February 3, 2007 / Carroll Gardens–Cobble Hill / Perspective / Brooklyn South

Psychic never saw it coming

Ariella Cohen

for The Brooklyn Paper

Similar stories

PS … I Love You: Psychic RV is right on target

Yellow Hooker: The soothsayers of Bay Ridge

Tools

Print this story

digg

del.icio.us

Email a friend

Your name

Your email address

Recipients’ email addresses (Up to ten, separated by commas.)

As any decent palm reader can tell you, the lifeline is the easiest of the body’s etchings to recognize.

So it must have come as a quite a shock to Michelle, an experienced reader of palms, tarot cards and minds, when the long life she had seen for her storefront on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street abruptly expired earlier this month.

“We might be back after the landlord finishes renovating the building,” the sad psychic told me last week, speaking over a cellphone that had the same problem with fuzzy reception as, apparently, her crystal ball.

The cell-to-cell connection was our first — and it ended badly.

“Go be curious about something else,” she shouted at me before hanging up. Temper, temper. Given her line of work, shouldn’t she have anticipated my questions?

But she was right about one thing: I was psychicly curious. Neon as a carnival, intimate as a confession booth (or a brothel, come to think of it), the storefront psychic has always piqued my interest — though never enough to go inside.

The telepathic entrepreneur is like the bagel maker or the corner shoe repairman — an eternal presence that you don’t notice until it’s gone. And as neighborhoods like Cobble Hill get fancier, the brightly lit shops look increasingly like garish blight, holdouts from a time before New Agers collected degrees in homeopathy and corner storefronts on Atlantic Avenue fetched thousands a month in rent.

As a college-educated, female Brooklynite with just a few neuroses, I would guess that I am statistically more likely to visit a $100-an-hour psychotherapist then a $5-a-reading psychic.

This week, I broke the pattern with a visit to Marie, an adviser with a devoted following.

Marie presides over the corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventh Street in Park Slope from a walk-up apartment above an old botanica. A wild paint job marks her presence.

Marie advises from a neat living room with wall-to-wall carpeting. Next to her, a big-eyed, silent baby swings in a rocker, sucking his finger like some kind of teething shaman.

Marie read me quickly. Five minutes with my open palm revealed to her my “long lifeline,” as well as a peskier truth that I’ve successfully kept from my mother for months.

I asked Marie if it was difficult for an old-fashioned psychic to stay in business. She conceded it was. But instead of talking about landlords or changing demographics, she pointed a finger at us: the injured auras she confronts each day.

“The bad energy I see exhausts me,” she said (was she smiling? Did she consider me a problem aura? Maybe I should see a shrink!). Somehow, this complete stranger had gotten to me.

Like any shopkeeper, the storefront psychic sells a product that means to fill some void and, eventually, make you feel better. Her crystal ball, however, never promises that the latest boots, the freest-trade coffee, or even a cheap money order will get rid of that blah aura you’re feeling.

The supernatural peddles trust, and a moment of soul-to-soul connection. Telepathic skills — or a lack, thereof — aside, Michelle the psychic had created, on a block of sandwich shops and the offices of Bad Apple Bail Bond Company, a place for people to stop in for a moment and focus on each other, bad auras, ugly signs and all. For that, she will be missed.

The Kitchen Sink

Neighborhoodies, the Brooklyn-based custom-clothing biz that slapped your inside jokes across its hooded sweatshirts, has closed its Atlantic Avenue shop. Now get back to your to iron-on letters. …

Can the wonders of chocolate be taught? Chef Jean-Jacques Bernet of Provence En Boite said he had a grand time teaching pastry-making to a “passionate” audience at the prestigious James Beard House. And we thought what happens on Smith Street stayed on Smith Street! …

The popular children’s gym, The Little Gym, opened its first Brooklyn location this month at 125 Court St. The center is famous for developing children’s fitness and motor skills — sign up and get Junior moving on those Olympic ambitions. …

The prix-fixe frankfurter has arrived: In a bold attempt to bring the courting crowd to Union Street wiener shack Schnack, owner Harry Hawk has launched a $39 “Dinner for Two” deal. Available on Monday and Tuesday, the package includes two-course meals and a chilled bottle of wine. BYO mouthwash: Hot dog breath is deadly.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

Links