Home sweet apartment

I grew up in a NYC apartment in Queens. My wife grew up in a house in the suburbs. When we met, we were both 20 something city dwellers and quickly settled into a Brooklyn apartment, where we lived for a number of years. We might still be there but for one thing: we decided to become parents. As our 1 BR apartment soon began to become much too small, we began looking for alternative living arrangements. It was then I realized I'd have to do something I never thought I would do: escape from New York.

We considered staying in our apartment,at least for the short term. However, we knew we couldn't stay in their for long so we began reconsidering our living arrangements. As much as I loved living in the city, I hated the lack of storage and privacy as a child, not to mention having to be quiet because of the neighbors when I lived in an apartment. I lived that once and didn't feel like repeating it when our son was born, even though the building my wife and I were living in was fairly kid friendly. So we went out to the suburbs and bought our house (it also helped that the cost of a 2 bedroom apartment in our old neighborhood cost the same as our 4 BR house in 2000) where the only people who complain about our children making noise in the house are my wife and myself. It's also nice to open the back door and throw them out into the yard in 2 seconds as opposed to the whole ordeal it was for my parents-- hallway, elevator, lobby, walk to playground -- to do the same, but that's another story.

Therefore, it was with great amusement and a reminder of why I moved out to Jersey to live near my wife's family in the first place, when I read the article in today's NY Times (and the comments on Fark, where the article was also listed) about couples raising noisy children in the city. As I read the article, I wondered how many of the parents grew up in apartments and weren't aware of the noise issues that little children make. I wonder how many of them thought how great to have a washer and dryer and a few good sized closets in their apartment without considering the neighbors.

The 1960s neighborhood in Queens I grew up in was full of young families when I was born. We lived in an apartment one floor above a childless couple, which is what my parents were before I came along. I was one of several children and we were quite noisy when young and not quite civilized. Not so noisy that my parents let us run around all amok, but noisy enough that one of my earliest memories was of my parents warning us to be quiet before the downstairs neighbors [bang bang bang] got their broomstick out.If we ran, we heard bang bang bang, If we walked loudly - bang, bang, bang. If our blocks fell -- bang, bang, bang. If we laughed at a cartoon too loud -- bang, bang, bang. She was the type of person who would go to a mid afternoon movie cartoon and complain there were children there.

We heard that broomstick so much we were convinced the wife was a witch. This was confirmed decades later when my mother was rushed to the hospital and her health aide left the stopper in the kitchen sink and didn't shut the water off all the way -- why the neighbor decided that then was a good time to tell my wife and sister in law what she really thought of my family while my brother and I were dealing with the beginning of our mother's final chapter. All, I can say, if she's reading this, is I'm so sorry my mother's illness caused her to miss her Cosmo that afternoon. Anyway, I digress.

At the time (1960s and 1970s) it was still fairly common for children to be living in my apartment building, plus the surrounding buildings , and we were a noisy lot playing in playgrounds and apartment building driveways, while having the nerve to ride bicycles in and around the neighborhood. Some neighbors complained but many, who grew up in even denser neighborhoods in Brooklyn did not, knowing that noise and chaos was part of city life. That seems to have changed over the 70s and 80s as the city's population declined.

The grumpy downstairs neighbors became the norm and not the exception. I think this took off as NYC schools continued their decline through the 70s and many of the children left for the suburbs; the local elementary school, so crowded at the start of the decade that the 6th grade had to rent classroom space in the local church and temple, had one floor, out of three, virtually empty by the end of the decade. As middle class childless apartment dwellers became the norm, at least in my neighborhood, many of the playgrounds were converted to sitting areas or parking lots. Heck, many of the buildings don't even allow dogs anymore, though my old building apparently still does (it doesn't help that many of the buildings were designed so that residents exit onto a walkway and not the street, making hard to curb a dog as it usually starts doing its business before you can actually get to the curb).

As an adult I can understand how annoying it is to have noise when you want quiet. I've also sat in on board meetings, as an adult, where parents of small children defended their running around by saying children will be children. To my parents' credit they never tried to justify our noise making to our neighbors, aside from apologizing for the noise. However, apartments equal noise and living with neighbors. Therefore, it was with the banging and arguing with neighbors in mind, that my wife and I chose to buy a house. I have to admit that I did find it quite liberating not to have to cover 80% of our hardwood floors with carpeting or furniture.

Now, about a decade later, as NYC has once again become a desirable place to raise a family, and the costs of buying a house is still out of reach for younger families, the issues my parents faced have come back. As fuel prices continue to rise, and living in a private home becomes less desirable, this situation will probably increase even further. So unless home sweet apartments an adult only building, such as a senior building, New Yorkers are going to have to get over it.