Brooklyn Streets

You may have read about the screen Alicia and I found out on the streets a few weeks back. Well, that was a rare gem. It's not all great stuff. Here's a different kind of free bonus you can find on the sidewalks of Brooklyn:

Screen off the street

Alicia and I have learned to keep our eyes open while walking around the city. Especially in Brooklyn. Especially the night before the trash goes out. Here's why:



We found this! It's not broken, dirty, or punctured. It was just sitting on the curb in a big cardboard box. It was a pain in the butt walking it back, but we got a free screen out of it.

It even has double joints, so it can bend in any direction (Bonus points for spotting the cat):



Okay, maybe only 1 bonus point. We haven't figured out what to do with it, but it's too cool to throw away. It's folded up and leaning against a wall for now. Any ideas?

Damages films on our street

Just going through some of my pictures from Fall 2009. Back in November, the FX show "Damages" filmed a few scenes in front of our building. They posted flyers all over the street two days prior to filming, then began to park trucks everywhere. I didn't see anyone famous walking by the apartment, but there were signs pointing to catering, trailers and principle photography. It was a cool insight into how a show is made (there were a lot of people!).

Here's some pictures I took from my roof:

Brooklyn Comic

Was reading a local paper yesterday and I came across a great comic about living in Brooklyn. Click through to go see it. I couldn't get it to display correctly on my blog.

Click here!

It's by local cartoonist Julia Wertz and is almost exactly how I feel about living in Brooklyn. Just thought I'd share.

Backyard at Night

Alicia and I have put a lot of work into our garden. I'm sure you've read about it on her blog and I plan on including more updates over the summer. For now, here's some pictures of our garden at night.

---

This here's one of the solar lamps we've lined the garden with. They were on sale at our local hardware store, though I think the rechargeable batteries need replacing.

---

Here's an overexposed photo of our view at night. At the bottom, you can see Leela, but more about her later!

---

Here's a backlit photo of Alicia. I no longer have the string of blue lights hanging, but didn't it look cool?

---

To finish it off, here's me!

Backyard Update

Well, my Zinnias are huge. The big news is the flowers are finally coming in. Above, you can see the first bud that will be flowering soon. Here's a shot of the garden to give you some perspective:



Yeah, they are huge. I didn't realize it when I planted Zinnias. I'm not much of a flower guy. My biggest regret is they kinda look like the weeds that surround the garden. Oh well!

Otherwise, things are good back there. Alicia and I go about once a week and enjoy the outdoors, and I feed the cat (Oreo) about every other day. Clearly, she's got another owner, as she doesn't even come by every night.



For the record, the food is on the ground because I can't pour the food without Oreo putting her head in the path of the bowl. I've gotten to the point of just pouring and letting the food land wherever. Of course, Oreo is too good to eat the food of the ground. Bah.



The ivy has doubled in size. In July, I felt stupid because the ivy just wasn't climbing up the poles I bought. Now I feel stupid because the poles will be too short.



Construction has added another full story. Alicia found the permits online and found out that the building should go up six stories. Two down, four to go I guess. It's loud about once every two weeks when they are putting the huge beams up. But now you can't even access the construction site from our backyard, which has significantly quieted down the construction. Early May, we woke up every morning to the sound of construction workers on the other side of our bedroom window. Good riddance.



The tree directly above our backyard is still my favorite, but this one has really started to look gorgeous. Ample rain and sunshine has turned the leaves into a great color, especially when back lit by a cloudy white sky.

And that's the news from Lake Wobego... er, um, the news from our back yard.

Apartment Shuffle

I've been living in my apartment in Brooklyn for over a year. Which is a lot, considering I've moved four times in the past five years. Outside my time back home in Eden Prairie, the longest tenure I've had in an apartment is one year 10 months, give or take (this was when I broke up with my ex and was essentially living with Alicia in her place).

So Alicia and I starting thinking about this place. We are paying $1600 a month, which is a lot, but much cheaper than Manhattan. Was it a good deal? Should we stay another year? Is there a better neighborhood to move to?

With those questions in mind, Alicia and I had fun surfing the internet looking at apartments in New York. Part of the fun was the thought of actually moving, part came from verifying whether we had a good apartment.

At first, we thought we were getting screwed. I got out the tape measure and discovered our apartment is somewhere between 450 - 550 square feet. Which is small, compared to what other apartments had. This was amplified by our feelings of claustrophobia, brought on by all of our stuff. Sure, we've lived with it for a year, but it took a year to realize we had a very full apartment. There wasn't much open floor space, most walls were covered with shelves, and our living room really felt cramped. Suddenly, having 700 square feet sounded really appealing.

The listings on Craigslist.org and others indicated that most one - two bedroom apartments in the 700 square feet range were about what we were paying, $1600-1800 a month. Moving was sounding better and better.

But I had to see the apartments. I managed to check out two open houses. The first was $1700 a month in a nicer building just four blocks away from where we are now. The problem was the space was in very awkward places. There were no right angles in the apartment and it turned out (by my estimate) to be nowhere near 700sqft as advertised. Really, it felt like there was no advantage over this place. It was almost equal. Not worth moving for.

Next, Alicia and I tried a step up in price ($1800 a month) for bigger (actually 700 sqft), but in a worse neighborhood (about two subway stops deeper into Brooklyn). We arrive at a newly built building that was originally meant to be condos until the real estate market took a turn for the worse. The agent brought us to this incredible apartment with a deck, huge windows, a nice stainless steel fridge, beautiful bathroom, full kitchen, . . . I could go on. So, what's the catch?

It's the model, and it is $2200 a month. We go down the hall to see the $1800 a month apartment. Still feels like the same size as our apartment. The kitchen is smaller, there's no deck, and there's no decent light. It just isn't worth taking the trouble to move into. Plus, $200 more a month? No thanks.

The implications of moving were becoming clear. For our price range, we weren't getting any improvement. And it would certainly be more expensive every month. But that model apartment, Wow. It was nice. We've come to the agreement that we should hold out on moving until we can step up to that level.

So Alicia and I start looking at our apartment and tried to determine what we could fix. As some background, when we moved here over a year ago, we were very excited. We spent two or three months planning the layout of this apartment. Every piece of furniture was in its ideal spot. But still, everything felt cramped. If only we had more storage. . .

Here's our solution. We went to the new Brooklyn Ikea and purchased two "Wardrobes" to act as a closet. These huge monoliths hold our clothing, freeing up both closets to be used for other things. They are from the Hopen line, which matches the dresser you see to the right, my bed and my bed side table. I love the frosted glass!

I won't kid you, these were rather expensive. Not four figures, or even close. But their price is justified in my mind when I consider how much moving costs alone would be. And if Alicia and I live in this apartment for another year at $1600/month instead of somewhere else at $1800/month, we've just saved $2400.

But they've worked. The space we have taken up in the bedroom is now free in the rest of the apartment. What used to look like Alicia's closet now looks like this:

We've got all of our food, most of our cleaning supplies, and lots of other junk in there. That is all junk that used to sit in our living room. Now, it is tucked away in our newly acquired storage space.

The most startling shuffle in the apartment that resulted from the Ikea wardrobes is the lovesac's new home:

I know what you're thinking: "Aren't you shunning it??" The short answer is yes. I've had the Lovesac for four years now. It is the most comfortable piece of furniture I own. This apartment just doesn't have the space for it in the living room. Heck, it took up 1/4th of the floor space! It has it's own little corner now that I can still sit on it to read, and it stays fluffed almost all the time. And by shoving it back there, look at the living room now:

What is hard to convey is the floor space. This room doesn't heat up as much anymore. It feels wide open and comfortable. It has made this apartment feel half as cramped as it used to feel. Heck, I can even use my orange chair now.

The configuration you see above isn't permanent. Alicia is planning on shuffling the desks around after the bar exam (she's done Wednesday, 7/30!).

The best part is that the apartment now feels fresh. I'd be happy living here for another year, and that will save us money.

Renegade Craft Fair

Going back just over a week, Alicia and I hit up a festival in our neighborhood called the Renegade Craft Fair. Taking place in McCarren Pool, an old empty pool, the fair features craft sellers from around the area. We're talking a lot of knit items, a lot of art, a lot of printing press stuff, and tons of non-fancy jewelery.

Alicia and I attended last year, and I wasn't very impressed. It was a lot of over priced knit items, almost entirely geared for women. Plus, it was very sunny last year, so sun burns commenced.

This year was different! It was packed, a lot of variety, and while there was a lot of female-centric items, there was also hipster paraphernalia. Alicia got to see several printing shops that she had looked at online previously when checking out wedding invitations, and I got to be tempted into purchasing two items.

The first is kinda ugly. But fantastic. I can't help how much I like it. Pictured here, it's a mug with some strange brown glaze and about twenty steel studs sticking out to act like a handle. I still don't know why it appeals to me so much, but it does. I drank coffee out of it the next day, but it is currently serving as a pencil cup. The steel studs aren't very comfortable to hold, but it's necessary to avoid burning your hand.

My second purchase is a new bag. I've been shopping for a new bag for quite some time now. I've got my giant Laptop bag, a big and shapeless Brooklyn Industries bag for when I'm schlepping a lot of things. There's my bag from Office Depot back in Duluth that I even took to Italy. All these bags have a good reason for them, but I was missing a small bag to just hold a few items if I'm not going out to carry much (no groceries, just maybe taking a two books to study at a coffee shop).

One problem I've encountered is that it seems the size of bag I was looking for has bordered on being a purse. Alicia frequently turned down several other bags I liked because they were too much like a purse.

Enter this bag. It's bigger than a purse, designed specifically to go over and around your left shoulder, and it is made using old tire rubber on the outside (in stripes) so it must be manly. The inside is simple, but big enough to carry my math books. It's great! Outside my trip to Ikea (where I wanted a big bag to carry Ikea swag), I've used it every chance I get. It has a great adjustable strap for keeping it squarely on my back, and it seems pretty high quality. Plus, it's basically one of a kind. The woman who made it doesn't really have a store, only a website (which I can't seem to remember). So I won't be passing people on the street with my identical bag. That isn't a huge selling point, but it makes my bag feel special. I guess I'm a sucker some times.

Ikea Brooklyn

On Wednesday, June 18th, Alicia and I braved the early morning to get to the grand opening of Ikea in Brooklyn.

We got on the subway at around 6:30, taking the G train to its last stop. The Ikea is on the shore, about ten blocks south of the subway station. When the store is open, it has a shuttle bus running every 15 minutes, but because it was 7:10 in the morning (Ikea opened at 9am), we had to hike it. We got a little lost, but that gave us a tour of the neighborhood.

We finally arrived at Ikea around 7:45am. It was a circus. Literally. There were clowns, a band playing, even a carnival game where you hit the sledge hammer against the lever and try to make a little ball hit the bell at the top. I won a little finger puppet dragon. Here's the band playing next to some Ikea Flags on the Jumbotron set up.

At about 8:30, they set up a podium and some grand opening speeches were made. There was one by the Brooklyn Borough president, one by a New York City Councilwoman, and two or three Ikea executives. In Swedish tradition, instead of cutting a ribbon, they sawed a Log:

Here's a picture of a cool truck that was driving around that was basically a living room on wheels (the text on the top says, "See what $1,365 can do for a l:

Finally, at about 9am, the line started moving. I would estimate there were a few hundred people in front of us, but it was moving fast. As we entered, we were given golden envelopes with prizes inside. Alicia and I both received a coupon for a free frozen yogurt, but we could have gotten as much as $250.

The strangest (and coolest) part of the whole day was actually going up the escalators into the Ikea Showrooms. There was a large crowd of Ikea workers cheering:

It really made me feel like I had done something cool, even if I was just going into Ikea. It was crazy.

But the store was great. Ikea had put a lot of attention into making it look great. Here's one example:

They actually went through and made all the clocks have the correct time. Here's two other bizarre photos, one of very neatly folded yellow Ikea bags, one of the never been used carts all neatly waiting customers:

Surprisingly, it didn't feel very crowded. The store is just that big. The only other Ikea I've been to is the Twin Cities Ikea and I'd estimate that Brooklyn Ikea is about half as large. This is based on the size of every department. The showrooms just held more. The layout was almost the same. The warehouse section at the end was nearly identical. My only complaint about the other shoppers is that no one was actually following the arrows around the showrooms. They were zig zagging through the shortcuts, and it made it a bit confusing for Alicia and I to gawk at the pretty setups.

Shopping wise, I wanted a new desk chair to replace my previous $35 dollar Ikea chair. It had lasted about 2 years, but when I leaned back, the top would fall off the chair legs. The replacement I picked has a back, and only cost me $30. So it's been great thus far.

My favorite purchase has been a mortar & pestle. Its heavy, made of nice stone (marble I think?), and I've played with it almost every day. I keep crushing Altoids, but today I crushed some sugar that had gotten rock-like because it got wet and dried:

The worst and creepiest thing we bought was this Cheese and Roe spread from the grocery section. Check out the package:

It is just gross. At first, it has a pleasant cheese flavor. But then the roe hits. It tastes like gross fish, and doesn't go away. I had to quickly find something else to eat to make it go away.

But it was a great experience. There was a lot of new Ikea stuff to see, and I will probably never see such a clean Ikea in my life. Plus, we got free stuff while waiting in line:

We also got a pen and a tape measure, not pictured. The yellow thing at the bottom with the Ikea logo is a beach ball that I gave to the little girl next door. She's always bugging me as I come and go, but I still thought I'd be nice. Plus, what was Alicia and I going to do with a beach ball?

What's sad is that I'm already planning what I want the next time I go. I'm addicted to Ikea. Now that it is just a subway ride away, I might just have a problem.