OTAS, you found it

So I’ve finally gotten a taste of what it’s like to live out here in Brooklyn. In my Manhattan days the components of my life were like one seamless, living, breathing thing. Out here in Brooklyn, they have shattered into pieces. Where I used to roll out of bed, hop in the shower, then shoehorn myself onto a rackety subway for a few minutes before getting to work, I now get up a 6, and read a good 30 pages of “The Grapes of Wrath” on a luxurious express bus before getting to my desk. Though I used to sweat out a workout on a tread mill right by home, I now go for a jog along the harbor and have a spectacular view of the Verrazano Bridge and the ships coming in from their long Atlantic Journeys. And though I used to hang out with colleagues/friends and not worry about how much I drank or how I was getting home, I now decline things like this because of the trip back and my state of mind (drunk) while on that journey. In short, there’s work and there’s home, and the two are very different places that not longer collide – each is thought of and planned separately.

Am I happy? Absolutely. Though the inconveniences of living out here abound, every little interaction is more pleasant, not so rushed and done with a Brooklyn pride. T-shirts do not say “I Love New York,” but read, simply, “Brooklyn,” with the love and pride implied.

This place is the real New York. It is not filled with transplants of over-ambitious, pretentious folks from Odaho, but with real New Yorkers. They know that this was the borough with the first museums, opera houses, and culture when Manhattan was, well, nothing. Though I am also reminded every day as I commute into “the city,” as they call it here, that this mighty Manhattan— with its sky scrapers, business and culture— still reigns supreme. But I can’t help but think that though the outer boroughs of this city are not New York's heart, per se, but are, rather, its soul.

Images from the shore, steps from my new digs.