I love my neighborhood

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I am completely enamored with the neighborhood into which I've moved. A true mix of - yes, the rumors are true - hipsters looking effortlessly chic in what are surely incredibly expensive clothes, thin and waif-like as they suck down their coffee and dangle their cigarettes from their lips, sauntering from coffee shop to subway, yammering on their phones. Mixing elbows with the kids born and raised in Brooklyn, children of Polish and Italian immigrants mostly, also sucking down coffee and smoking, but with tougher-looking exteriors, eyes with more of a smile in them, Brooklyn accents thick and heavy. There are children clutching their parents' hands as they dash up the stairs from the subway to get to the numerous elementary schools clustered throughout the houses and mom-and-pop shops. And there are lifers, the parents and grandparents of the born-and-raised Brooklynites, the men and women who have watched this neighborhood grow and change for years. Speaking to each other in Italian, in Polish, surely discussing children, neighbors, friends of the families, shaking their heads at the latest girlfriends and boyfriends, the things adults all over the world discuss with their peers.

I love that I have a sushi restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a burrito joint, an ice cream stop, a myriad of bodegas, a deli all within close, close walking distance to my house. I love that further down there is authentic Italian food, a Vietnamese restaurant, Chinese food. And that there is a store selling monuments for your Catholic deceased, headstones for your loved ones, that there is a dentist and a physician within two blocks of each other, where probably only the lifers get their dental and medical needs met. I love that I have found a little neighborhood that still has shops open late after a long day, but that also has families and histories and space and peace and quiet. I am so happy with my change. I think I had needed it for awhile. It's truly giving me a new lease on New York life.