Lunch hour in Flatbush: a line for the ballot, a line for the bakery, and nobody leaving either

By noon the line outside Flatbush’s poll site, in the community room at Triangle Junction on Avenue N, had folded back on itself and begun negotiating with the line outside the bakery next door. Nobody in either seemed to mind. “I came for the ballot and stayed for the patties,” said a villager in a nurse’s uniform who had voted, come out, and rejoined the other line for lunch.

Flatbush is the biggest ward in the State of New A, and it votes like a block party: grandmothers with folding chairs, students doing homework against the wall, a man with a cooler of sorrel whom the poll workers asked, politely, to stand a little further back. He did, mostly.

The fare-free Tiger Bus brought a fresh load from Downtown New BK every few minutes, and several riders said they had planned the whole day around it. “No fare, no toll, no excuse,” said a retired teacher who rode in from Atlantic Parkway. She would not say who she was voting for, and then said it anyway.

A few voters arrived from the other direction, from the houses on Mill Street a short walk east, and they had driven. “Parking was the hard part,” one said. The empty lot at 4 Flatbush Avenue, where City Hall’s grocery store is going, filled up before lunch.

Flatbush reports late — its line is long and its count is longer — so tonight its votes will reach the board after Mill Bergen’s, Long Island’s and most of Man A’s. When they arrive they will be the biggest single batch of the night. Polls close at 9:00 PM; results follow on the Elections page.