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Community Corner

Why Hoboken is Better Than Brooklyn

Kathy Zucker and her family took a trip back to Brooklyn Heights. They retraced their steps and found the place unchanged; they were the ones who had changed.

My husband and I recently took our two toddlers to the Brooklyn Marriott to watch the NYC Fencing World Cup.  into many of our old teammates and introduced them to our children.

We parked our car in Brooklyn Heights, our former neighborhood. After we left the fencing salle, my husband had the brilliant idea of getting dinner there and revisiting our favorite haunts. We had already stopped by the farmers' market to pick up lunch materials, and the food was just as great as we remembered.  

 Everywhere around us were families out on weekend walks, it was the perfect setting for a Brooklyn Heights toddler outing on a gorgeous summer evening. And yet we couldn't wait to get back to Hoboken.

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After dinner we strolled down the promenade, stopping to sit on a park bench, looking at the Manhattan skyline from the east side. Every step we took in Brooklyn ignited old memories. We stopped to get ice cream and ate it on a stoop. We also had the thrill of seeing two FDNY trucks tear out of the fire house down the block.

I expected to be overcome with nostalgia and longing to live in Brooklyn Heights again. And it is certainly an incredibly picturesque, walkable, convenient area. It is also old, something that never occurred to me while we were living there. Almost every building has steps in front of it, a nightmare when you are hauling a heavy double stroller. Parking garages are scarce and on the outskirts of town, window air conditioning units are the norm, and the sidewalks were bumpy with ancient tree roots.

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Some parts of Hoboken remind me of Brooklyn Heights, but there is much more new construction, especially on the west side of town. My family has an urban lifestyle 15 minutes from Manhattan with many of the benefits of the suburbs (expansive rooms, deeded garage parking and central air conditioning plus big box grocery stores with parking). I knew all this when I bought my condos, but re-experiencing my past brought those choices back vividly.

I am really glad we chose to live in Hoboken.

To read more about what makes Kathy Zucker tick, check out her blog at http://hobokenmomcondo.com/momblog and follow her at http://twitter.com/zhobokenmom

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