Few things are more fulfilling than walking a dog in the park on a beautiful Brooklyn day. Alas, I personally don’t own a pooch because I’d feel bad leaving an animal in my apartment all day long only to come home and subject it to a steady diet of reality TV. But thanks to the Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition (BARC), a rescue organization that runs a volunteer dog walking service, busy, city-dwelling dog lovers like myself can still scratch that behind-ear itch for a little puppy love.
Located at 253 Wythe Ave. at the corner of North 1st, BARC has been around since 1987. 90 percent of the dogs they care for are mid-to-large sized breeds, and 70 to 80 percent are pit bulls or pit bull mixes.
“People just seem to abandon pit bulls,” said Holly, one of the shelter’s managers. Between handing dogs off to volunteers and running pups around the block herself, Holly mentioned she was the only employee on duty that day, with about 40 (!) dogs to care for.
There’s something addictive about walking over the Williamsburg Bridge. There must be, as every day, so many of your fellow neighborhoodies walk the 1.4-mile walk, a hundred feet in the air. The industrial latticework of red fading into Pepto Bismol may not be one of architecture’s greatest aesthetic accomplishments, but its quirkiness makes for a fitting and functional connection between Williamsburg’s laid-back land of artists and the bustling downtown resources of lower Manhattan. It’s also grounding and refreshingly tactical, an optimal place for clearing/organizing your mind.