Team Colorado takes South Brooklyn.

Team Colorado embraced the competition this Wednesday during The Great Gowanus Pilgrimage Pre-Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt, and it's time to give some much-deserved props to the 303 in the 718.

We ravaged each and every bodega on 5th Ave to find plantains and gefilte fish. We searched high and low for Park Slope's Famous Pink House and Maggie Gyllenhaal. We were tea-bagged at the Tea Lounge. We repped Team Colorado on the bathroom walls at the High Dive (left), and serenaded the bartender at Bar Reis. All while trying to navigate South Brooklyn on smart phones after a few too many free shots.

And although we may not have convinced a vest-clad Food Coop employee to come back to the Bell House with us for bonus points, and maybe we didn't make it all the way to Ikea or even Carroll Gardens for that matter, we did have our moment of pride and glory. That's right--for an extra 25 whole points we fished up some of that toxic syphilis sludge we call Gowanus Canal water.

And although we may have received more disgusted and horrified looks than praise and glory, we were proud of our cunning and innovation. In the last ten minutes before the end of the hunt, we threw together pieces of found garbage and created our very own canal water trapping device.

So maybe we didn't win, or even come close, but we braved pollution and disease alike. We explored unknown territory and even learned a few things about South Brooklyn. And most importantly, we had a hell of a good time.

The Beverage Manager

by james subudhi

We sat next to each other in our silence through two beers. I read. She drank and stared into the space between conversations. We gave periodic glances, our eyes swinging down like pendulums, at the blackberries in our laps, as if to give each other the sign that we were wanted, connected, not alone. We were alone.

She was at the bar to drink good beer and to prove to herself and her husband that she still had the looks to be hit on by a younger man. I sat at the bar to read and hit on women. We were a perfect match.

I suggested the Spatan to break the silence.

We dissolved each other’s insecurities in a warm solution of commonality, self-affirmation, flirting and intellectual indulgence.

I gave her a younger age. She gave me her hand to hold gently. I offered to play her a song. She gave me her business card.

Our conversation danced and tip toed on the thin silver back of the ring with a diamond on the other side facing her palm.

She was either too drunk to notice that I knew or wanted me to know to have a sense of security to fall back on in case our feet slipped it off her finger, her nail the edge of her comfort.

The ring turned up. The glass emptied. She told me she had to get up early in the morning. Somewhere in the distance a pumpkin carriage began to rot.