11 Ways to Spend Thanksgiving Weekend in Brooklyn

Photo by Kim Seng/Flickr

1. Avoid the kitchen. Here’s a very handy list, via the Brokelyn blog, of 30 Brooklyn restaurants serving Thanksgiving meals this Thursday. Let their gracious staffs toil in the kitchen so you don’t have to.

2. Dole out taters and yams to the elderly and/or less fortunate. The Heights and Hills communities (that is, Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill) are calling on locals to help serve meals to local seniors. From Brooklyn Heights Blog: “A Thanksgiving luncheon is held in Grace Church, 254 Hicks Street on Thanksgiving Day, November 26th. Volunteers are needed to bake pies, seat, serve & chat with the guests, and to help hand-deliver meals to those too frail to attend the luncheon. Many pies are needed so that each guest can take home a freshly baked pie.”

3. Get drunk — early and often. Time Out New York’s list of all the New York City bars opening at 8 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day includes at least three in Brooklyn. Pour one out for the ancestors.

4. Hide out in your local cineplex. Among this year’s Thanksgiving weekend releases are “Carol” (featuring a bicurious Kate Blanchett), a re-telling of Frankenstein and, for all the neighborhood nostalgists, ”Brooklyn.”

5. Brave the Black Friday sales. Brooklyn isn’t normally subject to the Black Friday stampedes of middle America, but keep your guard up in any case. Here are some ideas for shopping destinations from Time Out.

6. Or, to be safe, just do Black Friday from your laptop. Amazon has some pretty clutch deals posted online.

7. Head to Manhattan for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Join the estimated three million folks crazy enough to watch America’s most-loved Thanksgiving tradition up close, at street level. From the New York Times: “The parade begins at 9 a.m. on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at Central Park West and West 77th Street. It will move south on Central Park West, making an eastward turn on Central Park South, then heading south at Sixth Avenue from West 59th Street to West 34th Street before heading west to Herald Square, home to the world’s largest Macy’s store. A word of advice for anyone going to the event: the views on Sixth Avenue from West 34th to West 38th Streets will be limited as space is reserved for media outlets.”

8. Or, to be safe, just watch it on TV. Hundreds of heavily armed officers will be patrolling the parade this year, lest ISIS or another terror group try to pull something. So you might prefer watching the parade via NBC on your couch — no matter how crazy and/or day drunk your extended family members may be.

9. Win a pie in Prospect Park. If you can get your butt out of bed for the Prospect Park Track Club Turkey Trot Thursday morning from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. — and shell out $30 — you could be one of three lucky finishers to go home with a Thanksgiving pie. The con: You have to run fast enough to place top three. The pro: More room for pie.

10. Join a bicycle procession to Brooklyn Pancake Diner. In another strenuous-activity-with-food-incentive type event, BikeNYC.org is hosting a 10- to 12-mile family bike ride — with costumes! — through Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. The cost is $35, but that includes a pancake breakfast at Brooklyn Pancake Diner and prizes for best costume and bike theme.

11. Go for a drive. Believe it or not, the least brutal traffic forecast for the days surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday is Thanksgiving Day itself. According to DNAinfo: ”Traffic patterns on the holiday should conform to those of a typical weekend day, with the most congestion between 12 and 3 p.m. and 8 and 11 p.m.“ So rest assured: There’s always an escape route.