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JOURNAL
SO LONG, MANHATTAN
And so it was with some hesitation that I contemplated leaving the famed borough after living a few blocks from Times Square for over 12 years. Was I giving up? Had I failed in my mission to conquer the world with my talents? Would I never be at the “top of the heap,” a highrise penthouse apartment?
Yet here I was, taking the R train all the way out to Bay Ridge, a lovely, quiet, middle-income and middle-aged neighborhood in southeastern part of Brooklyn, to look at an apartment. A funny thing happened as I stepped out of the subway and onto 77th Street: my shoulders dropped their tension, I breathed, my pace slowed. It felt good!
Then I saw the apartment I was contemplating. After my creative use of a studio apartment for the last several years, this new place seemed like a castle: four rooms plus an eat-in kitchen, full bath and five closets, double the cabinet space, minus the cockroaches, and windows in the front and back. For $100 more than my Manhattan studio. It took me all of five seconds to announce “I’ll take it!”
“But the commute . . .” many of my Manhattan friends warned me. Manhattanites will put up with any kind of apartment to avoid the inconvenience of a long commute. Trust me, I know. I actually found the hour-long ride from Harlem, where I’m in school, to Bay Ridge to be an uninterrupted pleasure, and even finished my homework assignment before I was back on the street.
Many in the rest of the country spend a couple hours each way going to and from work stuck in traffic inside their cars. This isn’t so bad.
Most surprisingly, I’m finding my new neighborhood to have more conveniences than my old one. There is a laundromat across the street. There is a butcher and a cheap fruit-and-vegetable stand within a short block. There is a 24-hour deli on the first floor; I could probably pick up my morning newspaper in my underwear if I wanted to, but I’ll spare the neighbors. Starbucks, Subway, Haagen Daz, a bakery, two banks, two pizza shops, a grocery store, a florist and a liquor store are all within site of my front door. And yet, somehow, Bay Ridge has retained a neighborhood feel, with brownstones and family homes and small tenement buildings where people know who lives in their building. I never had it this good between 10th and 11th Avenues in Manhattan.
This week, I took my bike out to the bike and pedestrian path along the waterfront. Now I’m closer to the open water of the Atlantic so I can smell the salty air. Trees, grass, fishermen on the edge of the land, the glory of the Verrazano Bridge up close. Who knew? Who needs Florida?
And it’s time for me to face facts: I am middle-aged. Most of us don’t live to a hundred. I’ve earned the right to some space and peace. However, I still believe my best, most productive years are ahead of me. Bay Ridge will help me to re-energize my creative juices, help me to be the best I can be instead of doing all I can do. New Yorkers are known for working hard, but I think we sometimes get caught up in the manic doing (quantity) at the expense of simply being (quality).
I’ve only been here a couple of weeks, but I’m already thinking Brooklyn shares a slogan with my home state of Maine: “the way life ought to be.”
What's Your Opinion?
KevScoHall@Verizon.net