10 Years

A Catalogue of the Apartments I Have Lived in Over the Last Decade in New York City

Before New York, I lived in the suburbs of the Texas panhandle. I lived in my mother’s house from 2000–2006 (for the most part):

It was obviously big. It was absolutley lavish. It was totally comfortable. It was nowhere near being anything urban.

2006 — Woodhaven, Queens

Part 1

When I moved to New York City, I first moved to Woodhaven Queens. That was September 1st 2006.

On a map, Woodhaven is all the way to the right butted up next to Forest Park. But if you’ve never lived in New York, and you’re a naive Texas boy at the ripe age of 22, you don’t know any better. You think Woodhaven Queens is as ‘New York’ as it gets and on the map with no real geographical context, it’s not too far from Manhattan, so why not.

And then you get there. You park your rented minivan with your whole life crammed in the back in front of this yellow sided home where not far the J train screaches and thuds above Jamaica avenue. You excitedly unpack all your things and call this place home for the next grand part of your life. You’re going to be famous. You’re going to be rich. You’re going to have an incredible gaggle of interesting and beautiful friends. You’re going to be a real ‘New Yorker.’

As much as any 22 year old suburban Texan can be a ‘New Yorker’ living out in bumble-fuck Woodhaven.

Part 2

You’ve been living lavishly for two months off savings not over-worrying about the fact that you haven’t found a job yet and how you’ve not really paid rent on time and how everything in New York is diametrically different than everything you once knew. Suddenly, your landlord tells you he and his family are going to move into your apartment, so you and your roommates need to move up one floor to the attic apartment. There the pitch of the roof affects how you stand when you have to pee. It affects your preconceived notions of space and comfort for when you need to shower. And it challenges your notions of what a working livable kitchen really can be.

I had my first New York Thanksgiving in this attic apartment. I cooked my first turkey in that kitchen. On Thanksgiving night I fell asleep while the movie Elf played as my out of town friends laid splayed out on the floor. This was not what I imagined, but still, it was starting to feel like home.

2006 — Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Thanksgiving has passed and my landlord says I can’t keep being late on my rent. He tells me he has a different apartment that’s cheaper and I can pay my already backed up rent back while living in this cheaper place. I say, ‘Okay’ because it adds up and so I move to Crown Heights.

If you ask any ‘Brooklynite’ now, there’s a part of Crown Heights that is the place to be. Franklin Ave between Fulton and Eastern Parkway is the jump off. It’s turned into everything hip and urban chic. Franklin Ave is a street that is lined packed full of cafes and bars and smartly graffiti’d walls.

It wasn’t like that in 2006.

I had heard the term ‘slum’ before in passing. But I had no clue what it really meant. But I soon learned. The building that I moved into was owned by a slum lord. How this translated in the literal sense was that that apartment was cockroach infested. The electricity would go out regularly which would force us to go down to the pharmacy below (barring it wasn’t closed) and ask to be let into the basement, wade through a couple inches of stagnant water, find the fuse box, pray not to get electrocuted by the cocktail of water at our feet and electricity at our fingers, and finally flip the switch. There was no heat and the hot water had a regularity of an octogenarian. And come a true New York winter that February, where I almost cried myself to sleep as my roommate and I were forced to cuddle in a bed in the hopes that our collective warmth would save us from a death of freezing, I then knew what a slum truly was.

2007 — BedStuy, Brooklyn

The previous Crown Heights slum is seized by the local government. The slum lord has been supposedly placed behind bars. My roommates decide New York isn’t for them, so they leave and I am left lost alone and desperate to find somewhere to live.

What was previously said about Crown Heights, can be said about BedStuy. It’s poppin now. Cool kids and great bars and there’s a scene in BedStuy. But again, that wasn’t the case in 2007. I found a place that was renting rooms by the week. Again I was desperate, and it seemed like the right solution. So I moved.

What I didn’t know is that a week by week place listed on Craiglist at a very ‘affordable’ price means that the place quite possibly could be a sort of half-way-house. Again my naive self didnt’ know. But soon, after I see a gun or two in some fellow housemates’ hands, and hear a lot of over the top screaming followed by top volume love-making-moaning late into the early mornings, I quickly learned.

I lived in that apartment for only three weeks.

2007 — Jackson Heights, Queens

I’m desperate again so I reach back to the only thing I know. I ask my previous landlord and he says he has a place in Jackson Heights. He says he’ll give me a good deal and he’ll forgive the owed rent. He says that Jackson Heights is a cultural hub and I’ll feel at home because I’m Brown. He says the room is small but, he says I’ll be comfortable there.

The room was a sunroom-porch that was made into my makeshift bedroom at the back of the apartment. It was all windows and looked out onto the backyard and the Queens’ stars, so in the summer it was exceptionally hot and in the winter it was frigidly cold.

But I learned to love it. Here in Queens without the bustle and compaction of Brooklyn, I found some space. Space to cook more and try the diversity of foods afforded by the diversity that is Jack Heights. Space to try running because I had no friends or no real life so I had nothing to lose. Space to try reading because the 53rd Street library is right off the E train and they also have free internet there.

I lived in this apartment for a little over a year. It became a great home for me. I grew up, or at least grew more into my New York identity in that apartment.

But then I decided, I wanted back into Brooklyn.

2008 — Bushwick, Brooklyn

I have a small bunch of friends now, but they mostly all live in Brooklyn. I hear about the parties. I make it to the bars. But I always have to go home back to Queens. And god forbid I go out with a beautiful girl who lives in BedStuy, it takes me a good couple hours to get back home to Jack Heights.

So with a good friend and a random customer who once came into the store I worked at then, we all moved to Bushwick. Now this was Bushwick before Bushwick became Bushwick. This was the Bushwick of warehouses and Puerto Rican flags and roosters in your neighbor’s backyard and the plexi-glass partition at the local Chinese spot. This is the Bushwick where your girl, if she wants to stay at yours, has to run from the train to your apartment in fear for her safety. This is the Bushwick where the inside of your apartment had been flipped with modern lighting and custom cabinetry and handsome bathroom fixtures, but just outside, the real Bushwick is alight with quite the contrary.

And though all the previously mentioned descriptions make that Bushwick seem a bit effrontery or not ideal, it was great. The reason I moved back was to be a part that communal youthful renaissance that was Brooklyn. And even though I was in a ‘rougher’ part of Bushwick, that’s where the aforementioned renaissance would take place.

And honestly, most nights I just stayed at my girlfriend’s place.

2009 — BedStuy

My girlfriend and I walk into the apartment with the building’s manager. There’s another possible tenant there seeing the apartment as well. We then walk separately and investigate. New appliances in the kitchen. A comfortably sized master bedroom. A second room which we could rent out or just store all our junk. There’s laundry in the basement and this is before laundry in the basement becomes a normal New York thing. My girlfriend looks at me while the manager is talking to the other possible tenant and she says, ‘This one. I want this one.’

So we move in in a few weeks. It’s an early Sunday morning. We load a Uhaul van with all of our collective things. With the help of a friend we unload and then unpack. We then drive over to Ikea and spend a healthy sum of money on new apartment things — a new bed, shower curtains, shiny new kitchen utensils. We then drive back and repeat. By this time it’s late afternoon and we set up the bed, I change out a light fixture. We clean up after the moving mess. An hour or two later, friends stream in and there and then we have our housewarming.

This was when BedStuy was starting to take off and we were finally a part of it. Whether it was seeing all the new restaurants and shops and seeing the diversity of the streets dramatically change, we knew we had found our home. We constantly had friends staying with us. We hosted parties and thanksgivings.

Then, we had a horrible break up that ended ‘us.’

I stayed at the apartment and then endured what it means to be a single heartbroken hip Brooklyn boy. As cliche as that all sounds, I was that living, breathing, bad facial hair wearing cliche. And both in the moment and now retrospectively, I needed it. It was hard and heartbreaking and at times the anxiety and sadness turned alcoholism overtook me and any potential for good spirits. But I learned things, about how there are things I can’t control, about how to think and be better, and about how to forgive myeslf and move on.

2013–2015 — Europe

To be a real New Yorker, there has to be a point where you say ‘fuck this’ and go do something else somewhere else for awhile. For me, that was Europe. You could say I wasn’t living in New York then, but I was still paying taxes in New York and I came back occasionally and slept on friends’ couches and floors. So I’m going to play that hand of technicalities and say I still ‘lived’ in New York.

2015 — Sunset Park

I’m back in the States and not thrilled about it. One thing that you know when you leave New York — especially at this time in its history with its current financial climate — is that if you give up a good apartment deal, you’re pretty much fucking yourself. So upon coming back to New York, where BedStuy and Crown Heights used to be affordable to broke struggling urbanites, those neighborhoods have broken through their glass ceilings and become high in demand. Which therefore prices me out upon my return.

I’m forced to jump onto the D train and commute south to Sunset Park. Sunset Park has two very distinct municipalities. There’s the Latino side. Then there’s the East Asian side. So similarly to Jack Heights, I am amidst a melting pot of tastes and culture, but it isn’t where I want to be. And coupled with my grumpiness about not being back in Europe, it turns into a not so good look.

I ate terribly. Drank too much. Complained way too much. Went off on extended self-righteous tirades at most (if not all) of my friends. I developed some sort of breathing issue that curbed me from any sort of running routine. I was working two jobs that I wasn’t fond of. And when I’d come home on the less than reliable D train, I was nowhere near thankful for being back in the city I once loved.

2016 — Lefferts Gardens

I’m not in Sunset Park anymore. Rather I’m on the other side of Prospect Park. The neighborhood is less culturally dynamic, but it’s comfortable and comes with a certain sense of familiarity. I live with my girlfriend (the same one as before) and we’ve grown up and this apartment, this home that we’re always building together, is the manifestation of that process. We have an evil cat that I’m not the biggest fan of, but she teaches me thing like patience and kindness and that not everything will be perfect and that that’s okay. We have friends over regularly whether it be for a book club meeting or a themed-party or just because. I’ve helped start a business out of this apartment and as much possible, I work here to make that business a living breathing future. And this apartment is my home now just as New York has come to be.

It’s been ten years now. There’s no happy ending here or convenient moral to the story. I can’t wrap it up nicely in a bow because I’m still living it. All this is is an effort to remember. To document and archive and hold onto the memories and the images of the places that I call or called home in the city I’ve called home for the last decade.

I’m sure this won’t be the last apartment. And I’m sure this won’t be the last home. But I think for me, coming from where I came from to growing what I’ve grown, I can say I’m proud and grateful for the last decade. It hasn’t been perfect. It’s been nowhere near ideal. But neither has New York. And that’s why it fits and why I’m glad to call it home.