Be the BBT

Andy Cuomo and Joe Lhota talk tunnel (Courtesy WPIX)

The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is open again (no trucks). Thank you DOT. I don't take the BBT (or Hugh L. Carey Tunnel) very often. I just don't like sharing my BQE with the drivers who would normally exit the highway to Manhattan via the tunnel. One night last week, I decided to avoid Merge-fest and jump off the Gowanus at 38th Street. No rush, I thought, I'll just work my way back through Sunset Park, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, and Fort Greene--the old stomping grounds.

Everything worked pretty well until I got to around 9th St. in Park Slope, where it all ground to a halt. No problem: When one avenue stalls, I'll just jump over to the next: Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth. Nothing helped. All chock-a-block. Prospect Park West was fine, except it's one way the wrong way (I guess I never drove when I lived around here). Eventually I crossed the Rubicon of Flatbush Ave. and made it to Vanderbilt Avenue. After that, I was home free. "Never get off the boat," Martin Sheen says in Apocalypse Now, "Absolutely, goddamn right."