Inside Thomas Mulzac's new vacation home are two duplexes, the living rooms of which overlook Restoration Hall in Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant. (Beth Morrissey/The Brooklyn Ink)

by Beth Morrissey

Bodegas, nail salons, and fast food restaurants are not the typical trappings of a tourist destination.  But Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Fulton Street now boasts a sleek, new “vacation home,” a short-term rental for out-of-towners.

The modern five-story building, with large glass windows and a shiny metal façade, is the new business of Thomas Mulzac, 49, a life-long Bedford-Stuyvesant resident.  A retired captain from the Department of Corrections, Mulzac estimates the building cost between $750,000 and $800,000.

“With regular renters, sometimes if they start getting behind in rent, you could go on months before you able to get them out and get somebody else in there,” said Mulzac.  He believes that he can earn between $20,000 and $30,000 a month from the building’s 2 rental units and ground floor commercial space.

Despite the recent economic downturn, tourist visits to the city have remained strong, with 45.6 million visitors in 2009, according to NYC & Company, New York City’s official marketing, tourism, and partnership organization.  NYC & Company estimates that one in five international visitors to New York City spends time and money in Brooklyn, and that several million domestic business and leisure travelers visit the borough every year.

“We’re probably a different animal in terms of destinations.  We don’t have great spikes or shifts,” said Tiffany Townsend, vice president of communications and government affairs at NYC & Company, noting that tourism in New York City is not prone to great seasonal changes.

“They hear that Brooklyn is the new chic girl,” said Monique Greenwood, who for 15 years has run the Akwaaba Mansion, a bed and breakfast in Bedford-Stuyvesant.  According to Greenwood, who is also a board member of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, some of her clients are interested in visiting areas like Williamsburg, Dumbo, and the Botanical Gardens, while others are looking to experience Bedford-Stuyvesant by visiting local restaurants and Weeksville, a cultural site that is a reconstructed African-American settlement from the 19th century.

Greenwood says providing a personalized experience attracts guests to her business.  “We start a relationship with them from the moment they ring our phone,” said Greenwood, who says that she caters mainly to couples and business travelers.

Like Greenwood, part of Mulzac’s business plan is providing clients with a personalized experience.  He and his wife are designing tour packages of New York City that can be customized to fit different client’s needs.  His daughter Shayla, 13, corresponds with tenants before their arrival to inform them about the weather, to inquiry about what type of brochures they should have on hand, and what type of food they should stock in the refrigerator.  Tenants’ names are also placed next to the buzzers on the building’s front door.

“He did way too much for us,” said Michael Vargas, 28, who was Mulzac’s first tenant.  Vargas, a New Mexico native who currently lives in Texas, was visiting the city with a group of seven friends who stayed in the building for six nights.

Mulzac, who started renting the units in the last week of September, is targeting tourists traveling in groups.  He makes arrangements with renters by using websites, such as Homeaway.com, which is a platform for homeowners to connect with short-term renters.

A search for “Brooklyn” on Homeaway.com turns up 156 properties, some of which are also in Bedford-Stuyvesant.  “To get people to come to yours you have to be better.  You have to give people more,” said Mulzac, who has equipped his three-bedroom, two-bath duplexes with amenities such as computers, faxes, flat screen TVs, and telescopes.  The building also includes a roof deck with views of Manhattan and a large barbeque.

Mulzac says that he has 15 bookings for his vacation home, some of which are for April 2011.  He charges $275 a night and $1700 for a week’s stay.  At the Best Western Arena Hotel, located two blocks south of Mulzac’s building, the price for seven adults to stay in two rooms with city views, a 42-inch TV, and other amenities for a week in April is approximately $2070.

Although Mulzac may have to deal with a multitude of tenants, he has the potential to earn more in a month than other landlords who rent three-bedroom apartments with long-term leases. On Craigslist, 163 ads for 3-bedroom apartments in “Bedstuy” were posted in the last 30 days.  Rent on those apartments ranges from $1300 to $3400 a month.  If Mulzac books one of his apartment for 4-weeks in a month, he can earn $6800.

Mulzac says the idea to build a vacation home came about after a conversation with his wife. “We said you know what, we’re going to put all our eggs in one basket and my retirement, my 401k, because it was doing so bad…it doesn’t even make sense to keep [money] in,” said Mulzac.

“The only thing I’m worried about is that when people come here they have a good time,” said Mulzac, who says that many clients who have made bookings have asked if Bedford-Stuyvesant is a “safe” neighborhood. “I said yes it is safe.  But that being said, no matter where you go in New York, you got to be cautious.”

Vargas, who had lived in Brooklyn for three years before, was not concerned.  “It’s near Fulton.  It’s such a busy place.  I wasn’t even worried about that,” he said.  According to Vargas, he and his friends have spent little time in Bedford-Stuyvesant, choosing to shop and sightsee in Manhattan, Brighton Beach, and Williamsburg.

Mulzac hopes to rent out the building’s commercial space, possibility to a coffee shop, by January. “My wife and I said, no matter who comes here, it’s not going to be another nail salon, it’s not going to be a bodega,” said Mulzac. “We want something that is going to add character to what we have going on upstairs.”

The Brooklyn Bridge, of course. (Photo: Yeebo/The Brooklyn Ink)

It is beautiful from any angle, with those soaring stone towers and that intricate spiderweb of suspension cables that seem to wrap the bridge up in a kind of haze.

The grandeur is there when you walk across the bridge, even when you are surrounded by cars and tourists. The cars rumble past on either side of the wooden walking paths. The tourists trundle past just about everywhere you look.

Yesterday, a woman surrounded by three of her companions looked at a picture of the bridge she was holding in her hand. She then pointed up to the actual bridge directly in front of her, as if to confirm that the group really was in the right place. Just ahead, a tall British man was speed-walking, only to find that a pair of older women—their conversation sounded vaguely Dutch—were cramping his style. He bobbed and weaved behind them as they ambled along. Finally, he could take no more, and brusquely pushed past them with a derisive “Excuse me!” The women seemed not to notice.

Just look up! (Photo: Yeebo/The Brooklyn Ink)

The high point of any suspension bridge is that moment when you get to an actual tower, and the sheer weight and heft of it looms over you. It makes sense, then, that the towers attract clusters of tourists posing for pictures and milling about.

On this day, it had attracted a horde of small children on a class field trip. They were all sitting down, munching on cheese and crackers. The kids were focused on the cheese, not the bridge. A girl yelled out “statue of cheddar cheese!” Her classmates picked up her battle cry. The children leapt in joy to say it.

This made the teachers and chaperones very jittery. “Please stay sitting down,” they started saying. “Max, Rose, can you sit down?”

The tower. (Photo: Yeebo/The Brooklyn Ink)

One of the adults—a thin man with a gray beard and a yellow windbreaker—was especially agitated. “You just have to sit down for one more minute,” he kept telling the children. “And then we’re going to walk right back.” Soon enough, they did. The man in the windbreaker led them back to Brooklyn, telling them to “watch the edge, watch the edge.” The fact that they were all at least two feet too short to fall over the edge of the barriers on the path and into traffic did not comfort him.

They all made it safely to the other side. The beautiful bridge faded behind them. Ahead of them was the sign reading “Welcome To Brooklyn—How Sweet It Is!” The borough was welcoming them back with open arms, like so many millions before and after.

Rick Kadlub in Brooklyn. Photo: Finnegan/Brooklyn Ink

I.

Brooklyn is home to 62,000 Italians, 65,000 Dominicans, innumerable pairs of skinny jeans and 4.5 million tourists. The travelers come from all over the globe, searching for a Brooklyn that doesn’t necessarily exist.

The idea of Brooklyn is one that artists love to explore. Writers tend to wax semi-poetic about a number of well-worn topics related to the borough. For one, the light: James Agee called it “the lordly, idiot light”; William Styron the “pollen-hazy light.” Walt Whitman, in his poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” described seeing “red and yellow light over the tops of houses” created by “foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night.”

They also write about Brooklyn’s food, or objects that double as food. Anatole Broyard, “A Sunday Dinner in Brooklyn:” “On the corner squatted their church — a huge casserole, fat, heavy and plain as the women who prayed in it.” Woody Allen, in “Side Effects:” “Because the family is too poor to afford fresh rolls, he spreads marmalade on the News.”

But most tellingl­­y, they write about Brooklyn’s streets. The novelist Carson McCullers described her Brooklyn Heights street as a place that had “a quietness and sense of permanence that seem to belong to the nineteenth century.” Betty Smith, in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” said the borough had “beautiful names for ugly streets.” Henry Miller, who was “born on the street and raised on the street” in present-day Williamsburg, put it best. “To be born on the street means to wander all your life, to be free,” he wrote in 1959. “In the street you learn what human beings really are; otherwise, or afterwards, you invent them.”

So it could be that these millions of tourists are looking for a feeling unique to the borough — some hazy, idiotic, godly sensation, scented by marmalade-dressed newsprint. Or, in other terms: the absurdity of real life in Brooklyn. Guidebook in hand, I went there to find out.

II.

I’ve never met Rick Kadlub in person, but he offers to pick me up off the side of the road in his beat-up silver Mitsubishi Eclipse one Sunday morning in Park Slope. He’s 47, burly and completely bald, save a pair of thick black eyebrows. He navigates the roads like he mapped them.

We’re driving so he can get cigarettes, and then to meet Hector and Vivian Garcia so Rick, a self-employed Brooklyn tour guide, can take them on a three-hour sightseeing jaunt around Park Slope and Prospect Park. Rick was born in this neighborhood, but the area he shows to his customers differs from the one he grew up in — he used to carry an ax in his coat when walking to pick up his grandmother at the subway stop on Union St. The corner today is home to a charming diner and apartment buildings with fluorescent-colored doors.

Most of Rick’s clients are from overseas, looking either for physical proof of a Park Slope coffee-and-stroller army or to see where parts of their family migrated. One-fifth — or maybe it’s one-seventh — of America can trace their roots to Brooklyn, Rick says; he’s not sure on the exact figure. Regardless, he once had a woman from Atlanta on a tour who broke into tears when she saw her childhood home.

The Garcias meet us at a sunny bagel shop. They’re an hour late. Vivian is petite and expressionless, Hector tall and younger looking than his 65 years in shorts and a baseball cap. They own a website in Florida that sells essential oils and materials to make soap. They visit New York often, but have never made it to Brooklyn. “We were afraid of where we might end up,” Vivian says.

Rick leads us up and down the neighborhood’s lush, brownstone-laden blocks. The Garcias are impressed. This is not the dingy Brooklyn they expected. Hector feels the groove of the place. “You come here and you get energized,” he says. Vivian tries to prove herself wrong. She says that some of the brownstones could stand to be pressure-cleaned. She asks if it’s safe to walk around at night.

We walk by the Montauk Club, Rick making sure to point out the building’s intricate moldings and quatrefoil windows. The Garcias squint to see the Native American heads carved into the balcony. The building has received such dignitaries as Grover Cleveland and Mark Twain. Today it hosts a Weight Watchers meeting.

A few blocks over, Prospect Park fully placates the Garcias. A string trio plays at the gates to the verdant pasture. Nuzzling couples stumble by. Families bike in packs. We turn our heads away from Richard Meier’s glass castle to soak in the scene. Our two-mile tour is almost over, and this is a good note on which to end. Rick tells us that sheep used to graze the park’s lawn, and it’s not difficult to imagine.

Over gloppy post-tour slices of pizza at Pinos, the Garcias nod emphatically when I ask them if their opinion of Brooklyn has changed. They’re not much for talking anymore, though, with their focus narrowed in on their slices. They say it’s the best pizza they’ve ever had. It might be why Hector slips Rick a $5 bill when we all part.

III.

A few Saturdays later I’m at the Brooklyn entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge, intent on stalking rogue, tour-guideless tourists. I want to walk over the bridge with them, chart their reactions as we cross boroughs in the gray air above the East River.

Immediately, I bump into Jean Ruane, Marie Baxandall and Shirley Carr puzzling over the large map of the adjacent area mounted next to the stairway leading up to the bridge. They’re from Manchester, England, in town to run the marathon the next day. They’re looking for Williamsburg.

Marie, a tiny woman with dark curls and a necklace of multicolored beads that looks like a string of elfin Christmas lights, shows me an address on her cell phone. Her husband wants a Joy Division shirt done in “reggae colors” from an obscure screenprinting shop in Williamsburg — do I know of it? I don’t. They decide to push their visit to Williamsburg to Monday, after they’ve run their marathon. Today is about the bridge.

Even though the women have only been in New York for a day, they are quick to appreciate the idea of Brooklyn as an oasis of authenticity. “It’s nice to get away from the tourist attractions and see where the indigenous peoples live,” Marie says. Meanwhile, Jean’s conception of the borough springs from an episode of “Sex and the City” in which a character moves to Brooklyn and is derided for skipping town to a less glamorous locale. She’s nonplussed. “I’m going to write to the producers,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with Brooklyn.”

Jean, a petite schools inspector with cropped blonde hair, leads the pack over the bridge. The thin walkway is clotted with people coming from the other direction. It’s Halloween, and some of them are wearing costumes. There are witches, fairies and pirates. There’s a man in an emerald green bodysuit that covers even his head — it doesn’t even have eyeholes. The women pay him no mind. They’re more surprised that people in New York dress up their dogs.

Marie darts ahead of us to take pictures with her 90s-era film camera. She runs her hands over the bridge’s steel girders and metal suspension cables as if she were showcasing a Camaro on “The Price is Right.” Like Jean, Marie’s withstanding notion of Brooklyn is mired in pop culture — shows like “Law and Order” and “The Sopranos,” the introductions to which can give a better tour of the city than a chartered helicopter. But now that she’s actually here, she chatters excitedly about what she sees. She especially likes Williamsburg for “taking over from where Greenwich Village left off.”

Toward the middle of the bridge, we’re pushed into the bike lane by the excess foot traffic. A man in full cyclist regalia, presumably not dressed as Lance Armstrong for the holiday, yells at us. “Bike lane!” he barks. “Wake up!”

The women giggle and hustle to the walking lane. Marie takes a picture of Jean posing as the State of Liberty. Shirley breathes in the smog. We’re not in Brooklyn anymore. The main island is more serious. The sky threatens drizzle. The ladies ache to put their feet up, but they decide to visit Ground Zero first.

IV.

I decide it’s time to talk to a Brooklyn expert — or at least someone who embodies the borough on a near-cellular level — to synthesize what I’ve seen. I meet Eben Wood, an English professor at Kingsborough Community College, at a muffin shop in Fort Greene, near a bookstore advertising a Jonathan Lethem reading and with titles like “Where The Wild Things Are” and “Veganomicon” displayed in its front window.

Wood says he’s dismayed by the hipster infiltration of Brooklyn, even though he admits he’s a hipster himself. Dressed in a checkered oxford shirt, jeans and heavy brown boots, sporting a full beard and moustache and carrying a messenger bag, it’s difficult to argue with his self-identification.

In early October, Wood organized Dreamland Pavilion, an academic conference on Brooklyn that hosted 90 presenters on topics ranging from the Atlantic Yards to the borough as a gastropolis. More than 150 people made the trek to Kingsborough’s campus on the borough’s south coast to take part in the examination. As far as Wood knows, it was the first academic conference to focus solely on Brooklyn.

When I ask him what people look for when they look for Brooklyn, he points in the direction of the Greene Grape grocery store up the block, built to evoke an old Italian market. It’s a symbol of the old and new of the borough, awkwardly meshed together. Inside, “you expect a white ethnic guy in an apron with his sleeves rolled up, smoking a cigar and cutting you a delicious dry ham,” he says; that’s the old Brooklyn people yearn to feel when they come here. The ethos of new Brooklyn — rooted in notions of idealized utopian corporatism — is evidenced by the fact that you can’t buy a slice of dry ham at the Greene Grape unless you have $20 to kill. In his academically minded conclusion, Wood determines that the borough’s attempt at progression through simulated regression lodges it between the two extremes, making it impossible for tourists to find truth in their expectations.

Wood was born in Michigan. Drawing on his graduate work and his position at Kingsborough, he thoughtfully analyzes Brooklyn’s deeper social issues from a historian’s perspective. He purports himself to be fully enmeshed in the battle to save the area’s ethnic enclaves from developers’ malfeasant hands. He believes in Brooklyn’s obstinate pluckiness — and that it will fight against mindless gentrification, to preserve what’s left for future history-seekers and those who desire affordable rent.

But perhaps Wood’s own experience of hosting visitors best illustrates the core certainty of what outsiders think of the borough. He recalls a visit from his German friend a few years ago, after he first moved to Brooklyn. She was taken aback that she could not step out of his Bed-Stuy apartment, hail a cab and jet to the Museum of Modern Art. She summed up her feelings toward Brooklyn succinctly. “What a fucked-up place for you to move to,” she told him.