 | |
|
I lived there with a few college cohorts, because my aunt had an apartment that she left behind when she moved to be close to my dad. The market was soft, so the apartment sat empty until I occupied it post-college. It helped launched my career and those of my friends, because we split the maintenance fee as our rent. We would not have been able to live in the NYC area without it.
This was no hipster haven like Williamsburg pre-gentrification, with cool, arty lofts and warehouse spaces. It stayed an ethnic pocket that was not sophisticated. I was reminded of that every morning, when a car pulled up to the apartment building across the street blaring its' horn. It wasn't just any car noise, it played the opening ditty from "La Cucaracha". Several times. And every morning the windows slammed open, as the neighbors yelled curses at the driver in the car for disturbing their mornings' sleep. Welcome to the 'hood, honey.
Don't get me wrong, I schlepped to my low paying job via the local subway line, the only one in that neighborhood, for an hour each way every day, because the apartment was perfect for us at that time. There were doormen for security, and we were on a high floor. But this was deep in the heart of Brooklyn, not some fancy West Side joint, and we do shit differently here. There's less fake attitude, more noise, less political correctness, and a whole lot of real life.
I remembered it yesterday clearly, when I heard a car zoom down my block blaring the same groovy "La Cucaracha" horn. What did I do? The exact same thing I did then—I went to the window to watch the spectacle. Unlike my Kensington years, no lady stepped out of the building across the street, dressed in a nurse's aide uniform, like they used to wear back in the day. And that was my Consuela moment. What's yours?
