Bushwick, and My Old Roomate

The Times picks up on a unique little community in Bushwick Brooklyn, distinctively east of the much more trendy Williamsburg.

My old Roomate, and great friend Stew lives in #248, and this is where I visited him when I was in New York last fall. From here, he's moving to Long Island to get married in a few months. It's definitely a distinct community, but I wouldn't say Stew's place was that bad!

Young Artists Find Private Space, Without Privacy - New York Times by Cara Buckley

One “room” is a cramped cubby that measures, in all, perhaps 25 square feet, just enough for a full-size mattress and whatever can be stashed beneath. The first-floor rooms, in the basement, are musty and windowless, like caves. The second-floor rooms have plywood walls but no doors, only cut-out windows that overlook a kitchen cluttered with day-old dishes, a chore wheel and the odd paintbrush.

One of the residents likens her home to a “giant treehouse.” Another says it is like “living in a public bathroom.”

“Where the stalls are just superficial sight lines that block the other person, but you can hear everything they do,” said Robyn Frank, a 23-year-old artist. She had just moved in to the McKibbin lofts in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and sometimes they literally become bathrooms. They are known for their giant, raucous parties; revelers occasionally urinate in the halls.