It’s almost 2008, and the JMZ line is still sending Bushwickers into Manhattan on rickety, smelly old trains from 1969. This may be about to change: Mike reports that this past Monday they ran those shiny new trains with the digital displays for the J and Z.

“Imagine my surprise Monday morning when this pulled in to Myrtle Ave. Finally! A J train that doesn’t leak when it rains.” Well said.
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Last night after work I cleaned the kitchen and took the trash out. When I got outside, I decided to sweep the front of the house: trash area, sidewalk, gutter, tree pit — I even swept part of the sidewalk in front of the neighbors’. I think I was kind of hepped up on all the caffeine I had had throughout the day and needed to burn it off. I picked up every last cigarette butt, quarter water container, and Doritos bag and put it in the bag I was putting on the curb. Shit was sparkling. As I swept up the last heap of trash in the gutter, squatting between two cars, I realized that there was a dollar among the refuse. Kinda nasty, but far be it from me to leave money on the ground.

I guess my class privilege (aka, desire not to live in filth) handed me that extra buck. Hm?

I thought the alternating colors on this block of houses on St. Nicholas between Stanhope and Himrod were cool.

#1 — $960 — 1br: The best deal in Bushwick! Super cheap and all utilities included, even cable and high-speed internet! Attractive new kitchen and decent bathroom, this place was renovated right. The street isn’t fabulous, but at this price, wince for half a block on your way to the train.
Evergreen and Madison Gates JZ

#2 — $1250 — 2br rr: Good location in North Bushwick, close to Knickerbocker for produce and pizza. Wood floors, nice light, third floor, but no photos of the kitchen or bathroom: proceed with caution.
CATS OK Himrod and Irving DeKalb L/Knickerbocker M

#3 — $1450 — 2br: Just your basic floor-through two-bedroom apartment with wood floors and decent-but-nothin’-special kitchen and bathroom.
PETS OK Putnam and Broadway Gates JZ

#4 — $2200 — 3br: I’m including this just because it’s so unique — a “quonset hut” warehouse on a tree-lined but still kind of industrial street.
PETS OK Boerum and White Montrose L

#5 — $1775 — 3br: New renovation with exposed brick and wood floors. Your standard slick modern redo. Steps from the gorgeous St. Martin of Tours church and charming Irving Square — this is one of the more intact and picturesque parts of Bushwick, which will have to do since there are no amenities in the immediate neighborhood.
Hancock and Knickerbocker Halsey L

From the wtf file: Wyckoff and Flushing is an “upscale block“? Is that like how all these crappy Hasidic pink-brick developments are “luxury”?

No obvious ripoff alerts or Bushwick wannabes this week, sorry guys!

I used to hear jokes that seeing a white girl in Bushwick was as rare as finding a unicorn. While the recent influx in hipsters might make that term no longer applicable, there is still one genuine unicorn to be found in Bushwick.

Natalie Weiss, aka Unicornicopia, has been living and performing in Bushwick since 2005. At 5′10″, with almond shaped eyes and and a huge smile, Natalie could be confused for a fashion model, a fact Vice magazine took notice of. But Natalie’s mission is not to stand around and look pretty for the cameras; rather she spreads her message through “experimental worship-tunes” that sound like a cross between Laurie Anderson, The Magnetic Fields (when the chick sings), and a 1950’s musical. Not surprisingly, Natalie accredits some of her earliest influences to musicals and has even written a couple — but it wasn’t till a 2001 trip to Africa as an AIDS educator that Unicornicopia was formed. “I was filled with the joy of the lord” Natalie says, smiling widely with no trace of irony. Natalie takes that joy wherever she goes, even when she was transplanted to the Halsey stop on the M J train in 2005 when she moved from Florida to try to have one of her plays performed off-Broadway.

Though the play fell through, Natalie stayed in Bushwick, and though she described her initial experience as scary — always a friendly face, Natalie found it hard to meet people in an area she saw as “more industrial than community-oriented.”

It was only after moving above Goodbye Blue Monday on Broadway and Dodworth that Natalie found the community spirit she was looking for. She accredits the change of Bushwick addresses with the shift of her perspective on the neighborhood. Far from finding the noise of the overhead J and the populated streets a detriment, Natalie finds her music influenced by her scenery, “I’m much more into a noise-oriented sound these days!” she exclaims, ever the optimist.

Her outgoing nature has finally found a home beneath the train, as one can often spy Natalie on the streets outside her home or in GBM, chatting with older residents. “I prefer the old men in this neighborhood to the hipsters,” she sniffs, “at least when you make friends with the old guys, they stop objectifying you!”

Good point — and one she plans to live by — as she is now having to plan a sudden relocation. Though she won’t be living above me anymore, Natalie plans to stay in the neighborhood while doing a back-up singing gig for Fischerspooner. She loves the neighborhood, and as she says on one of her songs, “It is so important to feel cared about.”

–Unicornicopia will be performing live at Monkeytown on Wednesday, September 26th.

My yard is no stranger to trash. It’s a good 2 feet higher than the neighbors’ because of the three decades of household trash tossed into the soil as a sort of emulsifier. But we have cleaned the top layer and laid a patio and garden in a small corner of it, and I’m annoyed when I have to pick up new trash.

But one day a couple weeks ago I couldn’t help but be amused by the out-of-the-ordinary refuse I found as I let the dog out — one pair of pink panties, one open package of lube, and one big, fat, gushy condom full of milky sperm. I usually pick up the trash around my house barehanded, but I wasn’t touching that shit. So I went inside to get a paper towel, and when I came out, my housemates had let their dogs out — and the condom had mysteriously disappeared. I assume it was the big ridgeback-mix puppy who, uh, cleaned it up for me. Gross.

Every few days, another pair of panties sails into my yard from the building a couple doors down. That’s right, they have to make an effort to fling them over my neighbor’s yard and into mine. Like when they tossed that glue trap with a smashed mouse in it a few months back. It takes talent.

Those apartments are mostly Section 8 and stabilized. I guess now we know where the money they’re saving on rent is going — into an endless supply of new panties.

Whatever, joke’s on them — that dump will be condos in a year (like I figured months ago). Done deal.

We walked past this row of buildings with two faces in the lintels: one that looks like Robin Hood and another that looks like a Victorian lady. I’m sure there’s some historical cultural context that would make this make sense.

photo by eppleart from the BushwickBK flickr pool

For the first time in a long time, I spent Saturday night in Bushwick. And I don’t mean making dinner and watching foreign films until 2am. After we finished painting the hallway in the house, we got changed and went to the home of fellow BBKers Jen and Mike up on Broadway and Arion — 10 minute walk at the most — for cocktails and food. A bunch of their friends, some local, were there, boozing it up with rum punch and munching on duck sloppy joes. Sadly, Petra from Bed-Stuy Blog had to go home in a car drunk off her ass before I got to chat with her. (I’ll pay for this.)

We were having such a good time (Luis was enjoying being sexually harrassed by chicks) and were there so late that we had to cut the conversation short to run to my neighbor’s house for his birthday party BBQ. We arrived too late for food (besides, we were stuffed), but got to hang out a bit in the garden and chat up the pan-South American clique that populates his parties. I always enjoy hearing yet another of his friends tell me about how they were going to buy our house but (insert reason they didn’t here).

Lately we’ve been spending more time in the hood as we meet more people to hang out with. Between the BBQs and dinners and straight-up house parties, not to mention meeting friends for coffee at various places in the hood, there is less reason every day to leave Bushwick just to hang out or have some fun.

I guess you could say that in Bushwick, we even have DIY amenities. Or maybe these thoughts are my way of coping with the gross lack of decent commercial dining experiences here. You decide.

Maybe you’ll find your soulmate?

Special Bushwick Friend - m4w - 25
Selling Points:

“I am just looking for someone who is sincere, and likes making love.
And by making love, I mean fucking each other”

Also, I like all kinds of sex. Aggressive sex, aanal sex, oral sex. Meat and potatos sex, Keith Sweat sex, la la la la

Sociopathic Asshole Seeks Same - 27
Selling Points:

Must love me.

(You would think Patrick Bateman lived in a nicer hood than Bushwick)

I watched your bike for a second while you went in brooklyns natural - m4w - 23
Selling Points:

Its too bad I was on the phone because I would have tried to start a conversation.

Last Light - 21
Selling Points:

1. sometimes I eat meat
2. i like brown better than black
9. i prefer lakes over oceans.
12. i really should paint my walls.

You Stole My Wallet & Camera At A Party in the Mckibbon Lofts
Selling Points:

yeah, you are a fucking asshole. anyways, i just want my ID back. you can mail it to me.

Ah, young love!

#1 — $1800 — 2br: I like honesty: “Don’t care about a long walk to the subway?” Looks like a good renovation, nice fixtures, wood floors, big windows. The huge fonts and colors of the ad are annoying and why can’t we call from a land line? No matter. PETS OK Onderdonk and Stanhope

#2 — $1650 — 3br rr: It’s a railroad, but this is a very reasonable price for what it is. It looks well-kept, has wood floors, and access to the back yard. Three short-blocks to Irving Square. UPDATE: The landlord wrote to say that there will be a stainless steel fridge and stove installed next week. Cornelia and Knickerbocker

#3 — $950 — 1br: Looks a bit cruddy but it’s $950, stop you’re bitching. PETS OK Bushwick and Gates

#4 — $1450 — 2br: I don’t know how “unbelievable” it is, but it’s a good price for a real 2 bedrooms. Basic, solid stuff here, wood floors PETS OK Putnam and Broadway

#5 — $2500 — 2br: Yes, it’s super expensive, but look at this place. Everything is done in a tasteful modern style, and…does it have 1.5 bathrooms? I think putting “bedrooms” is a typo. Anyway, looks like a nice roof deck, too. Says 1/2 block to JZ but if it’s at Putnam, then no, it’s a few short-blocks to the train. Putnam and Broadway

RIPOFF ALERT: It’s now $300 less, but at $3000, this one bedroom apartment on Troutman — the unsold “Troutman Lofts,” I am assuming — is still an outrageous ripoff. They are now billing it as a 2 or 3 bedroom, because you can use the mezzanine as a bedroom, and they will even build you a second mezzanine as a third bedroom! More cheap spindly wood crap banisters for everyone! Mezzanines on top of mezzanines! From your cloud-level upper mezzanine, you’ll be able to spy on the gaggle of thugs who sit on the building’s stoop at all hours. Give. Me. A. Break. This should be $2000 at the most, and that’s being generous.

Bushwick wannabe: Actually, this is so far into Bed-Stuy, I think “Bushwick” might be a typo by an ill-informed data entrist. But here it is anyhow: it’s by Atlantic and Utica on the AC trains.

From the wtf file: Okay, the apartment seems fine: $1800 for a renovated 2br “loft.” It’s not “E. Williamsburg” by any stretch, but whatever. But can anyone tell me what “Big Shopping Mall” is “steps” to the DeKalb L stop?

Dishonorable mention: They have pawned off the $1300 studio onto some other agency. At least they’re not calling it a loft. Bushwick and Troutman is not a cute intersection, I can’t imagine how they think they can get this price. Oh wait, they can’t — that’s why the dump is still vacant!

(I’m aware that it’s now 9/21 — shaddap.)