Williamsburg is in a state of revival!

From a beat-up, poverty-dominated area it is emerging and flowering into a high rent, swinging, artistic segment of New York City. It has always had proximity to Manhattan and many buildings that can be converted to restaurants, nightclubs, lofts and apartments.

My friend Paul Zohn and I took a trip to Williamsburg to buy some coffee at the Porto Rico Importing Co. on Driggs Ave. Take the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to Metropolitan Avenue (just west of the Kosciusko Bridge) and go through the streets.

The factory entrance has huge bags of coffee from around the world. We each bought de-caf and regular coffee and chocolate-covered coffee beans and chocolate-covered orange rinds. It might not be cheaper but it is always fun to buy at the factory source.

We then proceeded to Havemeyer Avenue and South Second Street, where my grandfather and two uncles (Phil and Leo) ran a dry-goods store for 45 years. We stopped into the bodega which had replaced my grandfather's store. As a 5-year-old boy I would climb to a corner of the store, sit on the top rung of a ladder and proclaim it was my portion of the store. I told the bodega owner that my grandfather could have bought the building for $50,000. He laughed and stated that the present owner of the building was just offered $3 million. A sad real estate story.

It was now lunchtime. What to do? Where to go?

A light bulb went on over my head!

The best steak house in the city lies next to the Williamsburg Bridge opposite the domed Williamsburg Bank Building (now a HSBC bank).

We scooted over to Peter Luger's Steak House for lunch. Luckily, we got a corner table. We enjoyed two draft beers and ordered a salad and steak for each. Peter Luger's salad is large thick cut tomatoes over large Vidalia onions (also thick cut), drenched with the spicy, delicious Peter Luger steak sauce.

All the waiters are supposed to be German. I asked our waiter, "What part of Germany do you come from?" "County Cork," he replied.

He handed us the bill and sadly with our cargo of coffee and chocolates we headed back to Jericho.

A wonderful day in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and two suburbanites returning to our verdant homes.