First Day in Brooklyn

On September 1, 2007, Jenn and I started dating. Exactly three years later we spent our first day in New York City. When I woke up in the morning, I looked out the hotel window and all I could see were old buildings. Some were well kept and some were in need of renovation or even demolition. As I took in my surroundings, I saw the Statue of Liberty in the distance and it brought a smile to my face.

Our first day plan was to scout neighborhoods in search of an apartment, so that's what we did. It also gave me a chance to get accustomed to driving in the city because Jenn wants no part of that. Driving in the city reminded me of driving in the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area, only more intense. It seems that many blinkers are out of order, but the horns work just fine.

We parked the car in a neighborhood where we were going to be viewing an apartment the next day. We walked around to check out the housing, stores and overall atmosphere. The houses are lined up with no spaces in between which means nobody has any front yards. Many folks sat on their front steps and there was foot traffic on every block. Most shops were small and specialized and we went through a few to gauge prices on products we might buy. Everything is a little more expensive, but there are also many stores that sell every day items fairly cheap due to the vast amount of competition in New York City. One price I did notice that I could use for comparison is cigarettes. Since I used to smoke, I tend to notice cigarette prices. In Manhattan, Kansas a pack of Marlboros hover around $5. In Brooklyn, they were $11.50. Now I expected to walk around and not see many people smoking, but I see smokers everywhere. They are a dedicated bunch.

We found a gas station and bought a detailed atlas of the city so we could find our way around. With nowhere in particular to go, I drove around the streets of Brooklyn comparing neighborhoods based on the knowledge I had from apartment hunting online. After a bit, we figured out that we could drive to Coney Island, which is the sight of the famous Boardwalk and home of the world's oldest Ferris wheel at 90 years old. As I stood watching the Ferris wheel, I began to imagine it back in the Roaring Twenties when it was built; how amazing it would have been to be one of the first to ride such a thing.



The air was humid and the beach was full. Children and adults swam in the Atlantic Ocean as far as our eyes could see.



We located a pier and walked out onto it. As we were walking by, teenagers avoided the no diving signs and jumped off the pier into the water below one after another. For a second I wished I had bought swim trunks and perhaps was a little younger.





As the sun was setting, we headed back to the hotel since we needed to do laundry. We found a wholesale produce store that sells produce cheaper and fresher than we could ever expect in Kansas. That was a certain blessing to us. Then we walked from the hotel a few blocks to a local laundromat. This will not be a fun thing to do, but on the way back we stopped at Brooklyn's Finest Pizza and ordered a pizza to go. I had heard great things about New York pizza so we thought we would give it a shot on the first day. It was tasty. We went to bed full and exhausted awaiting our next day which includes a trip to Jenn's school and apartment searching.