56 Stagg Street,

Brooklyn, NY 11206

Close to L/J/M/G trains.
Bodega and laundromat are downstairs and both have very friendly staff.
Multiple supermarket options.

There’s an OG crew that basically owns the sidewalk. They’re not friendly, let alone neighborly.
Think blasting music until your windows rattle, cars honking and revving like The Fast & The Furious, fireworks at 3 AM (the BOOM kind, not the festive colorful ones) and fights that come with knives and sometimes guns are waved around to amp up the drama.
Good luck watching a movie or listening to your own music. Noise machines and ear plugs don’t work, that’s how strong the bass is.

Ambulances picking up overdoses is just part of the scenery.
And if you’re a woman walking by alone, expect some charming “commentary”.
They don’t like old-timers or newcomers. They don’t even like each other, otherwise they wouldn’t fight so much.
I get they’ve been here for generations but we have to be able to sleep so we can go to work in the morning and pay our bills.

Inside the building, it’s not much better.
The intercom barely works, packages get opened or vanish altogether (cameras are often down).
Mice and roaches have been here longer than anyone else and we have to do our own extermination to keep them from engulfing the building. You can hear the mice running in the ceiling and walls.

There’s no super, so when something important breaks, expect weeks of waiting and the cheapest and flimsiest fix possible. At this point, we just repair everything ourselves.

The walls are thin enough that you get to hear and smell everything your neighbors are up to. And yes, they are up to a lot.
Add in steam pipes that clank and bang like a psycho drumline and are hot enough to cook on, and you’ve got the soundtrack of the apartment. And yes, they leak.

For internet, there’s only Spectrum. So they charge whatever they feel like, and it goes up every year. Same with the rent; average Williamsburg prices and rising yearly, as if this is luxury living. Meanwhile, my kids wake up scared in the night because the chaos outside never really stops.
I’m NY born and raised and no, this isn’t just normal NYC noise. It’s a lot better than it used to be but this block is still a special kind of crazy.
Somehow we’re all still paying for the privilege.

Honestly, if it was cheap, I wouldn’t be complaining.

A ton of natural light. Really good location. Really affordable.

Cockroaches, floor falling apart, neighbors outside could be loud

Renovate/close up all the openings + get a better extermination process to get rid of the bugs