Clinton Hill, Brooklyn: What's it like to live there?
April 2, 2010 1:22 PM Subscribe
Tell me, a prospective resident, about Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
I am probably going to be moving from Harlem to Brooklyn this summer (new roommate will be working in Brooklyn, and it's just as convenient for me). Perusing Craigslist, there seem to be lots of reasonably priced apartments in Clinton Hill.
I have no previous experience with the neighborhood. Here's what I want to know:
I am probably going to be moving from Harlem to Brooklyn this summer (new roommate will be working in Brooklyn, and it's just as convenient for me). Perusing Craigslist, there seem to be lots of reasonably priced apartments in Clinton Hill.
I have no previous experience with the neighborhood. Here's what I want to know:
- What's the general character of the neighborhood? Families? Young people? Long term residents or lots of turnover?
- What should I consider the boundaries of the neighborhood while looking for an apartment? (To avoid the kind of shady listings that will say an apartment's in Park Slope when it's really in Gowanus.)
- What is it like to commute to Manhattan from Clinton Hill? Does one generally walk to the C or to Atlantic/Pacific, or is the G reliable enough for the first bit of the trip?
- Are there many green spaces in the area?
- Since both Pratt and St. Joseph's are in the neighborhood, does it feel overwhelmingly student-y?
- If you live or have lived there, is there anything about it you wish you'd known before you moved to the neighborhood?
Hellloooooo neighbor.
1. There are families in the neighborhood, but it's nowhere close to DUMBO or Park Slope in terms of parents who insist on taking the stroller brigade to the bar. There are some young people thanks to Pratt's presence, but it's an older and somewhat more laid-back community compared to Williamsburg and Greenpoint. There are a lot of middle- and upper-middle class African-American families who bought the brownstones decades ago and hit real estate gold. There are rich gentrifying families who have also bought those brownstones from older residents, hence the competitive brunching atmosphere on weekends. And then there are twenty-somethings who join CSAs and sit in the park and read on weekends, which is our house.
2. I'm terrible with streets, though I'd say Myrtle to the north and Atlantic Ave to the South would compromise the informal latitudinal parameters? You can suss out bad egg Craigslist posts by looking at the nearest subway stop. Classon isn't great, Clinton-Washington on the C and G are golden, Fulton on the G and Lafayette on the C are also good. Just make sure you're within walking distance.
3. The C is sort of a pain but reliable, and you can transfer to the express train at Atlantic. G haters can suck it; my boyfriend takes the G every morning to get to the L and says it's great. The C has actually been dicier, as it's often not running on weekends. Recently, however, the A just runs local and all is well.
4. Fort Greene park, of course!
5. Not at all. Pratt's campus presence doesn't dwarf the landscape like, say, NYU's presence dwarfs the West Village scene.
6. I love the neighborhood. It is 50% responsible for my complete and utter transformation from someone who despised New York and wanted to move IMMEDIATELY to someone who loves living in Brooklyn and wants to stay here indefinitely. Considering the other 50% of this equation is a great relationship and fabulous friends (you number among them!) this says quite a lot.
posted by zoomorphic at 2:06 PM on April 2, 2010
1. There are families in the neighborhood, but it's nowhere close to DUMBO or Park Slope in terms of parents who insist on taking the stroller brigade to the bar. There are some young people thanks to Pratt's presence, but it's an older and somewhat more laid-back community compared to Williamsburg and Greenpoint. There are a lot of middle- and upper-middle class African-American families who bought the brownstones decades ago and hit real estate gold. There are rich gentrifying families who have also bought those brownstones from older residents, hence the competitive brunching atmosphere on weekends. And then there are twenty-somethings who join CSAs and sit in the park and read on weekends, which is our house.
2. I'm terrible with streets, though I'd say Myrtle to the north and Atlantic Ave to the South would compromise the informal latitudinal parameters? You can suss out bad egg Craigslist posts by looking at the nearest subway stop. Classon isn't great, Clinton-Washington on the C and G are golden, Fulton on the G and Lafayette on the C are also good. Just make sure you're within walking distance.
3. The C is sort of a pain but reliable, and you can transfer to the express train at Atlantic. G haters can suck it; my boyfriend takes the G every morning to get to the L and says it's great. The C has actually been dicier, as it's often not running on weekends. Recently, however, the A just runs local and all is well.
4. Fort Greene park, of course!
5. Not at all. Pratt's campus presence doesn't dwarf the landscape like, say, NYU's presence dwarfs the West Village scene.
6. I love the neighborhood. It is 50% responsible for my complete and utter transformation from someone who despised New York and wanted to move IMMEDIATELY to someone who loves living in Brooklyn and wants to stay here indefinitely. Considering the other 50% of this equation is a great relationship and fabulous friends (you number among them!) this says quite a lot.
posted by zoomorphic at 2:06 PM on April 2, 2010
I love Clinton Hill, have lived here for several years, could happily stay here forever.
1. Different blocks can be a little different, some with more students, others with more families. There are a number of multi-generational families here who have owned their homes for many years, but there are definitely lots of young people too, and plenty of bars and restaurants that cater to young crowds. For me, it's a good mix.
2. I'm not sure what the official boundaries of the neighborhood are, but I would draw the outline from Park to Fulton in one direction, and from Classon to Vanderbilt in the other. Going past Vanderbilt is fine, still a really beautiful neighborhood over there. I would be slightly more cautious about going past Classon, that will put you at the edge of Bedford Stuyvesant, which is OK but a little rougher than Clinton Hill.
3. The G is fine on weekdays, especially during commuter hours. I often take it to connect to the A/C or the F. I actually like it because it's much less crowded than most other trains. On the weekends and late nights, the G gets suspended and re-routed a lot. My rule usually is, if it's after midnight, I will avoid the G and either walk from the A/C or take a cab. There are some pretty useful buses too if you're a bus person.
4. The Pratt campus is generally open to the public and has a beautiful lawn and sculpture garden where you can hang out. You'll be close to Fort Greene Park, which is really nice and has a Greenmarket every Saturday all year. There are some community gardens too.
5. The areas immediately around Pratt can feel kind of student-heavy. For the most part, the students are totally fine. If you're concerned about this you might want to avoid big loft-filled apartment buildings, which seem to house a lot of the Pratt students. St. Joseph's seems to me like a commuter school, and the students are very chill.
On preview, I agree with Mavri. Also if you happen to have a dog, there are off-leash hours at Fort Greene Park that are very popular.
posted by Mender at 2:07 PM on April 2, 2010
1. Different blocks can be a little different, some with more students, others with more families. There are a number of multi-generational families here who have owned their homes for many years, but there are definitely lots of young people too, and plenty of bars and restaurants that cater to young crowds. For me, it's a good mix.
2. I'm not sure what the official boundaries of the neighborhood are, but I would draw the outline from Park to Fulton in one direction, and from Classon to Vanderbilt in the other. Going past Vanderbilt is fine, still a really beautiful neighborhood over there. I would be slightly more cautious about going past Classon, that will put you at the edge of Bedford Stuyvesant, which is OK but a little rougher than Clinton Hill.
3. The G is fine on weekdays, especially during commuter hours. I often take it to connect to the A/C or the F. I actually like it because it's much less crowded than most other trains. On the weekends and late nights, the G gets suspended and re-routed a lot. My rule usually is, if it's after midnight, I will avoid the G and either walk from the A/C or take a cab. There are some pretty useful buses too if you're a bus person.
4. The Pratt campus is generally open to the public and has a beautiful lawn and sculpture garden where you can hang out. You'll be close to Fort Greene Park, which is really nice and has a Greenmarket every Saturday all year. There are some community gardens too.
5. The areas immediately around Pratt can feel kind of student-heavy. For the most part, the students are totally fine. If you're concerned about this you might want to avoid big loft-filled apartment buildings, which seem to house a lot of the Pratt students. St. Joseph's seems to me like a commuter school, and the students are very chill.
On preview, I agree with Mavri. Also if you happen to have a dog, there are off-leash hours at Fort Greene Park that are very popular.
posted by Mender at 2:07 PM on April 2, 2010
Also, apologies, I conflated Fort Greene and Clinton Hill into one big neighborhood. I'm a new resident so maybe I'm totally wrong, but I feel that the areas are pretty blended and not as nearly as culturally discrete as, say, Chinatown and Lower East Side.
The only thing I would caution you against is the possibility of limited subway access on weekends. Then again, I was coming from Greenpoint and wasn't terribly picky.
Not to gush, but I freaking love this neighborhood. Yeah, it's chi-chi at times and I feel like a scrub if I pad to the bodega in workout clothes and no makeup, but the benefits of a beautiful neighborhood and effusively nice people (I'd never known the names of my neighbors until I moved here) and the Brooklyn Flea and the CSA and the park? It's just so quintessentially Brooklyn that you feel like you're on The Cosby Show.
posted by zoomorphic at 2:27 PM on April 2, 2010
The only thing I would caution you against is the possibility of limited subway access on weekends. Then again, I was coming from Greenpoint and wasn't terribly picky.
Not to gush, but I freaking love this neighborhood. Yeah, it's chi-chi at times and I feel like a scrub if I pad to the bodega in workout clothes and no makeup, but the benefits of a beautiful neighborhood and effusively nice people (I'd never known the names of my neighbors until I moved here) and the Brooklyn Flea and the CSA and the park? It's just so quintessentially Brooklyn that you feel like you're on The Cosby Show.
posted by zoomorphic at 2:27 PM on April 2, 2010
Response by poster: This is all super helpful, thanks!
posted by ocherdraco at 3:29 PM on April 2, 2010
posted by ocherdraco at 3:29 PM on April 2, 2010
*pulls up chair and sits down*
It's becoming very foodie. There's the Greenmarket every saturday, and there are five (five!) CSA's. Myrtle Avenue, Dekalb, and Fulton/Lafayette are the main "drags" when it comes to restaurants (including a Habana Outpost, which is only open in summer as it's solar-powered; but they have great food, and they show free movies against the solar panels on Sunday nights in the summer). Other "spots" are Madiba, a great South African restaurant, and Tillie's, a coffee shop with open mike nights and a gallery featuring local artists.
Clinton Hill is pretty much Atlantic-to-Myrtle as the northern and southern borders, and Carlton Avenue and Bedford as the east-to-west borders.
Halloween is adorable. I live on Clinton Avenue, and there's a brownstone two blocks down from me where everyone's lived there forever and they all collaborate on a huge sort of talent show/skit thing in their front yard every Halloween, and they block off two blocks of Clinton Avenue for the block party -- the houses on the blocks are the unofficial "trick or treat" zone, so you see all the kids running around going out of their minds getting candy and every half hour OH HEY LET'S GO SEE THE SHOW and then the show ends and they go back to trick or treating and HEY THEY'RE DOING THE SHOW AGAIN and...the next avenue over, Waverly, is starting to get in on the act too - there's another group that all lives in the same building that gets dressed up in costumes and gives a concert, and last year yet another house did some goofy tableau in their garage where they spray painted the inside blue and set up skyscrapers made of cardboard boxes, then one of them dressed up as Godzilla and the other as King Kong and they staged a fight.
The neighborhood new year's tradition happens at Pratt -- there's a big collection of steam whistles on campus, and they drag them out onto the campus center and set them up, at 11:30 someone starts playing songs on a steam carillion and then right at midnight they sound off all 20 steam whistles at once. Then they leave them out for about an hour longer and let people take turns pulling the cords to sound some of the whistles off themselves. (And we're talking steam whistles salvaged from locomotives and steamships here...I think the one I sounded was from the S.S. NORMANDIE).
Commuting can sometimes be an issue -- you may have to do some mix of one subway to another subway, or a bus to a subway. When I worked in East Midtown I took the G to Court Square in Queens, then transferred onto the V and rode one stop in. Today I work in New Jersey, and take the G two stops to the C, then the C up to Port Authority; but the G to the C to the Path is another option. Figure on an hour into Midtown, about a half hour to downtown. You may have to experiment to get your best option (bus or no bus, G to the C or walk to the C...) But, I have to say, buses do expand your options rather a bit. There are rather a few of them, and most have escaped the MTA service cuts.
Clinton Hill is a bikeable distance from Park Slope, the Botanic Garden, and the main branch of Brooklyn's library.
Not too studenty; there's one bar near me that's more "studenty" than the rest of the neighborhood, but not "frat boy" studenty, more like "fresh-faced" studenty. My current roommate had checked out the neighborhood several months before moving in, when he was still deciding what neighborhood he wanted to live in, and told me that this felt like more OF a "neighborhood" and that was one of the reasons he looked in this area.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:37 PM on April 2, 2010
It's becoming very foodie. There's the Greenmarket every saturday, and there are five (five!) CSA's. Myrtle Avenue, Dekalb, and Fulton/Lafayette are the main "drags" when it comes to restaurants (including a Habana Outpost, which is only open in summer as it's solar-powered; but they have great food, and they show free movies against the solar panels on Sunday nights in the summer). Other "spots" are Madiba, a great South African restaurant, and Tillie's, a coffee shop with open mike nights and a gallery featuring local artists.
Clinton Hill is pretty much Atlantic-to-Myrtle as the northern and southern borders, and Carlton Avenue and Bedford as the east-to-west borders.
Halloween is adorable. I live on Clinton Avenue, and there's a brownstone two blocks down from me where everyone's lived there forever and they all collaborate on a huge sort of talent show/skit thing in their front yard every Halloween, and they block off two blocks of Clinton Avenue for the block party -- the houses on the blocks are the unofficial "trick or treat" zone, so you see all the kids running around going out of their minds getting candy and every half hour OH HEY LET'S GO SEE THE SHOW and then the show ends and they go back to trick or treating and HEY THEY'RE DOING THE SHOW AGAIN and...the next avenue over, Waverly, is starting to get in on the act too - there's another group that all lives in the same building that gets dressed up in costumes and gives a concert, and last year yet another house did some goofy tableau in their garage where they spray painted the inside blue and set up skyscrapers made of cardboard boxes, then one of them dressed up as Godzilla and the other as King Kong and they staged a fight.
The neighborhood new year's tradition happens at Pratt -- there's a big collection of steam whistles on campus, and they drag them out onto the campus center and set them up, at 11:30 someone starts playing songs on a steam carillion and then right at midnight they sound off all 20 steam whistles at once. Then they leave them out for about an hour longer and let people take turns pulling the cords to sound some of the whistles off themselves. (And we're talking steam whistles salvaged from locomotives and steamships here...I think the one I sounded was from the S.S. NORMANDIE).
Commuting can sometimes be an issue -- you may have to do some mix of one subway to another subway, or a bus to a subway. When I worked in East Midtown I took the G to Court Square in Queens, then transferred onto the V and rode one stop in. Today I work in New Jersey, and take the G two stops to the C, then the C up to Port Authority; but the G to the C to the Path is another option. Figure on an hour into Midtown, about a half hour to downtown. You may have to experiment to get your best option (bus or no bus, G to the C or walk to the C...) But, I have to say, buses do expand your options rather a bit. There are rather a few of them, and most have escaped the MTA service cuts.
Clinton Hill is a bikeable distance from Park Slope, the Botanic Garden, and the main branch of Brooklyn's library.
Not too studenty; there's one bar near me that's more "studenty" than the rest of the neighborhood, but not "frat boy" studenty, more like "fresh-faced" studenty. My current roommate had checked out the neighborhood several months before moving in, when he was still deciding what neighborhood he wanted to live in, and told me that this felt like more OF a "neighborhood" and that was one of the reasons he looked in this area.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:37 PM on April 2, 2010
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I'm going to get in before the G hate and say that I've found it to be a great train during rush hours. It comes less often than other trains, but often enough during rush hours. It's consistent during rush hour (if I find myself waiting out an inexplicable interruption in service, the A or the C is usually the culprit), and it's only really crowded if you're commuting when all the Brooklyn Tech kids are on their way to school. Outside rush hours, it's a pain, but still doable.
The Pratt/St. John's effect probably depends on how close you are to the school. I don't think they're an overwhelming presence unless you're within a few blocks.
There are a lot of lovely community gardens and Ft. Greene park.
The New York Times has a Clinton Hill/Ft. Greene blog that is kind of interesting. I think it will give you a skewed idea of the crime rate, though.
I like that I can easily walk or take a bus to downtown Brooklyn, Target, Ft. Greene, and even Prospect Park. (These are 20-40 minute walks depending on where you end up, so I'm not talking about going around the block.) If you're a walker, it's also a lovely area to wander around in.
posted by Mavri at 1:56 PM on April 2, 2010