The weather is really taking a page out of Katy Perry’s book with how hot and cold it is. I remember hearing that song for the first time in fifth grade and immediately knowing I would be obsessed with it (and Katy Perry) for a long time. The same thing happened when I heard “Royals” by Lorde for the first time as my mom searched for a parking space at temple. What songs are like that for you?

I’m figuring out how I want to straddle between outside and Outside. The white wine kick begins. I went to an improv show for the first time in over a year, which was both jarring and joyful. I also went to a pro women’s hockey game as the New York Sirens hit Madison Square Garden, winning in a shootout against the U.S. Women’s National Team Captain Hilary Knight and her Seattle Torrent.

Big news as of this weekend: I’m not renewing my lease in hopes of greener pastures. This whole entry is a plea to keep an eye out for two beautiful girls in their search for for 1-beds (or 2) available May–June 1 in the neighborhoods around Downtown Brooklyn and Prospect Park. Relatedly, if you or someone you know are looking for a 1-bed on the Bushwick/East Williamsburg border available June 1, do I have the place for you!

Whether it’s knowing when to leave an apartment, a party, or a relationship, some of the same conditions apply:

I started writing this newsletter summer 2023, soon after Meera and I moved into our apartment. Getting there was both fun and stressful. Meera lived a few states away, so I would trek from my UES sublet across the city to tour tons of apartments for us. It was quite the crash course in New York, apartment hunting, and New York apartment hunting.

Even though we fit all of their qualifications, two places rejected us because they took in a bunch of applications and probably went with people older and richer than us. I wanted to be done with it so bad that I couldn’t understand why Meera vetoed a place I toured whose laundry room was in a basement you could only reach by going outside.

I narrowed my search to Williamsburg and Bushwick because they seemed like the vibe I wanted, neighborhoods with young people (including a lot of my friends), great restaurants, and expansive nightlife. I remember touring an apartment in one of those huge, scary, scammy gentrifier buildings and walking a bit away to finish work and grab a coffee at Swallow Cafe. Sweating at Swallow and seeing the modelesque, alternative clientele, I realized that this was the area I hoped I would end up near.

Our apartment was actually listed under a different, further away address on StreetEasy, and it was the only place that we happened to tour on a weekend that Meera was visiting. Our realtor was really nice, and this seemed like more of a mom-and-pop operation (mom-and-poperation?) than the gluttonous agencies that gobbled up dozens of application fees, credit checks, and — yes — cover letters for each unit. After seeing the touring the unit below where we would live, our realtor said, We have another unit above this one that’s a little more expensive but has a bigger fridge and higher ceilings. Want to see it?

Coming from my basement unit, the high ceilings, skylight, and tall windows were refreshing. The apartment was being remodeled after smoke damage from a kitchen fire in the bodega at street level, and they hadn’t built a wall yet for what was supposed to be a second bedroom. This would have made the space darker and feel smaller, so we were happy to stand in our anti-Build The Wall values for both our and our landlord’s sakes. The cherry on top? Applying was first come, first serve, and we were the first people to tour the place. We jumped on it.

It’s been a stellar three years. The apartment was so great that I was stunned when each rent increase was small and not trying to kick us out to charge people more. We were now close to the L train and tons of fun spots to try. Some of my best and would-be best friends lived in walking distance, and it was easy to spend as much time as possible in the neighborhood. So many people were my age and similarly searching for something.

Living amongst the cool made me want to do something cool, and of course it elicited moral quandaries of how my presence impacts a neighborhood. I’m not sure if I would have started this newsletter if I didn’t live here. It was easy to get caught up in transplant politics (both within the community and how it relates to others) and the Disneyfication of living here. I can’t believe that enough time has passed that I can reflect on my experience, that I’ve been able to build all sorts of routines and ground myself. I have all of my spots: where I work out, where I ship my packages, where I go to urgent care (on a block of four urgent cares), where I wow friends visiting, where I can have a reliably fun night out, where I get my nails done, where I walk to clear my head…and of course my bodega of choice.

Last year at this time, almost all of my neighborhood friends announced that they would be moving, most of them to parts of Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights that are inconvenient to get to from where I am. I immediately began complaining and could pick a myriad of reasons — white people moving into less-gentrified historically Black neighborhoods, too residential to be fun, not enough trendy restaurants — but I was mostly upset that time passes, people change, and my experience would be more isolated.

I then thought I was ready to move, too. I live amongst blocks of industrial hellscape that are giving me cancer with barely a tree in sight. Maria Hernandez Park is a wimpy sapling growing out of concrete compared to the grand sycamore that is Prospect Park. I felt further away from the 23 and 24-year-old liberal-arts grads flooding than when I first joined them here.

However, this apartment kept me here. Why move for small reasons when moving is so hard and our place is so great? Two bathrooms. Responsive maintenance. Only one roach.

It was worth staying another year. I felt like we never really decorated our place because we knew it would be temporary, more temporary than it ended up being. However, this really was our cozy home, years of sunsets and storms to stare out at. This was the first place with both of our names on the lease, and we really had our systems down pat.

Although home continues to be a cozy landing pad, I found myself spending most of my free time in other neighborhoods. My friends were elsewhere, and our tastes were somewhat maturing. Before flying home for the holidays, I took a long walk like I had countless times. Walking is how I felt connected to my neighborhood: people-watching in the park when it first got warm in spring, dancing at the Puerto Rican Day Parade in summer, crushing fallen leaves down the grand stretches of Bushwick Avenue in autumn, and trying not to slip on my lonely route to the gym in winter. On this winter walk around Bushwick and Ridgewood, I realized that it was time for me to bow out. It was just a feeling. I am not connected anymore and don’t really want to be. I’m ready for something new.

This is the longest I’ve lived somewhere as an adult, and I could not really ask for much better. Except that I can!

What’s so cool about life is that you can actually just go somewhere else. You can’t always, but, when you can, what an opportunity it is to try something new. I am not a homeowner — I am a homo that owns my youth. Meera and I are different girls than the ones that first moved here, and I have the security to take a risk and give this different version of myself something different. This would be much harder to do later in life.

Quite a few friends cannot understand why we would give up such a great spot. They aren’t wrong, and rolling the dice isn’t a surefire way to victory here. However, when the club across the street in its sixth iteration of a business revealed that it’s the same as the others by blasting music loud enough at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday to wake me up, I know I’m not being careless in my choice.

We’ve been talking about this for a year, so it isn’t as rash as it feels. After a few days of putting it off, we sat in a cafe not too dissimilar from the one we sent our application in as we sent the email declaring we would not be renewing our lease.

The process is fast, and most places available in May and June won’t be on the market for awhile. Soon after pulling the trigger, we toured an apartment in Prospect Heights with no intention of applying, just to see what the search would be like. We’re more seasoned Brooklyn residents to know what and how to look, and we would be getting a head start.

The listing, although at the top of our price range, could be ideal. It’s grown up, a spacious 1-bed in a neighborhood that’s the embodiment of a 1 p.m. Saturday iced latte, close to other cute neighborhoods and a bunch of trains.

When we walked down the windy blocks of people that all had tote bags and nonprofit-job face, our long leather jackets realized we weren’t in Bushwick, Kansas anymore. If Bushwick has white pockets, this is a whole white garment. Why are there three wine stores within a five-minute walk and nowhere to dance it off?

The unit was cute but not enough for the price tag, and we were joined at the open house by two couples that just evoked frivolity, rich in a way that felt separate from me. But, we all were here. Despite whatever I want to think, we are probably just like them. What’s comforted me is that I live in a neighborhood that’s such a caricature, so I’d really just be swapping one caricature out for another. We went to the rooftop and stared out at the soon-to-be-rainy Brooklyn skyline, Meera and I agreeing that this place was definitely not it. But what is?

What’s so exciting is that I get to find out. I’m about to put in a lot of time, stress, and probably tears figuring out the right next move, but I’d rather reach for something better than stay somewhere I know I’ve outgrown. I’m manifesting literally greener pastures, a tree-lined street that feels like an exhale to walk around. I want to live more in a Saturday morning than a Saturday night. The politics of living somewhere as nice as I imagine will be a change of scenery and, as always, a case study in where the gentrifier goes next.