Why Our Neighborhood Rocks

I will be the first to admit that sometimes I joke about our neighborhood. I often fake-complain that it's full of pregnant women and strollers, or I pretend to be really annoyed by all the tourists on Central Park West, taking pictures of the Dakota or asking me for directions in the park.

But I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

Case in point: I got home from an agent audition tonight (it went really well, thank you for asking), and Dean has gone to a play reading, and I thought it would be nice to have a glass of wine waiting for him when he gets home. I realized there was no wine in the house (it doesn't last long around here), and I looked at the clock- it was 9:03! So I grab my keys and dash around the corner to Nancy's, our beloved wine shop which normally closes at 9:00. Mike was bringing in the plants, closing for the night, but he said, "come on in, and take your time," which was really sweet. But what was even SWEETER was that the other guy...the bald one...the one who wants to look at our groceries before he recommends a wine...Jerry? JERRY says, "and you're taking home some pinot." I thought it was a sales pitch, but it turned out he was sending me home with FREE WINE! They'd had a tasting earlier, and I was the lucky recipient of the leftover wine.

Reason number two: our Italian landlords yell at each other a lot, sometimes in Italian, and it's pretty entertaining. Pedestrians are treated to Romance-language arguments on a nearly daily basis. It's a shared experience, really, and it's fun to make "yikes" faces at the other people on the sidewalk when Luigi and Maria are going at it.

Reason 3: An old guy was sitting on our corner today, playing Christmas carols on the sax. The best part? He was wearing a Rudolph nose that lit up. He threw in the theme from Spider Man, but all I could think of was Homer Simpson singing "Spider Pig."

Reason 4: As mentioned in a recent post, the Most Famous Parade in the World starts two blocks over. Enough said.

Reason 5: We find the coolest stuff on the street. First it was a really good quality bookcase, and the other night it was what is likely a haunted portrait of a woman holding her creepy baby. It was a total score. And bedbug free!

Yep, we have a great apartment...a little messy on occasion, but a great place to live in a super neighborhood.

Come visit us and see for yourself.