My favorite neighborhood

I’ve lived in New York for 21 years, since I was a freshman in college, and I’ve lived in many, many neighborhoods. I had a compulsion to move in my 20s--I was just never comfortable. Here are the places I’ve lived, not necessarily in the correct order:

• Morningside Heights
• Brooklyn Heights
• Upper West Side
• Lower East Side
• East Village
• Cobble Hill
• Carroll Gardens
• Chelsea
• West Village (6 years)
• Sunset Park

And now, Astoria, and in a few months, the Ditmars side of Astoria. And this time, we’re homeowners, so perhaps this will be my last neighborhood? Who knows.

But finding Astoria and moving here was a great revelation. This is by far my favorite part of New York, and I feel like I have the breadth of experience of having lived in a lot of places to really back that up.

I found Astoria via Sesame Street, where my husband works, and which shoots at Kaufman Astoria studios on 34th Avenue. We had been living in Sunset Park together and had just married that fall, and he was working in the studio on that season’s episodes. So every morning he left our Brooklyn apartment at 7 AM, and he came home most nights at 10 PM.

We had no children then and I was working late most nights. I was still on staff at an ad agency; I hadn’t yet gone freelance and regained control of my hours. So we were both stretched thin.

And we hated our apartment and we hated our neighborhood. But like most things you hate but that envelope you, we didn’t really consider changing. We had really low rent, we loved each other and we weren’t home that much.

But the neighborhood felt so unfriendly and desolate and downtrodden. I used to powerwalk (my knees couldn’t handle running, so yes, I became one of those silly-looking women—and when I start exercising again, I’ll go back) in Green-wood Cemetery, which was nearby, but they kicked me out (you can’t powerwalk in a cemetery, even if you bring along a bouquet of flowers so you look like you are going to visit a grave… that is how low I had sunk—pretending to mourn a loved one so I could work out). So I had to powerwalk through the streets, and it was so lonely until I got to Park Slope, and then it was too crowded.

So we just endured, enjoyed our cheap rent and rejoiced when Fresh Direct started delivering so we actually had okay groceries (there were no good restaurants near us either).

And then came the Sesame Street Christmas Party, which used to be a big extravaganza. It was held on the set (by Hooper’s store) with tons of food and a DJ playing eighties hits and disco, and a wild Muppet pageant, and singing, and alcohol, and some office hijinks. I’m not great at those parties but this one was fun.

After the party, the entire cast and crew were allowed to take Town cars home (big perk after months of late nights!), so we climbed into ours outside the studio and it took off through the Astoria streets. And that’s when I fell in love.

It was late December and late at night, and my husband and I were giggling at the drunken people (a mystery guest and one of the interns) making out in front of the studio (big gossip for the next morning!) and I looked out the window, happy to be in the car heading to our apartment.

And all of a sudden I knew I wanted to live here, in this neighborhood. It looked as though a family could be happy here, in these quiet streets. It looked as though people had real lives here, that they weren’t just camping out until the next best thing showed itself. It felt as though a life could be built here and enjoyed and treasured.

I mentioned how pretty I thought Astoria was to my husband and he sort of blinked at me. He had never considered it a neighborhood—it was where the studio was, nothing more and nothing less.

It was in Queens, and Queens, to young, ambitious people in New York, was very low on the totem pole. In fact, it was lower than where Brooklyn used to be. And yet somehow Brooklyn has become cool and desirable. Anyway, Queens just wasn’t on his radar. It hadn’t been on mine either until that moment. Plus my father had grown up in Jackson Heights, and he had talked often about escaping Queens. For me to actually desire to live in Queens was truly bizarre to my dad.

So my husband thought about it, and fairly quickly he agreed with me (transforming his commute from an hour to five minutes was a big incentive). And six months later we moved to Astoria, and a few months later had our first child. Astoria is where our family truly began.

I love it here. And it is the place I imagined it might be that night in the Town Car heading back to Brooklyn—yet far, far more.

I’d love to know how other moms found Astoria. It is my favorite part of New York City, and I wish I had found it years before.