Moving out

I moved apartments this summer. This is now my fourth address in New York City, and by far the best one.

To review: my first address was 187 Franklin Avenue in Bedstuy. I only lived there for a hot minute, but it was my landing pad in the city and holds a special place in my heart because it was so very New York: my roommate, the opera composer; my upstairs neighbors, the collective known as Lesbeyond, and their three-legged cat; the hiphop artist on the top floor who hooked me up with my room; and the couple across the hall from her with a bar and beer on tap in their kitchen. They threw some raging parties in that place (but everyone moved out and the building has since been converted to all-Hassidic condos, as I predicted it would be).

My second address was a Craigslist hook-up on Madison Street, also in Bedstuy. I lasted one year and a month there, and it was pretty fucking awful. I lost my job and was working two part-time gigs to make rent; I got in fights with the super all the time about how my keys didn't work; mice always came running out of the stove burners despite two cats working overtime to kill them and stash their little corpses under the bathroom rug; I didn't get along with my roommates. My first winter in New York, it was hard to look around at the gray walls of my cold, shared apartment and not compare it to my perfectly Rachel-sized studio in Waikiki, wondering what the hell I was doing in this dreadful place when I'd had work, my own place, and a beach RIGHT THERE back in Hawaii.

Fortunately, I'm kind of lazy and it was less work for me to move to another apartment than it was for me to move to another state. So I took my dowry and went to Columbia Street, where I lived for five years.

Except for the house in Ocean View and the house on Walua Road, Columbia Street was my longest continuous address. I lived there for five years, long enough to see the city put in bike lanes, build a park, and start summer ferry service to Governor's Island. I lived through a tornado, lightning strikes, and two hurricanes. I got a job and my sister got married. I wrote a little, read a lot more, save a little money, spent a lot more, walked a few hundred times to the subway and back, and sat for many hours on my couch looking at pictures of cats on the Internet.

I loved that place. But they raised my rent and I had to move. It's a classic New York story.

A week after I moved to the new apartment, I went back to Columbia Street with a little cart full of cleaning supplies. I wanted to give the old place a once-over and take away the bags I'd set aside for recycling (clothes I didn't want, broken printer, etc). Unlocking the door and stepping into the dusty, leaf-strewn vestibule, I was overcome with a wave of warmth and safety. It was the same feeling I'd had every time I stepped over that threshold, but now it was particularly strong because I knew it was the last time I'd feel it in that vestibule. Half a decade worth of gratitude and exasperation for that precious old building that had sheltered me and my stuff in its crumbling bricks and sagging floors.

It was a bit of a wasted trip, because they'd already changed the locks in my unit and I couldn't get in to clean. I hope my old stuff made it to the recycling plant and didn't just end up in a landfill in Jersey.


So now I'm in Park Slope. It's not because I'm pregnant, though I gather that's the main reason that people my age move to Park Slope. It's actually all backwards--I got priced out of Columbia Street and was eyeing a move back to Bedstuy. Park Slope has been pricing out people way classier than myself for decades and shouldn't have been an option for me. The owner of the building is either super-nice or super-unconcerned about trends in the rental market in this area, so I get a floor-through apartment with a new dishwasher.

I've heard tell of this type of deal, but I always assumed it was a New York myth, like CHUDs or  Ninja Turtles. I feel like I should write to the real estate section of Penthouse. "I never believed it could happen to me!"

But I shouldn't be too happy about it yet. Wait until I've spent a winter here, and then ask me again how I like it.

No pedestrian bridge for me

I had a thought as I was falling asleep the other night: "Now's about the right time for me to be turned into a vampire. I'm still good-looking enough."

Random feedback from the ghost in the machine.

Last night, R and I went out to dinner and walked along the Brooklyn Promenade. After the winter that just wouldn't fucking die, it's finally about 50 degrees and actually a pleasure to be outside, instead of simply a task to be endured. We wanted to walk on the new pedestrian bridge that goes from the Promenade to Brooklyn Bridge Park, jumping over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to Pier 1. (The picture on my blog sidebar of shirtless dude lounging in a crowd of people on the grass is BBP Pier 1.) As we stepped on the pedestrian bridge, R squealed, "Oh, it bounces! I like that!"

I replied, "I don't like it. I'm getting off." And I ran back the way we came.

So we didn't get to cross the pedestrian bridge. But we did do something even more dangerous later that night: go to a bar in Bedstuy. As soon as we got of the G Train, R said that I'd better know where I'm going, otherwise she was flagging the first cab out of there. Ha! Jokes on her, there are no cabs in Bedstuy. But I did know where I was going, and we had a good time at a birthday party for another friend in Project Parlor. There was a pinata and everything.

That's all, really. Move along, nothing else to see here.

Avoidance

No, that title doesn't refer to my relationship with my blog for the past three weeks or so. I mean, we did sort of have that fight, and I still maintain that the blog was the one who promised to return the lard and chain saw to the hardware store after the electricity project failed, but that's behind us now, we've agreed to disagree. The real reason I was away for so long was that I was moving apartments, going from the 2000 square foot three bedroom in Bedstuy to the one main room plus bed alcove in the Columbia Street Waterfront district, or Cobble Hill, depending on who I want to impress. I lived in that Bedstuy apartment for a year, and in many ways it was tits: close to subway, laundromat, and grocery store, across the street from an awesome neighborhood bar, LOTS of space (my bedroom was the size of my whole apartment here), and two--count em, two--cats. You've heard of them before.

But there were also two--count em, two--roommates. Roommates who smoked with the windows closed and didn't ever clean the kitty litter box. So I packed up my dowry and boogied on down to the waterfront, where I am crammed nicely into a Rachel-sized apartment, rent-stabilized, pre-war, crazies included. Mom says that it reminds me of the Fort Street Mall crazies in Honolulu and that's why I feel comfortable here.

Oh, avoidance--that's right, I had a theme going. Today is Thanksgiving and I'm avoiding the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. There comes a point for every New Yorker when the thought of famous events--New York City Marathon, Thanksgiving Day Parade, Village Halloween Parade, New Years Eve, St. Patrick's Day--fills one with dread. The sight of metal barricades lining a street becomes a portent of doom and I go into bunny survival mode and look for the nearest wooded thicket in which to dive. The crowds, the police on horseback, the screeching PAs--and no one is even allowed to throw candy from the floats, though strangely I think throwing candy at marathon runner is still okay.

So today, I'm in avoidance mode. I'm staying in my apartment and watching Mom bathe her cat in the sink over the video chat feature on Gmail. For these small things, we are grateful.

Moving out

First, an auditory aid: Billy Joel.

Second, today I signed the lease on my new apartment in the Columbia Waterfront District of Brooklyn, just west of Cobble Hill, north of Red Hook, and south of Brooklyn Heights. Hurray for me! I move on November 15th, the day after my 24th birthday. It will be my first grown-up apartment, one that I didn't rent from my mom or share with roommates I found on Craigslist. No, this is a proper pad: went through a realtor and everything. It's rent-stabilized, fifteen minutes from the nearest subway, and a block away from the land of the Viking Hippies. I think I will fit in nicely.

My Columbia Street place will be my third address in New York since I moved here in 2008. Some of you may remember when I lived at 187 Franklin, but most people only knew me as I was on Madison Street. I have a few parting thoughts to share about Bedstuy, in which I have lived for over a year and will soon leave behind, as one leaves an AM New York behind on the subway platform after doing the crossword.

Bedstuy never charges you more than $4 for a beer, but all of the liquor stores have bullet-proof glass and only accept cash. You're never far from a grocery store, but the produce is always half-wilted and the fancier bread products have mold on them. There are no bookstores and the only place to get a cup of coffee is a bodega. No sitdown restaurants, but plenty of community gardens. There are women in headscarves wheeling around baby strollers and you can hear the call to prayer from the mosque on Bedford and Franklin five times a day. Sometimes the laundry soap has Chinese writing on the package and you can get fifteen different kinds of spice for jerked meat, but no fish sauce or Sriracha to save your life.

And one time, I walked home drunk from a party at 187 and woke up the next morning with a brick on the floor. I think I may have pried it out of the sidewalk to use as a weapon in case someone attacked me.

That's Bedstuy.