BoCoCa: My life in the Hills

I love my neighborhood. My neighborhood loves me. Our apartment is really at a very interesting intersection of Brooklyn: part luxe, part ghetto, part business, part entertainment, part government, part nightlife, part white, part black, part middle eastern, part hispanic, part gentrified, part ghetto. Most of all, for me, my neighborhood is convenient. My neighborhood is actually so convenient, I can easily go weeks at a time without leaving a four block radius from my house. Literally the farthest place I have to go on a regular basis is my job, which is a whopping four blocks away. I imagine this apartment I am in now will be the most convenient place I'll ever live in respect to all major amenities. See the map? See that huge mess of icons all cluttered together? Thats all the amenities I use almost every day.

Let's take a look: I already mentioned my job, which is four blocks away. The gym is a block and a half away. The grocery store (Trader Joe's) is half a block away. My bank is less than half a block away. The dry cleaner is literally one door down from us. We rent cars at Avis, which is directly across the street. The laundromat is one and a half blocks away. There is a huge movie theater 2 blocks away and a wonderful independent theater 8 blocks away. There is a Barnes and Noble right next to the movie theater and another amazing independent bookstore two blocks away. Lastly, we have access to about 6 different trains within a five block radius.

But lets not kid ourselves. This is no Eden Rick and I step out into every day. We live RIGHT ON Atlantic Ave, one of the busiest, nastiest, dirtiest streets in the whole country. It took a while for us to get used to the 18 wheelers downshifting outside or window every night as we tried to sleep. I would literally bound out of bed in the mornings, awoken by some mac truck barreling down the street, thinking the terrorists were attacking again (you'd be amazed how much air breaks sound like bombs about to explode). There is a Halal meat market right on our block, and we are routinely privy to the sight of whole, skinned goats, sheep and other unidentifiable mammals being brought into the butcher's via shopping cart. The is bus stop right outside which brings the double bonus of getting to hear the bus come by every 10 minutes and drawing interesting characters to the stop. Still, its our little corner of the Earth and its really begun to feel like MY neighborhood. The future is still uncertain, but we'll probably be moving sometime next summer. I will be sure to enjoy it until then


View Larger Map