Let me tell you about Ditmas Park.
Ditmas Park is the neighborhood where Daniel and I are blessed to be currently living. Sometimes when I think about all of the different places in Brooklyn where we could have ended up, a rush of thankfulness just washes over me.
I could go on, but you get it. It's beautiful. It's hip. It's got delicious french toast. You're sold.
We were too when we first arrived here. As I mentioned in a previous entry, Daniel and I have been subleasing an apartment in this area. We've got three roommates (and by roommates, I mean cats) that live with us, and they are a blast. It's a really great situation.
When we walk out of the apartment building, we are steps away from the main road: Cortelyou Road, which looks like this:
It's full of bodegas, coffee shops, amazing restaurants, organic groceries (not to mention a super successful food coop). As I write this, I am currently sitting at my favorite coffee shop, Qathra, sipping on a chai tea latte and feeling pretty self-assured in my perceived hipness.
The neighborhood is really relaxed, full of really interesting people and families. I would post pictures of the thousands of impressively adorable babies I see every day, but Daniel doesn't allow me to take pictures of other peoples' kids because he claims it's "creepy and off-putting". You can see how his tyrannical reign over this relationship has some consequences.
Ditmas Park is also central to a ton of incredible places. It's a short train ride to:
PROSPECT PARK
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| Grand Army Plaza |
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| Relaxing my life away |
THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM
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| Believe it or not, this is a coffin. |
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not to mention, a little place called MANHATTAN
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WE LOVE DITMAS PARK...almost as much as these people.
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| I don't know these people, but I'd like to. |
Not that I am trying to brag (by the way, did I mention that Tina Fey and Paul Rudd were shooting a movie down the street from me the other day?). I am just daily floored that I get to live here.
This summer, I have started on the path to becoming a New Yorker. I don't know how I officially become one. According to How I Met Your Mother, you're a real New Yorker when you've:
1. Seen Woody Allen (Not yet. Where does he hang out? I have so many things to tell him!)
2. Stolen a cab from someone who needs it more than you do (I have a problem with this one because I ride the subway, and I think most of us do.)
3. Cried on the subway and not given a damn (Check.)
4. Killed a cockroach with your bare hands (How about bare feet?)
So by this list's standards, I am sort of halfway there, which is pretty good for just a few months of actually living here. Something I have heard from a lot of locals is that you can tell you are a New Yorker when you go back and forth between loving the city and hating it.
Boy, do I get that. There are days when I am walking around Manhattan and I am taking in all of the sights and I just feel like that girl from That Girl.
Then there are days when I get stepped on, or it rains, or I eat something weird, or I get yelled at and I just think to myself, That Girl must have been on crack.
But whenever I feel like that, which is really very seldom, Ditmas Park is so comforting. When we were planning to move here from Texas, my fear was always that I would have nowhere to escape to when the city became a little too much. Now I can safely say that my neighborhood is my escape.
We signed a two-year lease the other day. Let's do this, Ditmas Park.
