All my New York apartments
Eleven places I used to call home
Hello! For new readers here, I’m a lawyer and writer based in Anchorage. Before moving to Alaska, I spent most of my life in New York. Allow me to take you on a real estate tour of the spaces I used to inhabit. A walk down literal memory lane, if you will.
Remsen Street. 1988-1992.
Our apartment was on the third floor of a multi-unit building in Brooklyn Heights. My mom was eight months pregnant with me when my parents moved in. They had been living in Milan, where my dad worked for a bank. I was supposed to be born at a hospital in Switzerland because my parents were unsure about the Italian medical system. But my dad got transferred, so. There we were.
My first babysitter had a thick Brooklyn accent. One evening, I sat near the window and pointed to a tree outside. Boy, boy, I said. My dad saw I was pointing at a bird. Oh, he said. Bird, he said. Not boy. The babysitter moved away a few months later. My parents were sad because she’d been good, but I wonder if they were also relieved. It’s nice to be able to understand your child.
I found out later that we’d lived below Sam Sifton, the (future) New York Times food critic. He was in high school and used to throw parties for his St. Ann’s classmates when his parents went out of town. I think my parents called in a noise complaint on him once.
My brother arrived in 1991. I recall us sharing a tiny room and him crying, then me waking up and crying too. Maybe we were jealous Sam Sifton hadn’t invited us to one of his parties, I don’t know.
Schermerhorn Street. 1992-1993.
A three-bedroom apartment on the top two floors of a brownstone, still in Brooklyn Heights. We were there for a year. I remember tickle wars with my dad and brother. I remember locking myself in my room and my dad leaving work in the middle of the day to free me. I remember having the chicken pox, both because of the oatmeal baths and also because my mom tried to get me to infect my brother. I remember when our goldfish died. I remember preferring to watch Barney over Sesame Street, even though I already seemed to know that Barney was the trashier choice.
Garden Place. 1993-2006; 2010; 2013; 2014.
The dream childhood home, a brick row house with a backyard and semi-functional roof. Because I have two decades of memories there, and because this list is about apartments, not houses, I am going to skip it for now.
North 7th Street. 2011-2012.
My first apartment after college, shared with two roommates. We were off of the Bedford L stop in the heart of Williamsburg during the tail end of that neighborhood being cool. It was the first apartment I had in New York on my own, away from my family. The area felt different from where I grew up. Because of that, I could be different, too.
I worked as a paralegal at a law firm in Manhattan. My commute took under 20 minutes. Some of my college friends lived nearby. I joined a kickball league in McCarren Park, and many of the people I met through that league also lived in north Brooklyn.
We went out all the time. I biked everywhere and stayed up late. I drank cold brew. I wandered around and wore whimsical outfits and flirted and went on dates and met so many people and had existential crises about my future. It was a perfect place to play at being a young adult.
There's a meat market down the street
The boys and girls watch each other eat
I lived around the corner from Best Pizza and became a regular there. I lived around the corner from K&M Bar and became somewhat of a regular there, too. I played kickball in McCarren every Sunday and invariably went to the Turkey’s Nest before, during, and after. I went to Good Co and would run into someone I knew each time, like how people say it is on Cheers.
The boys and the girls watch each other eat
When they really just wanna watch each other sleep
None of the high rises on the streets bordering the park existed yet. Neither did the fancy hotels. Williamsburg, though long gentrified, still felt raw, like there was room for anything to happen.
I wandered up to Greenpoint, land of hopeful musicians and Polish groceries. A place where my friend’s tough-looking brother nevertheless got mugged. I read lots of Thought Catalog and similar confessional online writing. I kept blogs and didn’t tell anyone. I downloaded Instagram and began posting snippets of my life.
The show that makes me nostalgic for this time is, predictably, Girls. We all hated it when it came out. Probably because we were living it and didn’t need the reminder of our cringe in real time. I’m happy to hear it’s aging well.
My brother and I shared a car, a silver Volvo station wagon that I would park on the street. There was still easy parking in Williamsburg back then. Every few weeks I would load it up with laundry and drive to my parents. I had no idea how privileged I was.
Jefferson Street. 2012-2013.
The next year, I moved to Bushwick. I had a different set of roommates and was farther from my friends and social life, which still mostly took place in Williamsburg.
Bushwick was where I first thought about being a writer. I took long walks and imagined myself opening a cafe or small bar and somehow also writing novels. I had a view of the Empire State Building from my bedroom window. There was a sense of space, an expansiveness in which I could experiment with more freedom.
I was lonely. I’d created physical distance from my family and friends, which revealed the emotional distance I subconsciously craved. I didn’t know who I was but knew I wanted something different.
I am walking through the city
Like a drunk, but not
With my slip showing a little
Like a drunk, but not
I still worked as a paralegal for the first few months of living there. I applied to law schools and, as soon as I got in somewhere, decided to leave the paralegal job. I spent the rest of the winter traveling, first with my mom in Nepal and then with friends in Thailand. When I returned to New York, my savings had run out and I needed a job for the summer before starting school.
And I am one of your people
But the cars don't stop
And I am one of your people
But the cars don't stop
Although I had put a deposit down at Columbia, I was ambivalent about attending. I landed a gig driving the delivery van for Momofuku Milk Bar, the Williamsburg-based bakery that provides desserts for David Chang’s empire.
It's been a long time since before I've been touched
Now I'm getting touched all the time
And it's only a matter of whom
And it's only a matter of when
It was a dream job. I was 24 years old and just starting to figure out who I was. I got to drive around delivering to coffee shops and restaurant kitchens. I was given free Stumptown coffees, the caffeine from a nitro cold brew surging through my veins as I blasted a mixtape (the van only played cassettes, how cool) while on the 59th street bridge. I even got to cry my way out of a traffic ticket.
An addiction to hands and feet
There's a meat market down the street
The best part was the deal we had with Brooklyn Brewery. A few times a month, I’d load up the van with pies and cookies, bring them to the brewery warehouse, and return with cases of beer. We stored those in the walk-in fridge alongside the discarded cookies. At the end of a shift, it was perfectly acceptable to crack open a beer and take a bag of reject cookies. I brought cookies everywhere. To kickball, to friends’ houses, to my own house for me and my roommates. One of the cookie flavors had cornflakes in it, which justified calling it a breakfast food.
The boys and girls watch each other eat
When they really just wanna watch each other sleep
I wanted to defer law school and keep working at the bakery, but I didn’t. I wasn’t ready to listen to my intuition. Perhaps I needed the legitimacy of law school. Perhaps I needed the legitimacy of an Ivy League education. Whatever the reason, I turned in my baker’s uniform and moved uptown.
They want to watch, to watch each other
Sleep, sleep, sleep
West 120th Street (“The Poinciana”). 2013-2015.
I’ve heard Columbia student housing can be hit or miss, but this apartment was awesome. It was on the top floor—the tenth—of a well-kept building with a doorman and elevators. There were laundry machines in the basement, a first in my adult life.
My room had views looking north across Harlem. The light was gorgeous. The apartment was restful and peaceful and, at least in my second year of law school, once I’d gotten the partying somewhat out of my system, conducive to studying. Sometimes I regret not having stayed in that apartment for my final year.
Brooklyn Avenue. 2015.
Alas, I thought by the time my third year of school rolled around that I was too cool for student housing, so to speak. I moved with one of my friends into a large two-bedroom in Crown Heights.
Crown Heights is far from Columbia. The commute did not go well. My friend was a trooper and found someone else to move in while I completed the rest of the year back uptown.
West 112th Street. 2015-2016.
More student housing. I technically didn’t live there because I was subletting from a classmate under the table. But, well, I did live there. For nearly eight months. It was a sixth floor walkup, which was a free leg workout. There were two pigeons that roosted on the windowsill. At the end of the street was the famed Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
This was a melancholy year. I knew I was moving to Alaska in August for a clerkship. The person I’d been dating broke up with me, and I was lonely. The end of school meant confronting the reality that I still wasn’t sure I wanted to be a lawyer. Everyone was moving on. I was terrified.
West Street. 2016.
The summer after law school, I lived with my parents in their apartment in Battery Park City. I was 28 years old but felt like a teenager. I studied and pouted about having to study and then pouted about how silly it was that I was pouting about having to study.
My parents sold the house on Garden Place two years earlier and were enjoying a life with less space and more views. The apartment was on some ridiculously high floor looking over the Hudson River. I took time lapse videos of thunderstorms as they rolled in.
I was moving to Alaska at the end of August, and my parents were moving to Utah a month or two later. I suppose we all felt a bit transient. I spent part of the summer convincing various friends to hold on to precious objects for me with the assumption that I’d be back in a year. The reality is that my parents ended up taking a bunch of my things with them to Utah. Once again, I did not appreciate my good fortune.
Newel Street. 2018-2019.
I returned to New York after two years away. Everything was different. I was different. I sublet a one-bedroom in Greenpoint intending to find my own place after a few months. But the person I was renting from decided not to move back. Somehow, I agreed to help sell her stuff for her. I thought I was going to stay in the apartment and sign a new lease, but the landlord raised the rent astronomically.
That was a chaotic time. I tried to fall back into old patterns, only to find that the grooves no longer fit. The best part about this apartment is it’s where I was living when I first started group therapy, which possibly saved my life.
It was strange to see how much Greenpoint and Williamsburg had changed in seven years. The high rises had been built. The chain stores had arrived. The dive bars had closed. Was it just that I was older? Hard to tell. At any rate, the dissonance hurt.
Lefferts Place. 2019-2021.
It’s the perfect apartment to write poetry in, my poet friend said upon seeing my Clinton Hill studio.
Fittingly, that is where I first embraced creative writing. I felt at home. I made it my home. My houseplants thrived despite the north-facing windows. It was truly a room with a view.
During COVID, my neighbor figured out how to get onto the roof. We’d sit up there with drinks and snacks and gaze at the skyline. Although I’d had that in Bushwick too, this time felt different. Everything was softer, more gentle. I was starting to know who I was.
This was the hardest apartment to leave. A space that allowed me to see myself. It’s where I adopted Laurie, my cat companion. It’s where I hosted friends, lovers, and family. It’s where I tie-dyed shirts in my tiny bathroom and installed shelves in my tiny kitchen. It’s where I made a home office when my real office shut down during the pandemic.
It’s where I began outlining the novel that I’m in the middle of writing. It’s where I got the offer to join the public defender agency here in Alaska, where I currently work.
I had moved in just as the magnolia tree in the backyard started to bloom. During my final weeks there, I got to watch the flowers one last time. White buds unfolding to pink, a brilliant living cloud until one by one, the petals dropped. The tree became just a tree. We moved on.
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The pull quotes are from the Regina Spektor song “Dance Anthem of the 80s,” linked above.
This was such a beautiful piece 🧡
Loved this, especially as a native New Yorker! You painted such a gorgeous landscape of the city, physically and emotionally.