Meeting the Locals

I’ve now lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn for more than two weeks. So, what is that like?

• Yes, there are a lot of parents

I knew before I moved here that Park Slope has a reputation for being stroller city. It certainly lives up to its reputation, but it hasn't bothered me much because it doesn't feel like the suburbs. You get the sense that a lot of these parents are defensive about their domestication, and are determined to prove that just because they appear to be part of a traditional mom, dad, and baby arrangement, they are anything but cookie cutter. This is the home of “cool” moms and “hip” dads, hoping to raise a generation of tolerant liberal children. That is all well and good, but it is also a little funny to watch. The other day at a restaurant I overheard a very serious conversation between a mother and her late-elementary age son. He was asking questions about a classmate who had two dads, and the mother was trying to explain that there are many different kinds of families. She actually referenced the book Heather has two Mommies, but when that didn’t ring a bell she conceded that she must have read it when he was too young to remember. This made me wonder, exactly how early in the child’s life had she decided to pull that book out? I mean, I’m sure it is great and all, but I can’t imagine the book as one that a kid would request and love. I sort of picture a toddler, whose favorite book is Fifteen Pages of Adorably Drawn Kittens being told by his parent, “No dear, tonight we are reading Heather has two Mommies.”

Later that week I saw a little boy wearing a Disney-style Snow White gown. Both he and his parents looked very pleased with themselves.

• People are very welcoming. Perhaps too welcoming.

Right after I moved in, I still hadn’t gone grocery shopping, and so was still dependent on restaurants for my daily meals. The first place I tried out in my new neighborhood was a small Sushi place that seemed to have an appealing and moderately inexpensive menu. The food was good and substantial, but the owner of the place kept coming over to talk to me. He repeatedly emphasized what a great, family owned business this was, and how I should feel free to bring people here. I couldn’t tell if his chief concern was increasing his business, or the fact that I was eating alone. It weirded me out a little, but I ended up coming back a week later. I saw no sign of the owner, so I thought maybe I could eat anonymously. Then the waitress came over and asked if I wanted “the usual” and recited exactly what I had ordered last time.

My other “too welcoming” experience was one I probably should have seen coming. Last weekend I decided to attend a local church. Having spent previous Sundays hoofing it from one apartment appointment to another, I was ready for a new routine. I enjoyed St. Mark’s in Seattle, so I thought I would try out the nearest Episcopalian church. When I showed up five minutes before the service was scheduled to start, my first thought was that I had gotten the time wrong. There were less than ten people scattered about a space that could probably fit a few hundred. By the time the service started, the total had probably swelled to 25. At first I tried to think, “this is charming. I’m sure it would be a great close-knit community to join.” But as things continued, I started to admit that it was kind of grim. The processional consisted of three people who, after reaching the front of the church, gave each other a few awkward “now what?” side-glances. When we sang hymns, there were a few designated women who sang into microphones--presumably to flesh out the anemic sound of the congregation. The priest had an accent--which was easy to understand when he spoke in a dull monotone, but near impossible to decipher when he became animated and wanted to make an important point. So I caught only the blander parts of an already cliché sermon. When I decided to refrain from communion, a woman took the opportunity to come over and have me fill out a visitor card. As she pressed it into my hand she said firmly “I will collect this from you after the service.” Equally frightened of both the woman and the prospect of forever being on a mailing list, I briefly considered making a run for it. But, I decided that there was no way I could do it inconspicuously. When we made it to announcements, a woman entirely unfamiliar with the concept of brevity was given a microphone. She cryptically alluded to “our troubles” and how she was sure that God would provide. About the time I realized that the service was going to creep over the two-hour mark, the woman asked if there were any visitors this week. Everyone turned around to look straight at me, and so I had no choice but to stand up and croak out my name. As two-dozen faces beamed at me, I suddenly had this feeling that—as it was clear that attendance was part of “our troubles”—I was perhaps being taking as a sign that things were on the upswing. When the service ended, I managed to sneak out without depositing my visitor card. I half expected someone to come running after me.

• Do Orthodox Jewish women work out? If so, what do they wear?

Yes. They wear running shoes, black leggings, a below-the-knee black skirt, a black ¾ length shirt, and a heavy black hairnet. And they still look less frumpy than me when I run.

Photos of my Apartment!

If I was really organized, I would have written all my blurbs about the other apartments I saw, and then posted these pictures. I could have taken you on a beautiful narrative journey through grim process of looking for a place, culminating in the joy of finding the right one and moving in. But my neither my time management skills nor writing ability is up to that task, so here are the photos. I'll probably keep posting stories from the apartment search as I get around to it. The first image is of the living room, and the later three of my Ikea-ed out bedroom.

As you can see, I've decorated my room a lot like my one back in Seattle (and at Earlham), with favorite photos, postcards, and things found in magazines. If you want to send me something, I'll probably put it up!

Tales From The Apartment Hunt: The Perfect Place For Someone Who Isn't Me

I once saw the movie Transformers and found it completely bewildering. Then I was hit with the realization that absolutely no part of this movie was made with me in mind. Everything that was leaving me cold was the most awesome thing in the world for someone else. One of the apartments I saw was a little bit like that. It was actually a sort of cool place, but not for Clara Berg.

The apartment was in Williamsburg, on the other side of the expressway [the east coast term for freeway, apparently] from all the Bedford centered hubbub. The building was a former toy factory, and much of the interior still looked like an abandoned warehouse. The door to the residential area was reached through a series of concrete hallways and industrial metal doors. The apartment itself had a small upper level and a large lower level. The living room had tons of windows, several couches, and a swing attached to the ceiling. There was one bathroom and six bedrooms, all of which seemed quite small and stuck into odd places throughout the space. The available room had a very low ceiling and the only windows looked out into the living room. In one corner of the living room there was an elevated platform. It was pointed out once as the location of someone’s room, and a second time as the DJ booth when they have parties. They admitted that they had just thrown a pretty serious party last night, and were still recovering. One of the housemates had a recording studio set up in his room, and there was no room for a bed. He explained that he had various places to go and spend the night.

The residents were showing the place in an open-house style, so there were several other prospective roommates milling about. I saw other people’s eyes light up when they saw the space, and they started to aggressively sell their personalities to the roommates (this was one of those situations where everyone interested writes down their name and the current tenants pick their favorite). I asked a few standard questions and made small-talk, but eventually said to myself “who am I kidding? I am not enough of a bohemian for this.” Even if I thought it was a good idea, there was no way that they would pick me. I was sure these hipsters were bloodhounds for prudery and could sniff out my awkwardness from a mile away. I politely declined to put my name down for consideration and headed for the door. Then I had to come back and get directions for finding my way out of the building.

Tales From the Apartment Hunt: Weirdest Landlord Situation

I saw my first potential apartment the day after I arrived. I was still in a confused and exhausted state, so luckily Kate was available to come with me. The ad had caught my eye because it was in my price range and said that all the roommates were grad students. The contact person was very chatty and wanted to give me detailed directions and have me call him when I got off the train. At first I had thought he was one of the roommates, but when we arrived it was clear that he was the landlord. He had Kate and I come into his living room, sit down, and talk a little. He asked me about my grad program and my background, and he in turn told me about himself, how long he has been renting the place, about the neighborhood, and a bit about the spaces in the apartment. Eventually, he decided he was ready to show the room, and took us next-door and upstairs. It was a six-bedroom apartment with two bathrooms, and a relatively small kitchen/living room space. There were two available rooms, and each came furnished with a bed, a desk, a dresser, and small flat screen TV mounted to the wall and wired with cable. There was also a bedroom apartment in the basement that shared the same entrance. There were no rooms available in that area, but he decided to show it to us anyway. Then he took us back into his place to talk some more. When I had a question about something, he took us back in to see some things again. Then we went back to his place and chatted some more. The whole process took about an hour.

The more I thought about it, the more the “reasonable” price started to seem exorbitant. The spaces were small, the commitment was long (1 year), and it was relatively far south in Brooklyn. Kate pointed out that, while it was great for the landlord to only rent to “responsible” grad students, it meant that he was hand picking the renters rather than the roommates having any say about who they wanted to live with. In addition to choosing the roommates, he had also selected all of the furniture, decided to install TVs with cable (something that I didn’t really need or want to pay for), and seemed pretty comfortable just letting himself in to all areas of the building. You got the sense that you would walk into the bathroom one morning and he would be there re-filling the toilet paper and asking you why you use generic brand floss. He described himself as a “hands-off” landlord though, so maybe I should have ignored all the red flags and taken it.

Clara Moves In With A Boy

I finally found a place! Exactly three weeks after the day I arrived in New York, I moved into my new apartment. Kate was a wonderful hostess (as was Myra last weekend), but I was very ready to be settled and spend my free time doing something other than wandering the city seeing rooms. As much as I wanted to spend all of this weekend setting up everything and making the place perfect, I also had to focus on work since my first major assignment is due on Tuesday. So the room is still in a bit of a disarrayed state (and let's be honest: I got so excited about seeing the bottoms of my suitcases again that I sort of started throwing things everywhere). Eventually it will be fit for pictures, but in the meantime here are the basics:

• Located in the southern part of Park Slope, Brooklyn. My room does not face the park, but the apartment is directly across the street from Prospect Park
• In a two bedroom apartment with windows in every room
• One roommate: John. A late 30s gay man who just finished a grad program in photography. I found him via craigslist, and so far he seems to be very nice, easy to live with, and not the sort of person who will murder me in the middle of the night
• John has two cats who will be moving in in November

Now that I have a place, a huge weight has been lifted. I feel like I can actually start to enjoy New York. Also, now that it is all over I can find humor in the apartment process instead of being terribly depressed by it. I plan to write some posts about it soon, but that too is going to wait until after Tuesday (when I give a riveting class presentation about archival cardboard).

Pitching a FIT

FIT is a weird place. I don’t mean that it is a bad school or that I’m questioning my decision to come here—I mean that so far it has sort of been a bizarre ride to be a student here. My program continues to show solid evidence that it is high quality, will teach me a lot of interesting and practical things, and may in fact set me up with the right contacts to find a job. But everything outside my program (ie: everything not encompassed in floor 6 of building E) is fascinatingly strange. Clearly, a big part of it is the fact that I had a liberal arts undergrad education in Indiana, and this is a design school in the middle of New York City. All the buildings are tall, I have to wear my ID badge while wandering around, and “dance team” is one of the only varsity sports. But for some of this stuff, there is no excuse. If was Jerry Seinfeld, I would be saying, “Seriously. What is the deal with FIT?”

• Every student in my program has had some sort of frustration with various offices requiring paperwork. For me this started before I even got there. Remember when five days before I got accepted to the program, they e-mailed to say that they hadn’t received half my applications materials despite having confirmed their arrival months ago? That was fun. This week I spent just about every day calling or visiting health services to try and clear up an issue with my immunization forms. New York requires the form to have a doctor’s stamp, and Washington doctors don’t have stamps. They helpfully suggested that I could get all the shots again. I’ve been advised to “be a New Yorker” and yell at them until I get what I want. As a Seattleite I feel guilty doing it, but it does seem to magically solve problems and make missing papers re-appear.

• If you enjoy people watching, you should come hang out on campus. My pre-conceived notion about the undergrad population was that it would be a bunch of gay boys and artsy females previously known as the out-there individualist at their high school. Much like the delusional Project Runway contestant who is shocked to be eliminated for making a chicken suit, I imagined most of the students carrying that “the world isn’t ready for me” attitude that is adorably obnoxious coming from someone who is 19. To some degree that is true. I’ve seen a lot of “ironic” early 90s ensembles, heads shaved in unexpected places, and perplexing piercings. But there is another FIT type that I wasn’t expecting—the group frequently referred to as “those little FIT girls.” These specimens look like they very well might have been the most popular girls in high school. They are all super thin, have long straight hair, wear tiny cute outfits, are covered in makeup, and carry designer bags. I heard a rumor (92% likely to be an urban myth) that the cafeteria sprays the lettuce in the salad bar with cornstarch so that “all the anorexic girls will get some calories.” The other day I sat next to one that was particularly amazing. I saw this girl with lips that looked suspiciously collagen enhanced, staring off into space, with her mouth partially open as if she wasn’t totally clear on how to close it.

• Now onto my top issue with FIT: THERE ARE NO BATHROOMS AT THIS SCHOOL. As part of living in a civilized world, one expects that when in a tall building, if you ask “where is the bathroom?” the answer should be something resembling “down that hallway and to the right.” The answer should NOT be “oh gosh…let’s see…well I think…is there one on the third floor? Maybe…the 5^th?” I have been in two buildings (one with 6 floors, the other 8) where my inquiry regarding bathrooms has been met with confusion, and then the admission that my best bet is to go to the first floor. And the first floor bathrooms aren’t nice and large with rows of stalls. No, they usually have between two and four stalls, and are a mess because of all the heavy use. Come on, isn’t this America? Doesn’t the Statue of Liberty say “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning for a decent restroom?” If my ancestors wanted to travel long distances to wait in line for a smelly bathroom they would have stayed in Russia.

Train Station II

Before they starting waving handkerchiefs and running down the platform

At the Train Station

With the folks