Full-on changes

Moving

Things change a lot in New York. We now have a new apartment where Franklin Avenue meets Fulton in Brooklyn. It's slightly further out than our old digs in Ft. Greene, but the rent is cheaper.

Kitty and I live in the basement of a brownstone on a small street called Lefferts Place. Nestled between the mayhem of Fulton Street and the car detailing shops on Atlantic, Lefferts is a quiet, tree-lined street. Families hang out on the stoops and slowly you can see the houses are getting repaired one-by one.


A showdown at high noon.

At the corner of Fulton and Franklin, a showdown is going on. On one corner, Crown Fried Halal Chicken and on the other, Popeye's Chicken. Both serve their chicken from behind bullet-proof glass. The best fried chicken is served from behind bullet-proof glass. Popeye's has the consistency of a chain, but it costs more. Crown (a local chain) is much less expensive and in addition to chicken, they serve beef patties, pizza, burgers, gyros, fries (which are delicious), ice cream and popcorn shrimp. You can guess which one we go to.

New sounds

When once we listened to children playing on the playground, we now hear the sound of the mosque, calling the faithful to daily prayers. It's an amplified recording of a man singing and on days when I'm around to hear it, the music reflects our place as outsiders in this neighborhood. For the first time, we are racially a minority, even though we are living with people who are in the same economic level as us.

Sweet Dreams.

As we turned out the light to go to bed, Kitty said, "It's stuffy in here. Would you open the window?" I happily oblige only to hear the sound of a car running at about 9,000 rpm. "What the... " I say. Our bedroom is in the back of the brownstone and it opens out onto the backyard. There is no street there. So what is the car doing?

The next day, I get home late and two men are walking towards the apartment. Our landlord, Vicky, is standing at the door in her robe and the men ask if they can come into our apartment. It turns out that they are from the State Environmental Protection Agency. Everyone on our street is complaining because one of our neighbors has neglected to pay their power bill. Instead, they installed a gas generator in the back. It's late, the guys are tired and they look sort of defeated as they go into the bedroom and pull out some sort of sound measuring device and roll their eyes when they see the reading on the meter. "Yep, it's a violation," says one.

"So, what happens next?" I replied.

"Well, we cite them again, cite the landlord and hopefully in nine months they will be evicted along with the generator. They've already been cited three times."

It's good to know that the city of New York is on our side!