Big sky Brooklyn

Fourth Avenue has few things to recommend it. The drivers are so crazy you have to cross when the light is green, and still pay full-time attention. The shops are strictly utilitarian: cleaners, auto part vendors, bodegas stuffed with junk food and a few staples. But Fourth Avenue is also where the downhill slope of the neighborhood starts to level out, and the claustrophobia of the tree-lined streets gives way to wide-open space. Planes, one after the other, fly over from the south, and sunsets are visible down by the water. Even when nothing is going on, there are often interesting clouds in the sky.