From the Mayor's Mansion to the End of the Line

Another day, another Key to the City adventure.  Lynn and I managed to take a tour over our lunch break, then I took off to the far reaches of southern Brooklyn in the evening.

Our lunch destination was Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of the City of New York.  This is another of the many places on this project that I've meant to see before but never got around to it.  The house was beautiful--I do love the Federalist style!--and the tour was really enjoyable.  Our two guides were great, and they told many anecdotes of the families who lived in the house before it became city property as well as the Mayors and their families.  My favorite part was seeing a British Revolutionary War cannon ball on a mantelpiece in the main parlor.  It was discovered in the ground while the mansion was being renovated, having done its part in destroying the house that stood there before Gracie Mansion was built.

Our key opened a closet upstairs in the master bedroom.  The whole upstairs is traditionally the residence of the Mayor, but since our current Mayor Bloomberg opted to reside in his own house, the second floor has been opened to the public.  Inside the closet was a portrait of Archibald Gracie, who built the house and lived there until his sons lost it in a business venture.  Also there was the original check Gracie wrote to purchase the property--in 1798.  Our tour guide explained these things, and showed us a real NYC Key to the City.  I'll have to find a way to earn one of those some day.

Later in the evening, I jumped on the subway and followed it to the end of the line.  Four subway lines end at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island.  The huge subway station there pours riders out into the thick of the Coney Island beach atmosphere.  There are food stands, beach stores, and of course, the original Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs.  A block away and you're on the iconic boardwalk with all the arcades, stands, music, and rides.  There's also sand, and some water too.  This lock was not amidst all that, but one avenue north in the more practical part of Coney Island.  Here are the real stores for the people who live there, and the places they go--like the local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

This was the first time I've struck out on my own to find a lock, and coincidentally it turned out to be a good one for it.  I found a metal safe box on a reference shelf that matched my key.  Inside was a whole history of Coney Island.  Newspaper articles stretching back a hundred years, a printed history of the early settlements on what was once literally an island (today it's only an island in name, landfill attached it to the mainland of Brooklyn long ago).  There were artifacts as well, including an old tin can of Coney Island brand sea food, that was once quite popular, and an early electrical conductor found preserved on the ocean floor off-shore.  It was a good place to sit, read, and learn.  Who would've thought?  I went to the library and ended up reading.

I visited the beach, which was empty as it was both late in the evening and starting to rain.  I was so close, I just had to go see the ocean.  And of course, stopped for dinner at Nathan's.

Today marks two milestones in the Key to the City adventure.  First, Gracie Mansion marks the 12th lock opened, meaning the Coney Island library took me beyond the half-way point to opening every single lock.  Second, Coney Island finishes off all the locks in Brooklyn, the second borough completed.  Time is short to reach all of the locks by the end of the project, September 6th.  But with some good planning, I may just make it.


View Key to the City - Man/BK - 8/18/10 in a larger map

Pieces of Brooklyn

The great Key to the City adventure continues.  Rather than have another marathon adventure, we opted to break the Brooklyn locations up among several days.

The very next day after our Bronx adventure, Lynn and I jumped on the subway for the quick trip over to the Brooklyn Museum.  Neither of us had been here before, so we didn't know what to expect, but it was a really good experience.  Our favorite exhibits were the full-scale replicas of actual colonial houses, built within the museum halls.  It was really cool to walk around these houses as if you were actually inside.  We eventually found our way to the top floor, where our key opened a secret door in the wall between two portraits.  Inside was a secret exhibit, just for us: a small collection of tiny Fabergé sculptures.  I didn't know that the House of Fabergé made things other than the famous eggs, but there were some great little sculptures here.  Tiny animals make of precious stones with diamond eyes, a miniature jewel-encrusted clock, and a life-size dandelion gone to seed, made of asbestos filaments.  It was a cool surprise, behind a secret door.

The following day, we ventured out again.  After work, we headed down to the Gowanus Canal, a highly-polluted body of water a short walk from our neighborhood.  This formerly industrial area is now dotted with artist studios, galleries, workshops, and performance spaces.  Right along the canal are the offices of Cabinet Magazine, a quarterly art and culture publication.  Our key unlocked a small box in the dark alleyway beside Cabinet.  Upon opening, the empty box played an old recording of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," a Tin Pan Alley hit song from 1919.  A note in the box said, "For the full experience call 718-XXX-XXXX between the hours of 10am and 6pm."  We'd arrived well after 6pm, but I later looked up what other keyholders had said about the location.  There used to be a bubble machine above the box that would start blowing bubbles when the box was opened.  It broke some time ago, so the folks at Cabinet decided to put their phone number in the box.  If we had arrived in time, and called the number, someone would have come running out into the alleyway to blow bubbles for us.

A week went by, with us traveling and some thunderstorms passing through, and the following Tuesday we once again set off after work.  This time, our destination was right along the way home, up in DUMBO.  We climbed a stairway off the street up to the entrance of Gleason's Boxing Gym.  The place was alive with the sound of solid impacts, and the distinct smell of hard work and sweat.  Gleason's is the oldest continually operating boxing gym in the country, and champions of all classes have trained there.  Cassius Clay, Mike Tyson, and a host of other boxing legends have trained here, and their pictures cover an entire wall in the back of the main room.  Individual lockers are scattered throughout along the walls, and one of them could be opened with our key.  Inside were boxing gloves, jump ropes, tape, and everything we'd need to get started ourselves.  We tried the gloves, but long days of work convinced both of us not to stay long.  On our way out, we were completely surprised to be approached by one of our new neighbors, himself training hard after a long day at work.  What a pleasant surprise.

There's one more location in Brooklyn, way down in Coney Island.  It has more difficult hours to work with, so we're not sure when we'll make it down there.  Tomorrow, the adventure continues in Manhattan, where we still have many more secrets to unlock.


View Key to the City - Brooklyn in a larger map

Disputed Territory

When I first came to NYC, back in 2003, it was my dream to get an apartment right in the middle of things.  I idolized, as so many transplants do, the Village.  Little did I know what geographic trouble I was getting myself into.  The original Village, Greenwich Village, was centered in what is today known as the West Village.  To the east, appropriately, is the East Village--which was originally part of the Lower East Side but renamed for real estate appeal long ago.

I settled in a little studio on Waverly Place and Mercer St.  When people asked me where I lived, I said "the Village," marveling at how incredibly cool that sounded.  But then they'd say, "East or West?" and I was stumped.  Some people insist the dividing line between East and West is Broadway.  Others swear that it's Fifth Avenue.  Maps, even official-looking city maps, are just as fickle, saying one, the other, or sometimes referencing both.  Mercer Street, were I lived, is right in between Broadway and Fifth Avenue.  Thus, each time I tried to describe where my little apartment was to anyone who lived in the city, it generally sparked a long--and often heated--debate on the boundaries of the Village.

Never one to shy away from cartographic controversy, I now find myself in a similar neighborhood border situation.  Our new apartment in Brooklyn sits between two prominent north-south streets, Court Street and Smith Street.  These streets are both labeled by several sources, maps, neighborhood guides, and city resources as the dividing boundary between the neighborhoods of Cobble Hill to the west and Boerum Hill to the east.

Cobble Hill was originally known as Ponkiesbergh, and was settled in the 1640's by the Dutch farmers in the area.  It gained its current name from being a small hill (the highest point is at today's intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street) where cobble stones were disposed.  These stones were used as ballast in the trade ships coming from Europe, and were not needed when the ships left New York laden with American goods, so they were dumped in what was then just outside of the town of Brooklyn.  Althought grouped into the generic "South Brooklyn" designation with everything else south of Atlantic Avenue for many decades, the name Cobble Hill has been in city documents since as early as the 1840s.  The high point itself was even used as a fort during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, though nothing remains of either today.

Boerum Hill, meanwhile, has a slightly more quiet history.  The area was named after the Boerum family whose farm covered most of the area in colonial times.  Its development followed closely along with Cobble Hill.  Some folks will tell you the name "Boerum Hill" is a product of gentrification in the area, like DUMBO or calling Hell's Kitchen "Clinton."  This is because, like Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill was lumped into the "South Brooklyn" designation well into the 1950s.  However, there are plenty of records showing the name "Boerum Hill" going back as far as the colonial farm itself.  So while the name may have been resurrected after South Brooklyn lost its appeal, Boerum Hill was the original name given to what is now the neighborhood.

Interestingly, in the early 1920s a large group of Mohawk families moved to Boerum Hill from a reservation in Quebec.  They came to NYC as ironworkers to build the new skyscrapers as, unlike their European-American neighbors, they were comfortable working at the dizzying heights of the tallest buildings in the world.  But as crane and building technology improved, the Mohawks eventually left as well, heading west where there was more work available.

So which neighborhood should it be?  I see one strong argument for each.  Historically, the actual hill that Cobble Hill refers to was centered on what is today an intersection of two streets one block away.  That puts our building literally "on" Cobble Hill, so it would make sense to call it "in" Cobble Hill as well.  On the other hand, the city government draws the line between Community Board 2, which includes Boerum Hill, and Community Board 6, which includes Cobble Hill, along Court Street.  This means that, as far as our representation in the city government is concerned, we're in Boerum Hill.

Though I suppose I could avoid the issue entirely, since nearly everyone in Brooklyn knows exactly what I mean when I say I live "around the corner from Trader Joe's."  As for the Manhattan dwellers, all I have do is say "Brooklyn" and watch their eyes glaze over.

Episode IV: A New Home

The great Suburban Exile of 2010 has ended.  After a month of living off in the 'burbs and commuting into the city, we're finally settled in our apartment.  That we own.  But it wasn't easy getting there, naturally.

Once June had hit and we were living in Connecticut, we had a new deadline to worry over.  June 30th was the last day we could close to claim the several-thousand-dollar First Time Home-buyer Tax Credit that the government began early last year as part of the larger economic stimulus.  We had the usual runaround, hearing "of course we'll make it," and, "don't worry about it."  But that's what we heard in March.  And April.  And May.

While our bank had pulled its approval of the building, another bank had gone ahead and approved it.  That bank closed several apartments in the building and our future neighbors started moving in.  We abandoned our bank, and started from scratch with this other bank that had approved people.  The new bank was wonderful; they accomplished in a week what the first bank to two months to do.  They rushed everything through for us, and all was moving quickly.

But not quickly enough.  June was flying by, and we were getting closer and closer to losing the tax credit.  Delay after delay we could handle, albeit grudgingly, but losing the credit would have been an extra slap.  Finally, as the end of June neared, our lawyer, the bank's lawyer, and the building developer's lawyer set a date to close and hoped that we'd have the final green light from the bank by then.  That date was June 30th, 10am.

Around 10pm on June 29th, we got a call from our lawyer.  We're going to close!  Probably.  There was some confirmation of funds transfer from the bank that we needed, and that hadn't come in yet.  Our lawyer told us to be ready at 10am, but not to show up at the closing table until he called.  Just in case.

The next morning we had our final walk-through in the apartment before the closing.  We walked around looking everything over one last time.  But mostly we were just wondering, would this really happen?  10am came and went.  10:30am came and went.  Finally, the phone rang, and we were off to the closing table.  Two hours, and many signatures and people shuffling, later we were homeowners.

Wasting no time, we immediately scheduled the movers for the following Monday and painted over the weekend.  It's good to be home.

Apartment Drama, or, Exile to the Suburbs

At this point, I'm calling it: We will not be moving into our new apartment this weekend.

For those keeping track, we found our new home back in January and signed the contract on it the first week of February.  (For those not keeping track, here's all news I remembered to print.)  There were some early complications in the way the condo was set up with commercial space on the ground floor, but those have long since been worked out.  Back in March, we had our first walk-through, and we were glad to see that it was largely ready for us to move in, with only cosmetic things making our punch list.

In April, we waited.  Waited for bank to give us our loan approval.  When that came, we were truly excited.  Everything was falling into place, and we were set.  Now all we needed was for the bank to make some final approvals on the building itself after those earlier complications.  But all signs pointed to closing in April, or perhaps early May at worst.

Toward the end of April, we heard the building had been approved by the bank.  Our lawyer scheduled a closing date for May 11th.  We were warned that the bank might not have all their ducks in a row by then, but that there was every indication to believe it was possible.  With certainty, we were told, the process was so close to being finished that there was no way the closing would be delayed beyond May.

So it was a time for celebration.  We threw a party in early May to say farewell to our backyard garden (and celebrate a birthday).  We told our landlord that the end of May was when we'd move out of the apartment, giving us time to paint the new place.  Wheels were turning, and we came to realize that Memorial Day weekend, if not earlier, would be when we moved.

Then, suddenly, the bank withdrew its approval of the building.  They'd approved it on a false premise, we were told, they didn't understand some key elements of the way the commercial space was set up.  Huh?  At least one part of the complication came from the fact that the condo uses one address, while the commercial space uses a different address.  Paperwork got confused, the bank got confused, and pulled their approval.  Whether or not we would close in May was once again under question.

Still, we were told not to worry.  The bank would sort out its confusion and re-approve the building any day now.  Any day now.  We asked our mortgage brokers for daily updates, but the answer remained "we're just waiting for the bank's approval."  We tried to be hopeful, as the weeks wore on, but in the back of our minds we were beginning to realize we needed a back-up plan.  And fast.

Which brings us up to this week.  Just yesterday, our lawyer called me again with a tentative closing date on Thursday.  That cuts is close, but still allows us time to move to our new apartment this weekend, since we can't stay in our current apartment beyond the 31st.  Relieved, I shot an email over to the mortgage broker again asking if he thought this was a possibility as well.  He does not think so.  In fact, he's confident we will not be closing tomorrow or Friday.  But he assures us, he's working as hard as he can to get it through as soon as possible.

Time for Plan B.

Lynn's parents have offered to take us in.  They live in Stamford, CT about a forty-five minute train ride from Grand Central.  They have a guest room in their basement with it's own bathroom.  We'd have use of a car, and would be train commuters to work, along with thousands of other suburbanites.  Three and a half years ago, I retreated to Stamford to wait out the job hunt, and now it looks like we'll be returning.  While I'm not looking forward to the commute (at all), I'm grateful for their generosity.  It's won't be convenient, but it will be a way of saving money and spending time with family.  And it's certainly a more viable option than finding a Craigslist short-term lease for a married couple, living out of a hotel, or hopping from couch to couch among friends (although I am also extremely touched and grateful to all of you who offered).

Louis the cat, however, may disagree when he meets Riley the dog.

Walk Through, Take One

On Friday, we saw our apartment for the first time in over a month.  Despite the general craziness about the condo structuring sill on-going, everyone involved is pretty confident that things will still move forward.  (That's a relief.)  So we had our first walk-through since the apartment has been finished.  There will be two more along the way, one in several weeks, and the final right before closing.

It was a little surreal.  For one, this is the first time we've seen the apartment finished.  The last time we went to the building, there were no appliances in the kitchen, not quite everything had been painted, and many of the little finishing touches had yet to be installed.  The hallway on our floor had no carpet or paint as well, and truly felt like a construction zone.  This time, nearly everything was in place, and it looked like a real apartment.

Our apartment, which was the other surreal part of it.  We've been looking at apartments for a long time, and have seen so many, and have invested ourselves in more than a couple.  Is this one really ours?  No, not technically yet, but it's darn close.

For now, the questions are moving away from "What will our monthly expenses be?" and "Is this a good location?" and instead becoming "What color should this room be?" and "Along which wall will we put the couch?"  And that's close enough for me.

So Maybe That Catch Isn't So Little

The new apartment saga continues.  While our mortgage brokers and the bank lenders bicker about what forms we should or should not sign (all of which carry little real meaning), new regulations from Fannie Mae have thrown another wrench in the works of our new building.

The building was built with the first floor much larger than the upper floors.  The first floor was intended to be large enough to hold a grocery store, or some other comparable commercial enterprise.  Meanwhile, there's a two-level garage underneath the first floor.  Compared to the upper floors, where the apartments are, roughly 60% of the floor area is commercial, leaving about 40% residential.

With the beginning of 2010 comes a new regulation stating that new condominiums cannot have more than 20% commercial space.  Whoops.

Not sure where we go from here, but it looks like it'll be an interesting ride.

Well, There is One Little Catch

Our contract on this new apartment is secure.  Our mortgage application is in progress, but there's nothing really to be worried about at this point.  But there is one possible catch in all this, and it involves the question nearly everyone has asked me since the last post.

When do we move in?

Because this building is new construction, they haven't quite secured their temporary certificate of occupancy (TCO) yet.  That is, the city has not certified that the building is ready and safe for people to actually live in.  Once the building receives their TCO, we'll close and move in between 30 and 45 days after.

They were expecting the TCO by the end of January.  Hopefully, they'll get it soon.

The Pen is Mightier

When I was young, I always knew how important something was by what pen my mother used to sign her name.  If it was a permission slip for school, any bic lying around would do.  But when she signed something important, she pulled a red leather sleeve from her purse.  Out of that sleeve came the most beautiful gold Cross pen.  This was important, this signature meant something, it needed the appropriate pen.

When I graduated high school, I had a diploma, wore a cap and gown, and celebrated with friends.  But when my mother gave me my own gold Cross pen, I knew my life had changed.  I was an adult, my signature meant something, I needed the appropriate pen.  When I graduated from college, she gave me another gold Cross pen.  Then I knew: I was on my own, I was making decisions for my life, I had to know when to use the appropriate pen.

* * *

After the first attempt at buying an apartment fell through, Lynn and I took some time off.  But before long, we knew we had to get back on the horse and start looking at apartments again.  So we hit the open house circuit and checked out some new possibilities.  One was fantastic.  It's in a new building, so everything is brand new.  There are two bathrooms (this becomes important when you're married), great kitchen appliances, and even a washer and dryer.  There's a roof deck with views on Manhattan, and the elevator goes all the way up for those of us who are too lazy to take stairs.  It's a great apartment.  And the most surprising part was that it is far more affordable than many of the other, older, apartments we've looked at.

We moved quickly, and made an offer.  It was accepted that same day.  Oh boy, I thought, here we are again with an accepted offer and needing to get to the contract phase.  This time, though, things went smoothly.  All the paperwork checked out and things were looking good.  Our lawyer worked out the contract with the seller's lawyer, and in just a few days we were set.

I brought the contract home from our lawyer's office so Lynn and I could sign it together.  We each signed with a gold Cross pen.

So Close, and Yet So Far

As happens with big changes in my life, I've been ignoring the ol' blog for a while.  It's been a particularly eventful holiday season and New Year!  I'll add more stories with time (maybe).

Lynn and I have been house-hunting.  Well, I guess you could say we've been causally browsing for over a year, stopping by open houses in our neighborhood on weekends.  Just before Christmas, we really started seriously looking—and finding.

We settled on a very nice apartment on Montague Street in our neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights.  It had two bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and was a duplex spread over two floors.  We loved the light, the feel, and were drooling over the space.  It seemed like a little two-story house, tucked away in a historic Queen Anne-style apartment building in the middle of our fantastic  neighborhood.  What could go wrong?

Lots, apparently.

First it was the price.  The sellers, in defiance of the current economy, the housing market, and their own broker's advice, set the price way too high.  We knew we could not afford it at their price, but we also knew it wasn't actually worth that price.  Or at the very least, this market would not support that price.

So, at the advice of our broker, we offered a significantly lower price.  To the sellers, it must have looked like a low-ball offer.  To us, it was the highest we could afford—and a stretch at that.  Initially, the sellers countered our offer with a number that didn't show any seriousness in negotiating at all.  After all, we knew, they had already turned down offers higher than ours.  We went back and said that our first offer really was our "best and final," and we were willing to walk away if they felt it was too low.  They accepted.

Thus began the rush to get into contract.  We had an inspection, the apartment passed with flying colors.  We had to look into the financial history of the building, which is a co-op, and do the due diligence there.  Here is where things fell apart.

A co-op, as most of you who don't live in NYC may now know, is different from a condominium situation.  In a condo, you own your apartment, it is your property.  In a co-op, you own a share in the "company" that owns the building.  Your share is proportional to the size of your apartment, and you own the permanent lease on your apartment.  With co-op buildings, the co-op board of directors also wields extensive powers over the building and its finances, so it is vital to check into the history of the board's behavior.

This particular co-op board took very good care of the building.  They also tried to take care of their residents by now raising the common charges.  But they did this on debt, acquiring a huge mortgage on the building, taking out a line of credit, and depleting their reserves.

And then there was the elevator.  Two years ago, the elevator was found to be in bad shape.  They could update it to the turn of $250,000 or perform several small maintenance repairs that would make it last another two years.  Well, those two years are over, and it's time to update the elevator.  Because the building has so much debt, and no reserves, that money has to come from the residents.  It was too much money for us.

We went back to the sellers, explained the extra expenses and offer an even lower price to off-set paying for the elevator.  They declined.  We moved on.  We sure learned a lot about the process, though.

And it definitely helped prepare us for the next apartment.  To be continued...

How Does My Garden Grow?

This weekend, a couple friends came to visit up from Baltimore. We were hoping they'd help us pick out some flowers for the garden, but they jumped right in and together we completely over-hauled the entire back yard. Saturday morning, unusually warm for April, we all walked up to the farmers' market in front of Borough Hall. We picked out some hanging baskets, a flat of Impatiens (which I had always assumed to be spelled and pronounced "Inpatient's") and a few other brightly colored blossoms. A quick stop to get some spades, gloves, and soil, and we were all set.

Back at the apartment garden we began digging out the seemingly unending tangle of roots hiding just below the surface. Throughout the day we rooted, weeded, finished a red brick border around the patio, cut back the vines growing up the walls, cleaned out excess dirt, planted all our flowers, cleaned off all the patio furniture we inherited, and enjoyed a beautiful day with excellent company. It was a remarkable amount of work, but we now have a beautiful garden to enjoy all summer.

We celebrated by firing up the grill for the first time, and making a feast of brats, burgers, salad, corn, and asparagus. Dark by then, we still ate outside basking in the elation that comes from hard work done well with good friends.

Leinie Berry Weiss for the Summer

Further evidence that, indeed, everything will be alright out in Brooklyn. I've discovered a huge beer distributing store on Court Street that carries Leinenkugel. Some of my most fond memories of Houghton involved Monday nights when a group of us would go to Pilgrim River Steakhouse and have steak burgers and pitchers of Leini (usually the honey weiss). It was always a great start to a week.

In the summer, Leinie had a berry weiss that always hit the spot. Some friends of mine even had it at their wedding. Now that I've found Leinie in Brooklyn, it looks like it's going to be a great summer of grilling in our backyard garden.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Brooklyn

The new apartment feels more like home every day. One week after moving in, we're putting the last few pictures up on the walls, and looking toward what we can plant in the garden. We've met all the neighbors in our building, and they're all friendly and welcoming. Our neighbors upstairs even left us a bottle of wine!

The neighborhood could hardly be better. Turning left from our front door takes you into the heart of Brooklyn Heights with it's townhouses and tree-lined streets. Turning right takes you to downtown Brooklyn where nearly every subway train comes through. From there, Court and Smith streets run south for miles lined with restaurants, bars, and shops of all kinds. We're right at the crossroads of history and convenience.

For the first time in a while, it's truly exciting to be living here again.

April Showers...

April is not usually a turbulent time. Spring always brought warmer weather, cleansing rain, and the promise of summer to get me through classes or just out of the winter doldrums. This April has brought showers, not of rain, but of change.

April 1st marked severe layoffs in my company. The company has been cutting back across several departments for about six months now, but this was the first time it affected my department. Nearly one half of our staff had been let go, including my friend of twelve years and many other wonderful people who have become like another family to me over the last two and a half years. The office is now quiet, and empty seats out-number filled ones. Those of us still there now share mixed feelings of relief and guilt that our friends and colleagues are gone while we remain.

The following Saturday, Lynn and I moved to our new apartment in Brooklyn. The move was surprisingly easy, and the moving company we hired was fantastic. A few friends came over on Saturday and helped out unpacking boxes, and by Sunday evening the place already looked like we'd been there for some time. Almost a week later, we have almost no boxes left, and are now hanging up pictures and re-arranging the rooms to make our home.

We've been able to explore the neighborhood a little, but this weekend we hope to spend some quality time learning about our new environs.

Boxes

Last night we broke out the Fresh Direct boxes we've been saving and started packing. Starting simply, we attacked the book shelves first, and quickly filled all eight boxes that we had. (We like books. A lot.) Now we're on the hunt for more boxes.

I'm always amazed when I'm preparing to move at just how much "stuff" I have. One would think with a small NYC apartment there isn't room for much&emdash;and that's true. Yet, after two years in this apartment I'm finding all kinds of things I didn't even know I had. I've always found moving to be a good chance to get rid of all this extraneous stuff. So in packing just those eight boxes last night, we also made two runs to the garbage and recycling room. It feels good to get things in order.

It'll feel even better to settle into our new home next week.

Schermerhorn

Sometime around 1200 years ago in the northern part of Holland, prospectors followed a small river inland to a vast area of peat for digging. Being in the peat lands of the Netherlands, the river often flooded in storms, forming a wide shallow like from time to time. This earned it the name "Skir mere" which means "bright lake." This name was eventually shortened to "Schermer," which also became the name of the area around the the river's flood basin.

By the year 1250, the removal of peat and the repeated river flooding connected the Schermer river to the Zuiderzee, thus allowing for trade all the way to the North Sea. The people there settled a small village where the Schermer met another river, and they called it Schermerhorn.

Even today, the village of Schermerhorn is home to less than 900 people. Yet those bearing Schermerhorn as a surname have spread across the Netherlands and around the world. There were Schermerhorns among the original Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, and they rose to be among the earliest aristocrats of the New World. For generations the Schermerhorn name was passed down through the wealthy Dutch of New York and Brooklyn.

It was a Schermerhorn who, married into the Astor family, created the Astor hotel to rival a competing family member's Waldorf Hotel. These hotels were later merged into the famous Waldorf-Astoria. (This same Schermerhorn, Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, had a 39-foot-tall cenotaph erected for her grave at Trinity Church, not far from where I live now.)

The Schermerhorn farm, across the river in Brooklyn, had been divided and subdivided as the small village of Brooklyn grew into the second-largest city in the US. By the time of Caroline's reign over New York society, all that remained was a street running through Brooklyn (later called Brooklyn Heights): Schermerhorn Street.

Lynn and I have found an apartment, we're moving to Schermerhorn Street.

House Hunting in the Middle

I'm a bit frustrated. The building I love has become so incredibly annoying that I can hardly wait to leave it. The adjacent building has added 9 floors to itself, completely blocking all of our windows. We have to draw the shades so as not to draw the attention of the workers 8 feet outside the windows. But the shades don't block the noise. 7am sharp, every morning.

I've always said that the building is wonderful, it's just everything around it that's bad.

So, we've made the decision to move (possibly to Brooklyn). Our lease is up April 1st, and that's no joke, so the time to be looking elsewhere is now. Ideally, we'd want to overlap a little with our current lease to make the transition easier.

We've toyed with the idea of buying an apartment, especially with the market coming down so quickly. But the market isn't quite there yet, and we don't want to commit ourselves to a mortgage when our own industries aren't the most stable. And the process is so long. We've spent more than a month looking at properties on weekends, just to see what's available. And many of those properties will still be there if we start looking again later. It takes ages to negotiate a price, go through the process, and close. Far too long for our needs right now.

Meanwhile, with the rental market in NYC, the attitude is "now or never." If you look at an apartment, find that you like it, and fail to sign the lease that day, it's probably gone tomorrow. This too is abetting a little with demand falling off in this economy, but the prevailing attitude is still there. We've got an appointment for Saturday in Brooklyn. If we see something we like, we have to make the decision to live there immediately. There's no time to consider other neighborhoods, or sleep on it. Yes or no. Now or never.

I want the middle road. I want to be able to compare and consider apartments, to take the time to feel out the neighborhood, and what it would be like to live in a certain place. I want to learn about the building--where is the laundry? The recycling? But I also want the speed and ease of finding a place soon, and not spending weeks to months negotiating and signing a lease.

Tomorrow I may have a new address.

The Pull of Brooklyn

Lynn and I have been spending a lot of time in Brooklyn lately. It began innocently enough; dinner with a friend in Park Slope, and celebrating a friend's new apartment in Prospect Heights. But before long, we were on walking tours of Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill. And then we took the big conceptual leap—what if we moved to Brooklyn?

I've tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid becoming the stereotypical "Manhattan Snob." Why, the very first day I came to NYC in 2003 I went to Queens—by mistakenly taking the wrong subway. I've spent a considerable amount of time driving around the Bronx—lost, looking for a bridge into Manhattan that didn't have a toll. And I don't know any of my friends or acquaintances who have also been to the Staten Island Mall—though it was a horrendous ordeal that I will never repeat. But I have, on occasion, explored the outer boroughs deliberately. The end of the A train in Queens, and Dyker Heights at Christmastime.

Still, I've lived in Manhattan for over five years, and the vast majority of my time in the outer boroughs is limited to getting to or from Manhattan. It's not so much that I have anything against the other three (I'm excluding Staten Island here, I will hold that grudge until the day I die). It's just that they're so far away from everything—that is, Manhattan.

Or so I thought. The more time we've spent in some of the nearer parts of Brooklyn, the more I've liked it. Some of the neighborhoods we've explored are lovely, with tree-lined streets, rows of brownstones and townhouses, and a very close sense of a true neighborhood. Certain neighborhoods are, in short, wonderful. And I am, frankly, really enjoying spending time there.

Add to this the falling real estate market, and a recently married couple thinking of taking the big step of their first real home, and you have several weekends now wandering between open houses seeing what's available. Lynn found this helpful picture on the interwebs to guide our search:

We've been looking primarily in Brooklyn Heights. It's a quiet, beautiful neighborhood of Federal and Queen Anne styled buildings. It has an esplanade overlooking the water, and it's own little "main street" with shops and restaurants. And it's only one stop from Manhattan.

We're looking for a neighborhood feel, check. Close to subways, check. And the added bonus of being an absolutely beautiful neighborhood, check. Brooklyn is looking more appealing every day...the pull is almost tangible.


Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/8172159@N02/

Christmas in (and out of) New York

One of the things I've missed since moving to New York has been the Christmas lights. Sure, once in a while you get the occasional family that rings their windows in lights--but you just don't get the kind of displays a standalone house can afford. In Manhattan, at least. Once again reminded that the majority of the city is not contained in the little island on which I live, Lynn, a friend, and I journeyed out to Brooklyn in search of the famous Dyker Heights Lights.

Walking into the neighborhood from the subway station in Bay Ridge, our first impression was of a typical urban residential neighborhood. The streets were in a grid pattern, as much of Brooklyn is, and the houses were modest middle-income two-story homes. Delving deeper, however, revealed the true character of Dyker Heights: Huge Mediterranean-style villas, brimming to the edges of the properties. Greek- and Roman-inspired statues, fountains, and temples. And Christmas displays that must surely warm the hearts of everyone over at ConEd.



The owner of this house, dressed in a snowman costume was greeting children with mint candies. His wife was dressed as Elmo. He told us that it took him two months to put together this year's display, and that he has to rent a storage unit solely to store his Christmas decorations the rest of the year.





Other folks opted to simply cover every surface with lights.





Street after street of displays like these fill the neighborhood. These few pictures hardly do it justice, but I found myself trying to pick my jaw off the ground and forgetting about the camera in my hand. This neighborhood has grown such a reputation for itself, that PBS filmed a documentary on the Christmas phenomenon. The residents we ran into were proud of their displays, and rightly so. If you ever need a quick shot of good, old-fashioned, exorbitantly excessive Christmas lights, they've got you covered.

Lynn and I flew out to Michigan for Christmas, hoping for a bit more snow and to see the family. The snow was sparse, but the family was not. Merry Christmas.