Urburbia

Eviction is the only real reason to move. Whether it's natural disaster or financial inadequacy, the forced move makes any excuse moot.

My brother in Buffalo grew tired of subsidizing my writing career, resulting in my 18th move (at lease three of them involuntary) in my 35 years. The thought of another evoked a dread akin to another birthday, and I seem to have equal power over both.

Gotham is a scribe's paradise, yet those who capitalize on creativity are living well while those doing the actual creative work juggle multiple jobs to make rent. It would be funny if it weren't true: I couldn't afford $500 a month in Buffalo, so now I'm paying nearly $1,500 in Brooklyn Heights.

My neighborhood was America's first suburb, where the original Manhattanites fled. Brooklyn Heights is also the site of George Washington's great escape of 1776-crossing the Delaware was never so essential-as well as the epicenter of literature. Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass near Fulton Landing; Capote, Auden, Wolfe and multiple Millers lived and wrote here. Until recently, Norman Mailer resided and worked in some surreal recreation of the bow of a ship overlooking the East River: over 80 and still climbing ropes and navigating passages to enter his writing realm. There are others, too, but not for long. Gilbert Grape's creator will soon be a former neighbor, though there's still that scarred skateboarder scribbling in her journal.

This waterfront sublet of the brownstone borough offers brilliant views to the highest bidder. Couples who bought during the sordid '70s are now selling out, the values of their homes having increased 50-fold, and more lawyers and investors are moving in. A reenactment of Washington's retreat but in reverse, they're now fleeing Manhattan for Brooklyn-Oh! The skyline afar enormous! Twin peaks missing, Verizon sign marring...

The Heights is urburbia now. They're hiring Russians and Mexicans to gut their new/old brownstones and Jamaicans to care for their kids. Their Dumpsters take up three parking spaces and their double-wide strollers clog the sidewalks, and they still have the nerve to complain about dogshit in their garbage cans. It doesn't matter, anyway; soon, my building will be sold, also, and I'll be evicted along with the rent-control retirees. Our landlord is old, too, though he still knows just how much rent he can squeeze from a stone.

Still, when I tell people that I live in Brooklyn Heights, they're suddenly eating chocolate-"Mmmmm, The Heights..." It is an appealing neighborhood, more symbol than actual place, but like every part of New York, no one fully understands it until living there for a time. My girlfriend, dog and I only ended up here because we were avoiding New York's newest pimps, the real estate brokers. We were emphatic that we would not pay someone more than one month's rent for the privilege of checking our credit and cashing our check. Our landlord also avoids brokers. Ours was a serendipitous meeting.

So we settled on Garden Place. A short one-way in Brooklyn Heights, it's a relic: a hidden, exclusive gem, so flawed that it's beautiful. A century and a half ago it was the Livingston family's garden; it was named Garden Street when the land was sold for development and made into a street, and later renamed Garden Place to convey affluence.

In comparison to the brownstones that line the block, our red brick building at the end is squalid. Our basement apartment, originally a servants' quarters, is more cute than comfortable, and the trash bins outside our window are constantly overflowing-mattresses, wicker hampers, befouled plastic baggies-giving anyone entering from our southern side of the street the feeling of entering a ghetto.

Alas, our landlord will never uphold the impeccable standards upon which the Garden Place Block Club insists.

During our first week here, when we were almost established and searching curbs for a couch, carpet or anything else useful and free, there came a knock on our door. A middle-aged woman in yoga pants and a sweatshirt was welcoming us to the neighborhood. Instead of a pie, she had a request-would we help carry dozens of tables and chairs? The annual Garden Place Block Party was underway, and we were suddenly pledges-bending, lifting and sweating like subjects in some perverse experiment. "Are we actually doing this?" we asked one another. We felt whored, and afterward, at the actual party, totally inferior, having no dish to offer, only our impertinent puppy.

It was sublime to meet everyone on the block, explaining where we came from and how we managed to live here. One wife remarked casually how cash magically appears from ATMs; the husbands were distant, drinking and whispering off to the side. Insider trading or swinging, we couldn't tell. And all along, we were told we had an awful landlord.

The Garden Place Block Club is a force to be reckoned with-our landlord is regularly summoned before them-and the community is aghast at the amount of garbage our building produces weekly. Outsiders are eyed; there's a 24-hour watch.

Despite such vigilance, our bikes were stolen from our stoop a week after the party.

Just two blocks south, across Atlantic Avenue in Cobble Hill, the brownstones are similar and the one-ways equally flawed, but real estate prices drop by a third. It's a world of opportunity there. Restaurants have a life span of hours on Smith Street.

And throughout Brooklyn, once-affordable communities have become hotbeds of speculation. Even trainless Red Hook has become a target for developers, a place artists are trying to get into before their presence helps price them out.

DUMBO was lost faster than it was found; Williamsburg, with its Hasidim besieged by hipsters, resembles Jerusalem; Harlem is now mulatto; Queens is being subdivided. Jersey is starting to look attractive. Soon, only the Bronx will remain, with its Yankees recalling their glorious century. But where there is land and buildings, the exodus of creation will continue.

I'm glad I live in post-9/11 New York, still the center of it all. The events of that day were on display at the Promenade, and the winds covered Brooklyn Heights with a fine toxic dust. My neighbor recently confessed that her tomato plants have never grown better (fertilized, perhaps?) and the EPA signifies us as a big red dot.

Nevertheless, I see reassuring signs of a rough, rude persona everywhere. I enjoy jaywalking and getting flipped-off, then laughing at how the city arrests people on bicycles when even the Garden Place Block Club failed to protect mine.

In this sprawling and saturated place, actual friends remain few, and several stops in between. I have peers and acquaintances, and shadows, like the CIA agent. Deep undercover, beer in a Dunkin' Donuts cup, disguised as a bum, using a straw to quicken his buzz-he's an awful agent, really. Anyone can spot him, and it doesn't help that he tells everyone he's CIA, either.

So here he comes, cup half empty, staggering past, stopping too late, he stumbles into reverse to ask me, as usual, "Are you that voice I'm hearing?"

Nodding but declining, I always answer the same: "Nope, sorry, man."

And how he glares. Shaking his fist, reminding me that he knows how to make bombs and where I live. And then he moves along, mumbling to his agency how he could take out a whole city block, starting with mine; he leaves me as always, sitting and hoping.

He'd better do it soon, before someone else does. Because, when he or they do, I won't be here. I'll have moved away again, evicted from New York and off to wherever. It has to happen-it's like clockwork really, and I'm already overdue. I just hope it's voluntary this time.