JohnViega

Hell's Kitchen is a wonderful neighborhood-- I lived here for quite a while, and visit often. It's a little less wonderful below 42nd St, but still pretty awesome. 9th Avenue is perhaps the best, most diverse restaurant row in the city. There's a great bar scene. For Manhattan, it's still somewhat neighborhoody (especially after you go west). As you go West, transportation gets a bit suckier, but taxis are always easy to find around here, even at 4am. And, if you're close to 8th avenue, options are absolutely great-- best in the city.

The downside to this neighborhood is one of its benefits-- Times Square. Being close to all the entertainment is great, especially when you're a theater lover. BUT, it can be very frustrating to have to wade through the throngs of tourists, especially from November through the end of the year. Having to cross Times Square in a hurry can be very maddening!

That to me is a small price to pay for living in such an awesome neighborhood...

We've been in Central Harlem for the last two years, but are about to move to a more family-friendly area.

About three years ago, we were renting in midtown, and started looking for a decently sized place to buy. We didn't expect to like Harlem due to reputation, but we went up and checked it out, and found that there was a fair amount of decent commerce-- in some parts. I also reviewed the city crime statistics, and learned that it was really pretty safe-- not significantly more dangerous than "nicer" parts of the Island. Plus, everything is still a lot cheaper than anything lower in Manhattan, and the neighborhood is certainly gentrifying. And, if you're close enough to 125th/FDB or to Lennox, it's incredibly quick and convenient to get to midtown. Sounds great!

Now I've got two years under my belt of actually living in the neighborhood. The value of our condo went up by about 70% in those two years, reflecting the continued gentrification. But, there are some downsides to the neighborhood as well.

First, the public schools are utterly abysmal. There are some great charter schools, but they're tough to get into. At high-school age this doesn't matter too much, but it's particularly horrible for elementary school. This is a primary reason for us moving away.

Second, much of the neighborhood is still pretty devoid of commerce. 8th ave from the park to 125th is built up. 125th is obviously built up. And Lennox is built up a bit above and a bit below 125th. These areas are continuing to improve, for instance with the forthcoming Whole Foods. However, If you're significantly north of 125th, there's just not enough decent commerce. There are commerce corridors on 145th (and to a lesser degree on 135th) that are better than nothing, but only slightly.

Really, Central Harlem is two neighborhoods:

1) The FDB corridor, which runs from central park to 125th and from 5th ave to Morningside Park.
2) Everything north of that.

#2 isn't a great neighborhood at all, except in so far as you might be close to the 125th street corridor. And 125th street itself is too low-rent. Sure, we just got a gap outlet, but even the big chain stores coming in are more low-rent-- Red Lobster and Joe's Crab Shack? There are exceptions like Whole Foods, but 125th doesn't have all that much to offer to the gentrifiers yet. I do expect that to change fairly quickly, and this strip will start getting nicer.

Lennox and 8th (FDB) are both already very nice, particularly FDB. My wife has an issue that it's all TOO nice, particularly for dining. All the restaurants are aspiring to be posh. There's no regular ol' Italian joint, but there are a couple of fancier places. Same with pizza. There is no normal comfort-food place like a diner, but there are more upscale comfort food places, like Harlem Tavern-- which is the place my wife most enjoys on the FDB corridor (though she's really excited about Harlem Shake, which we will visit soon, and we do love the desserts at Levain Bakery and Tonnie's Minis). So there's a decent amount of commerce in the FDB area, but it's not diverse enough yet.

The thing that bugs me most about Harlem is the lack of community. There are definitely a lot of long-time residents who don't make any qualms about their hostility toward those gentrifying the neighborhood-- though to be fair, there are about as many who are welcoming, and many many people who are mostly ambivalent. But the lack of community is more seen in the lack of civic pride-- nobody seems to care about putting their litter in trash cans. Even though the 125th Street BID picks up litter continually, there's always a sea of trash. There really just doesn't seem to be any recognition that it *could* be a beautiful neighborhood if everyone took care of things.

Walking through brownstone blocks, it's clear that, when built, this was a POSH neighborhood. But many of those blocks look shabby now-- as opposed to parts of Park Slope that look nice, even though they were built shabbily. The difference is all in community pride, IMHO. Hopefully this will get better as gentrification continues. But, gentrification will only go so far-- there are a large number of projects in the neighborhood, and I wouldn't ever expect that to change. That didn't bother us living here (even living right next door to a project), but it might bother others. At the very least, don't expect the kind of total gentrification that brownstone brooklyn has seen, mainly because there's only one in that entire neighborhood.

All in all, Central Harlem is middle of the road, but getting better fairly quickly (below 125th street in particular). I don't think it's yet a great place to raise a family yet, but I think it's currently a very attractive place for anyone younger, who wants easy access to midtown and some cool / nice places around. Plus, the cost of living is definitely quite good considering how accessible prime parts of manhattan are. So there's a lot to recommend, and it will only get better.

When we first started looking at Brooklyn neighborhoods, we figured that, especially with three kids, we were going to want to end up in Park Slope because of the schools and the sheer number of kids. After spending a lot of time here and in surrounding neighborhoods, we still very much like Park Slope and would be happy to live there, but we ended up liking BoCoCa and Brooklyn Heights a lot more.

The neighborhood certainly has a good selection of food and bars, but nowhere near as good as the Smith St/Court St area. The Slope food/bar scene is also unfortunately spread out (primarily on 5th Ave and 7th Ave). That could mean a lot of trudging up and down the hill too (which I took as a good thing, and my wife, who will ends up dealing with the small kids more often took more as a bad thing).

The Park is an obvious huge plus, and the North Slope schools are particularly good. There's a good community feel, though it definitely skews yuppie. There's not quite enough subway access, especially for South Slope, which makes due with the F and G. Especially from center and south Slope, it's a bit farther to the city than I think most people would like.

The housing stock is really nice when you're close to the park, but the farther west you go and the farther south you go, the worse it gets. there are too many houses with vinyl siding (many of which are hiding a decaying brick facade). And we looked at many houses in this neighborhood-- most of them had big issues with settlement-- typically significantly worse than what we saw in BoCoCa. You could tell that those non-prime houses were not considered anywhere near as prime when they were built.

Fourth Avenue as the western border has a long way to go before it's going to have the same "nice" feel that the eastern part of Park Slope has. I really don't like being on 4th Ave at all, even on a short walk to the subway. Part of this is changing with the rezoning that has already happened on 4th ave and the forthcoming narrowing (well, they're going to go down to 2 lanes of traffic in each direction anyway, except for the northbound lanes from Union to Atlantic).

The South Slope is cheaper, with a lot less commerce, and the housing stock is noticeably worse. But it was still friendly, and I suspect it's going to grow to be more like the North Slope very quickly-- we noticed lots of people getting priced out of the North Slope looking in the South Slope because, hey, the schools are still okay, and it's still Park Slope. For those looking to own, I suspect that neighborhood is one of the best balances in Brooklyn for those who want a decent family life but are still hoping to profit from a bit more gentrification (a wave which we've successfully ridden multiple times).

Nonetheless, despite all the positives in Park Slope, we eventually ended up with a strong preference for BoCoCa. Our attention started out 80% in Park Slope and 20% everywhere else, and by the time we went into contract on a place, we were down to about 80% BoCoCa, 10% Park Slope and 10% everywhere else (while we liked Brooklyn Heights more than Park Slope, we quickly figured we wouldn't get enough for our money relative to BoCoCa, which we instantly liked better than the Heights).

Brooklyn Heights has always had a mystique for me as the legendary home of Dr. Cliff Huxtable. And indeed, it is neighborhood-y, with great views, good (but crowded) schools, and great access to the city. On the downside, it's significantly pricier for what you get than the area south of Atlantic, and isn't quite as good for eating out.

When we started looking at moving to Brooklyn, this is one neighborhood we seriously looked at. I have to say, while we're not going to end up here, we would have been very happy here, and I'm sure anyone would be.

We've been living in Manhattan for a long time, but decided this year to look at places where the schools are still good, and we still wouldn't need a car, but we could get a lot more space for our money. I was also interested in a more "neighborhoody" vibe. This led us to Brooklyn. Being Manhattanites, we rarely left the island, so didn't know any of the neighborhoods too well before we started looking. But once we decided on the move, we spent tons of time in any Brooklyn neighborhood with good schools that was a close enough commute to the city. That includes Park Slope, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights, Fort Greene and even Windsor Terrace, Gowanus and Greenwood.

Of all those neighborhoods, we most fell in love with Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, with Carroll Gardens getting a slight edge due to the gardens and the higher density of italian shops/restaurants. But really, these feel mostly like a single neighborhood. The housing stock here tended to be very good (as opposed to large parts of Park Slope where the houses were not built all that well and do not look that great). The restaurant scene is amazing, and the commerce is thankfully far more compact than Park Slope. People take pride in the neighborhood. Carroll Park is great for kids. Though Prospect Park would have been nice, it is pretty quick to get there on the subway, and we will go into the city far more often than we will go into the park.

One of our biggest issues was the lack of housing availability. Few places come onto the market in Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, and for good reason-- these are the most livable neighborhoods in the entire city, to my mind-- the close-nit "neighborhoody" vibe is mostly gone from manhattan now.