January 25, 2008

The Slope

I have pretty much decided that I live in the coolest neighborhood in all of New York City. Forget Greenwich Village, The Lower East Side or anywhere in Manhattan for that matter...Brooklyn, and more specifically, Park Slope is where it's at! Okay, so maybe I wouldn't turn down a super sweet loft apartment in the East Village if it didn't cost five million dollars a month (actually more like $5,ooo/month in reality, but it may as well be $5M since it is way out of my budget)...but I can honestly say that I'm not sure I could be much happier anywhere else than where I live now.

Park Slope is located in the western section of Brooklyn and is just south of Williamsburg. The closest subway stop to my place is only one stop off of Manhattan so it takes anywhere from ten to forty minutes to get anywhere I could ever want to go in the city. My work commute to midtown Manhattan takes almost exactly 25min. Peace of cake. The only downfall in regards to transportation is that some lame-o taxi drivers refuse to go over the bridge to Brooklyn and tell you to get out when they hear that's where you're going. It's against the law for them to turn someone down so I have made a hobby of arguing with the jerks when necessary.

The Slope (as us trendy folk like to call it) is a community with a lot of young artistic/musician types (dare I say hipsters?) as well as young families that live the historic brownstones lining the east to west streets of the neighborhood. It is named after the fact that it is the area located on the west slope of Prospect Park; which I would argue is as nice a place as Central Park in Manhattan. The two main avenues, 5th and 7th are packed full of charming restaurants and cafes as well as the best second-hand shopping any bargain hunter could ask for. These places, along with the plethora of chill bars and concert venues make Park Slope a hard place to ever leave. In fact, most weekends, Anna (my roomie) and I don't.

I continue to find more and more cool places and more and more reasons to love where I live. Here are three of them:

1. The Chocolate Room - Super cool cafe with only chocolate on the menu! Yeah, I won't tell you how many of their famous chocolate sundaes I have consumed in the past few months.

2. Gorilla Coffee- Voted best coffee in all of New York City, and is less than two blocks from my front door. Yummy baked goods too. Hotspot to see celebrity regulars including Maggie Gyllenhaal.

3. Beacon's Closet- My fav second hand shop. I've been getting more and more into wearing vintage these days.

Want to come visit???

2 comments:

Liz said...

I agree with all three choices but especially The Chocolate Room!!! When I visited- walking into there was so wonderful- smelling the chocolate was amazing! What a treat- can't wait to go back!! There are amazing restaurants there too like you mentioned. My favorite was Miriam (sp?). Park Slope is a great area. Perfect for you and Anna! Love-Mom

jamie said...

I'll come visit! What do you say, uh... next week?! Yay!! Looks like I'm going to have to spend some extra time at the gym this week preparing for The Chocolate Room. Uh oh.