Help me figure out where to live in NYC

July 30, 2019 5:57 PM

I'm debating a few different NYC neighborhoods and could use some input.

I'm a 40-ish single female, lived in various neighborhoods in Manhattan for 15 years then left the city for a few years and have just returned. I'm trying to decide where to live.

West Village: lived here for a few years, love it. I like that there's less noise/traffic than the rest of Manhattan and the buildings are shorter, yet there are still trendy restaurants and bars around. I can walk to work from here. OTOH, I feel a bit lame for never having lived in a borough other than Manhattan and wonder if I'm missing out by not exploring a new hood.

Williamsburg/Greenpoint: love the trendy restaurants and bars always opening here. Wondering if any of my friends would ever meet me at any of said restaurants and bars given the train slowdown, though.

Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill: has some elements I like from the WV (quiet leafy streets, less noise, short buildings, more chill). Doesn't seem as trendy, seems to have more casual neighborhoody restaurants.

tl;dr - long-time Manhattan resident loves the WV but finds the idea of exploring a new area appealing too.

Any advice? Do you live in any of these places, and if so, what do you like/dislike about them?
Demographic advice is particularly useful too, as I want to live somewhere where I wouldn't be out of place as a 40-yo single woman without kids. Oh, and I can afford a place in any of these neighborhoods. I know I'd get more space for my money in the BK neighborhoods but I'm ok with the space/cost/neighborhood tradeoff however it ends up.

Thanks!

posted by sunflower16 to Home & Garden (19 answers total)

I used to live in Carroll Gardens near Cobble Hill and I think you'd like that area. Is your commute an issue at all? The F train was somewhat unreliable, but I didn't need to use it regularly. If you need to be in Manhattan for work, I could see advantages to staying in the West Village.
posted by pinochiette at 6:11 PM on July 30, 2019

Whoops, I just saw that you can walk to work from the West Village. Personally, I think that might be worth it. But Cobble Hill/Brooklyn Heights/Carroll Gardens are all great.
posted by pinochiette at 6:11 PM on July 30, 2019

The West Village, even in these sad latter days, is great, and walking to work is priceless. But, depending on how long you've been away, you may not intuitively grasp the tradeoffs of space and comfort at the present moment--every year it gets worse, and just compounds.

Still, WV gets my vote. You'll recalibrate quickly enough.
posted by praemunire at 6:32 PM on July 30, 2019

If you can afford West Village and can walk to work I think your grass is PRETTY GREEN.
posted by sestaaak at 6:42 PM on July 30, 2019 [22 favorites]

Live in the WV, walk to work, and use all the free time/mental space that frees up to explore and enjoy all those other neighborhoods you're wondering about.
posted by mccxxiii at 7:13 PM on July 30, 2019 [4 favorites]

If you definitely want to get out of Manhattan, I would give Fort Greene a try. Similar smaller buildings, pretty brownstones, lots of great hip restaurants and bars, not just full of 20 something party kids. Depending on exactly where you are, you can access a million trains at Atlantic so you’d still have a really short commute. There’s great bookstores, BAM, and the added convenience of Target and Trader Joe’s. My friends and I are all late 30s and child-free and we live all near each other and I hardly ever even leave the surrounding area on the weekends. Roam around Dekalb and Fulton and Lafayette and check it out.
posted by greta simone at 7:30 PM on July 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

WV def has more of a younger scene than Carroll gardens which has lots of affluent families. I’d do WV but remember where your friends live now.
posted by sandmanwv at 7:30 PM on July 30, 2019

I lived on Warren near Smith ST in Boreum Hill for six years and loved it.

I lived in Bushwick for three months and the L train is not something you want in your life, I do not think.
posted by vrakatar at 9:07 PM on July 30, 2019

WV here ..and I concur that anything that allows you to avoid the utter hell the NYC subways have become lately is a winner. You’ll save time and sanity. Come be our neighbor.
posted by spitbull at 10:14 PM on July 30, 2019

I say, live in the neighborhood that you already know you love and then just make a point of visiting other places in the city.

It sounds like you don't really want to move, you just think you should. You can scratch that exploring-of-other-neighborhoods itch by...just exploring other neighborhoods as a visitor.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:26 PM on July 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

I moved to walk to work because I was tired of the subway grind. Shitty apartment in Gramercy that cost a fortune but a good decision. Boerum Hill I love but it is a jog. If your work is flexible in when you arrive and leave I’d consider outside of manhattan to save.
posted by geoff. at 10:53 PM on July 30, 2019

Response by poster: I should mention that I work somewhat non-standard hours (later than usual so I miss rush hour but would still get the subway back home before the 8pm L slowdown). Good point about all of the train lines being less reliable/running less frequently since I last lived here though.

Friends are a very good point too. Most live on the UWS, Chelsea, or Downtown BK.
posted by sunflower16 at 2:42 AM on July 31, 2019

I, too, have just started apartment hunting in NYC and wish I could afford the places that would make my work commute as easy and as brief as possible. Time is slowly becoming my most valuable and coveted thing.

My first vote will be the WV. If you really feel the need to be in another neighborhood, Cobble Hill or Park Slope will be my next choices.
posted by theappleonatree at 5:28 AM on July 31, 2019

I would not live in Williamsburg. The train is slow, it's very expensive for BK and it's absolutely crushed with people going to trendy bars during bargoing times. You might as well live in Manhattan at that point and have good public transit.

I recently looked at places in both the West Village and Boerum Hill and found that in Boerum Hill the places were up to 30% larger for the same price. That's a huge difference when you're talking about 700 vs. 1000 square feet with outdoor space (for example). But you're also going to be walking further to everything fun in Boerum Hill—restaurants, groceries, etc. So it's a bigger trade-off than you might think. Personally, I have more or less decided to stick with Manhattan, since I can afford it, but YMMV.
posted by branca at 6:51 AM on July 31, 2019

It seems like the WV will situate you very well to see all your friends. Welcome back to NYC!
posted by ferret branca at 7:15 AM on July 31, 2019

With friends in the UWS and Chelsea, that makes the WV an even more natural choice. I'm envious!
posted by praemunire at 8:54 AM on July 31, 2019

I moved to the Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill/Carroll Gardens area recently and like it a lot. It skews older ("stroller Brooklyn") and you would not feel demographically out of place here, which is absolutely not the case with Williamsburg - unless there's something that is really, really specifically appealing to you about Williamsburg, I'd strike it off the list. Stuff I like about this area: very pretty residential streets, commercial areas still have a very old New York feel in parts which can be hard to come by elsewhere in the city, great shops that actually make me want to buy things I need in person instead of online sometimes, easy access to parks. Restaurants and bars are plentiful and good but definitely not trendy - to me, this is a plus, but your assessment that they're more casually neighborhoody is correct.

That being said! I moved here after 10 years in Manhattan and Queens, places I also loved, but during that entire time most of my friends lived in Brooklyn, so I was commuting to work AND to my social life. It sounds like in the West Village, you'd have an easy commute to work and to all your friends. In the absence of a reason to live in one of these other neighborhoods besides "it's different", I think WV is a no-brainer!

(Greenpoint is lovely but transportation-wise it honestly might as well be on the moon.)
posted by superfluousm at 10:20 AM on July 31, 2019

If you can afford to live in the west village then just do that, don't start messing around with train commutes from brooklyn bc none of the neighborhoods you're interested in will save you any money for the inconvenience. I left the wvill after 8 years because my rent went up to almost 5k a month and it was almost more psychologically damaging than financially.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:37 AM on July 31, 2019 [1 favorite]

The West Village is 80-90% white and 98% white collar, which is pretty segregated for as diverse a city as New York. Being able to walk to work is huge, but I personally find such overwhelming whiteness alienating and unwelcoming. YMMV.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:04 PM on July 31, 2019