There have been many challenges in living in our apartment on Sackett St these past three years. It's a top floor walk-up. We have no yard. The living room doesn't get a lot of light. The kitchen looks like it was installed sometime during the Reagan Administration. Shall I continue?
But perhaps the biggest downer of the whole affair has been the layout of the place. They list the apartment at around 1100 square feet, which I think is a slight exaggeration on the part of some shady brokers, but let's just say it is not small. The rooms are big and square and comfortable. The only snag is that our bedroom and the 2nd bedroom we use as an office face Sackett Street. They get a good amount of light. But sadly, our living room is tucked away facing the backyard (that is exclusively used by Apt. 1L). It is quite but gets basically no light. It's not just my lack of green thumb: our apartment is unsuitable to sustain plant life.
The bedroom isn't so bad (if you discount the fact that I took this photo with my iPhone) :
we've got thick velvet curtains and dark roman shades that do well to block the light, and we're early risers, so it's not such a drag.
But the office. Oh, sad office.
The only logical place to put our desks, considering the space required for three sets of bookcases (which I won't show on principle!) to house the books Will would surely die without, is butting up against the windows.
Now Sackett Street is one of the few streets in Carroll Gardens that has a bridge over the BQE at Hicks Street, so we get a LOT of truck traffic. It also used to be a bus route, until that recently got cut.
Long story short, IT'S NOISY IN OUR HOUSE! Actually, it's noisy just outside our house, which is not helpful when my work involves audio recording. Now granted, I know it's dumb to have my desk next to the window, but it's a geographical necessity. And I have some ambient sound blockers and whatnot, but it's not easy.
Especially when one of our neighbors has a leaf blower fetish.
Daily. Multiple times per day. In any weather! (please note: rain in video. Also, turn the sound up-- even with windows closed and the fact that he's three stories down and across the street it's that loud.) Will is convinced that the guy is in a loveless marriage and this is his only escape from the kvetching of his awful wife. I have never seen a wife. All I know is that for the better part of three years, I've marveled as I've watched this man blow a napkin into the street. I don't ever think I've ever seen that gas-guzzling machine used on actual leaves, but he blows winter, summer and spring in addition to fall (when there are actual leaves on the ground). And it blows my ever-lovin' mind.
WHY, LEAF BLOWER MAN?! WHYYYYYY!!!???
All I know is, he is hands down the thing I will miss the LEAST about this apartment. The blower man across the street. (that and whoever plays the flute at 3pm...)
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