New York Apartment Life, Chapter 2: Carroll Gardens

Next was the move off the island and into Brooklyn. This started my love affair with the borough, but it was not an easy beginning.

After a year of living it up in Manhattan, I began to see the pitfalls of being so concentrated in one place. I missed the change in scenery and tone when I left work, got home, or went out.

Plus the friends that I had in the city were all migrating to Brooklyn and loving it. I was definitely ready for less rent and more space. The less rent in Brooklyn is largely a myth these days but at least you get more for your money.

One of the definitive moments was sitting in a bar called Camp. It was the middle of the day and the bar workers were grilling for themselves in the backyard. I was sitting at the bar with my girlfriend deliberating on an apartment when the bartender comes by to check on us and then says that if we're hungry we should help ourselves to the barbecue.

The friendliness was such a stark contrast to the treatment I was getting in Manhattan that I decided right then that there was no going back.

In the end, we chose a newly developed building in Carroll Gardens. I should say we "lucked" into it since the area is notoriously tough to get into. There's less change-over since it's mostly Italian families that stake out a place and never have any inkling to leave.

This created a wonderful familial aura to Carroll Gardens, which was a welcomed change from the East Village.

As for the apartment, it was still a one bedroom and the kitchen wasn't much bigger, but the improvement was drastic. There was an actual living room, which was giant, as was the bedroom. The kitchen wasn't much more than a nook but having an actual refrigerator again was cause for much more excitement over an appliance than I ever thought possible. The bathroom was also bigger and didn't have the glass door and aluminum frame of the last apartment which I had to duck into every time.

Due to the last living environment, my girlfriend and I went to great lengths to turn the Carroll Gardens apartment into an actual home. We bought actual furniture and ambitiously painted every room. Foolishly more than ambitiously since it took us weeks to get the painting over with. I even had to bribe my friend with beer to come over to help out. Don't ever ask me to help paint because apparently I'm retarded when it comes to properly applying paint to walls.

A big wake-up call to Brooklyn and it's distance away from Manhattan was having to lug paint cans and supplies from Home Depot in the city via trains. The F was down during the weekends which complicated matters.

This started my love/hate of the F which I was married to for the next three years. It was always the closest train to my apartments which was great, but it was also frequently closed for service.

Within the first few days of moving in, the downstairs neighbors came up to introduce themselves. This did not happen in the East Village. It was a couple with a two-year old girl. They came up to "just say hi" and that their daughter wanted to know what the "frightening noises from their ceiling were".

And thus I was introduced to the Brooklynite's way of passive aggressiveness.

They didn't give a shit who we were. They just wanted to send a message that we youngsters from the city better not make too much noise and disturb their little angel.

When we did have the inevitable house-warming party, I slipped a note under their door warning them in advance of the party, to let us know if we were making too much noise, and to come up and join us if they wanted. I wonder if the Treaty of Versailles contained such thinly veiled insincerity.

Of course they didn't come to the party. But at 2am on the dot there was a knock on our door. I don't know how you can convey annoyance in knocking but our neighbor achieved it. I opened the door to find a seething woman who hissed "It's 2:00."

I'm not a combative person and I'm definitely not into passive aggressive behavior. So we ended the party and never bothered to have another.

Despite sensitive/shitty neighbors, I loved the area. It had such a quaint community feeling. I reveled in the small, specialized shops. I would come back after work, go to the butcher for meat, go next door to the cheese shop, and then hit up the bakery a block down. I felt like I had escaped back in time before the likes of Wal-Mart destroyed the individual artisans.

To me, moving from the East Village to Carroll Gardens indicated a shift in my New York life. The sheen and newness of the city had dulled a bit. It was less about daily (or nightly) adventures and more about how to settle and survive. It meant that this wasn't just a vacation but that I was making a stake for living in New York. It was this move that signaled to my parents that this wasn't a passing fancy, so they stopped asking when I was moving back and sold my car which they were holding on for me.

Unfortunately my time in the Carroll Gardens apartment was short-lived. My relationship had deteriorated beyond repair and I chose to leave the apartment to my ex.

My memories of that apartment were very mixed. I recall being happy about feeling like I was going to make it in the city. But breaking up and still having to live with an ex was one of the most awkward and gut-wrenching times in my life.

It took nearly two months of weekend appointments to find a new place. I saw so many dumps and met so many weirdos that it seemed hopeless for a while.

I was sad to let go of what I'd worked so hard to get to. But I don't doubt it was the best thing to do. Now, I've stabilized a friendship with my ex, and I still love to hit up the restaurants and bars in Carroll Gardens. Seriously, bar crawling on Smith Street is something I recommend to everyone.