Kings Highway #45, 7/18/09

Hey, I'm back! In the same month to boot. I had a neat opportunity here, as I had finished reading Dune (for the third time) and still wanted more sci-fi nerdy goodness courtesy of Frank Herbert, so I checked which BPL branches would have copies of the second book in the series, which I have never read. And then it turned out that there was one in the Kings Highway branch, which up until recently (June 11, 2009 to be precise) had been closed for renovations! For like the past two years! Plus my new home in Kensington is much closer to that area now, and Saturday was a perfect day, so I got on my bike and rode over there.

Branch: Kings Highway
Location: 2115 Ocean Ave. (nr. Kings Highway)
Transport: bicycle
Item: Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
Date: Saturday, July 18, 2009

The new branch is crazy! It does away with the traditional look of the "Brooklyn Public Library" signs on the front of the building (which are generally dark green, and in Helvetica I believe) and goes from some crazy modern thing! In orange and silver! WHAAAAA???

Anyway, it was a very nice, modern branch, though the building still looked like it came out of the '70s (or 1953, according to the site). There were three floors, one for very young children, one for grade school children, and one for adolescents and adults. There also seemed to be a wide variety of activities for parents and children to participate in. Oh and a good foreign language area as well.

One qualm I had, and something that to me completely defied explanation. I biked to the library, and when I'm locking up my bike my hands often get greasy, dirty, etc. So I was waiting to use the bathroom, but first I asked at the desk if there was a key (there was) and was told that someone already had it (i.e., they were in the bathroom already). Ok, no problem, washing my hands wasn't urgent, so I waited. Then when the door finally opened (it took so long, I assumed it was an old man, but it was some teenager) I went in to find a typical public bathroom, with a sink area, a toilet stall, a urinal, and even a freaking baby-changing table. It wasn't a one person bathroom. Why the hell was I waiting outside it to wash my hands? They just renovated this place, so why did they leave the door with an automatic lock? Ok, so crazy people use public libraries, maybe you cant just leave the bathrooms open to all. SO WHY NOT JUST HAVE THE ONE TOILET??

Ok, rant over. Obviously it's no big deal, just...kinda lame. But overall, nice branch. The book so far is good...well, definitely not bad. But Dune is just SO good that it's hard to reach that level of quality, and so far this book isn't really. Hopefully it'll improve. Oh, also, I still can't find my camera, so that means...phone pictures! Woo! Here they are:



They kinda made it into a cyborg. An inanimate cyborg.



Action pose!



Bow down to the monolith lest you be destroyed by it!



Now open! Woohoo!

And that's the story of King's Highway. Truly a highway of the kings. All the kings. Seeya soon!