson-Hoist" the old pronunciation of the classic Brooklyn dialect  is seldom heard these days. The  Brooklyn  Heights Blog "Dispatches from America's first Suburb" was chosen for this blog because it is an upscale community similar to  The City of Bloomfield Hills and close to our Midwestern sense  of decorum. Brooklyn has always been an "in your face" community. The Baseball team was named the Dodgers  because a century ago residents were not afraid to give those new fangled street cars a run for their money when it came to the right of way.

Today Brooklyn Heights is recovering from Hurricane Irene collapsed tree damage. The Brooklyn Heights Blog posted a video on You-Tube which indicates Brooklyn survived with tongue in cheek. 

Surviving with spirit is a theme in the coming of age novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith who attended the University of Michigan. That is also the dream of her protagonist in the mostly autobiographical novel. Betty Smith grew up in and wrote about the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

 If  Bensonhurst can claim The Honeymooners Ralph and Alice Kramden,  Brooklyn Heights can claim the world's only pair of "identical cousins"who starred in the Patty Duke Show The familiar theme song and introduction are included above. Courtesy of You Tube.

Want to take a seven  minute walking tour of the Hidden City: Brooklyn Heights ?

 Worried that Brooklyn Heights may not be upscale enough ? Not to worry. In three minutes and twenty seven seconds Real Estate Lady will set your mind a ease in the video titled Brooklyn Heights: NYC Neighborhood. While there are no homes on two acre lots in Brooklyn Heights there are also no views the Manhattan skyline in the City of Bloomfield Hills. Does Real Estate Lady look or sound familiar or is just me  ?

Can't bear to leave ? Every day a visit to Brooklyn Heights is a click away on the City Of Bloomfield Hills blog. Next Stop ? Cairns on the Great Barrier Reef in Tropical North Queensland Australia.