:: Williamsburg is our home and we love it. Many of its residents are affectionately referred to as hipsters and were recently sought after by MTV for their esoteric style.
Here is the casting call that MTV put out for a show called “I just want my pants back”:
Do you own skinny jeans, old school chucks, cabbie hat, the 70’s vest, an ironic t shirt or hat, a fitted sweater, flannel shirt, or chunky lens-less glasses? Do you drink PBR, have an ironic mustache, have a blog that allows you to post pictures you took with your digital camera? Been called a hipster? Deny being a hipster, but own various wardrobe and sport an asymmetrical hair style that is considered Non-Mainstream? Smoke Parliaments? Got any cool tattoos? Perhaps one of a star, maybe on your wrist or elbow? Own a vintage dress or have an awesome beard?
Yeah, those are our neighbors. Williamsburg has a vibe that attracts a unique crowd (including street artists like Banksy and others) and even though we are not the prototypical hipsters, we still enjoy throwing back an occasional PBR and writing it off to peer pressure.
:: The historic district in Fort Greene is decidedly awesome and rivals Park Slope and Carroll Gardens as the most picturesque places to live in Brooklyn. Everywhere else in Fort Greene sadly is not.
In the historic district (and the streets right around it) there is an absurd number of gorgeous single-family homes, in addition to Fort Greene Park and some of the most well-respected cultural institutions in all of New York; including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Technical High School (one of NYC’s most competitive schools), and Lafayette Church, which has underground tunnels and secret passageways that were an instrumental part of the underground railroad.
Outside of the historic district there are a bunch of eyesores and traffic congestions; including Target, Applebee’s, the Barclay’s Center, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and poorly lit streets that are probably urinated on semi-frequently.
:: Midwood is where my parents would live, if they decided to buy a home in Brooklyn. There are nearly 5x as many synagogues in the neighborhood as there are bars (37 synagogues vs. 8 bars) and tons of single family detached homes.
The biggest strike against Midwood is its distrance from Manhattan. It takes about 45 minutes to get to Times Square by subway (about 10 minutes longer than getting there from Bay Ridge), which appears to be the time it takes me to fall asleep, since that is what happened on both the trip there and the trip back. True, I tend to fall asleep often in moving vehicles, but achieving R.E.M. is not exactly what I shoot for on my commute to work.
Fortunately, Midwood has one giant ace in the hole: Di Fara’s Pizzeria! As anyone with a Zagat guide can tell you, Di Fara’s has the best pizza in NYC, hands down.
:: Finding a single family home in Carroll Gardens in our price range will probably require a combination of bribery, extortion and a touch of witchcraft, but since that’s never stopped us before, we are keeping the door open.
Carroll Gardens is rated as the top neighborhood in Brooklyn for good reason. For one, many of the homes have 30-40 foot front yards - hence the ”Gardens” in “Carroll Gardens” - which are both highly sought after and very unique to the neighborhood. Surprisingly, many of these yards (not including those in the neighborhood’s Historic District) have gotten unwieldy and tend to be adorned by an abundance of religious/tacky ornaments (pic), but nevertheless, Carroll Gardens has a 19th century charm, unlike any other neighborhood we have been to.
:: It’s impossible not to mention the Orthodox Jewish community when writing about Borough Park since they represent 67% of the 85K residents and are growing about 3-4X faster than your average family. While this may crimp our style on Saturdays since most local businesses are closed (bowling is definitely out), Borough Park does have great falafel the other 6 days of the week, a low crime rate, very good schools, a wide variety of very fashionable wide-rimmed hats and is only 25 minutes (7 stops) from Times Square when taking the D subway line.
But even with all that goodness, Rachel and I know that we just won’t feel right living in Borough Park for a couple of reasons:
