Airbnb Adventures: Williamsburg, Brooklyn

So, this is the building that we stayed in during the NYC leg of our east coast trip. Another Airbnb gem. It's funny, when you see a place on Airbnb, you don't see the neighborhood, the outside of the building, or even the inside of the building. You just kind of assume that since the pictures of nice, everything else will be, too, right?! Well... walking up we were extremely underwhelmed. The closer you got the worse it looked, haha. Once you got inside the building it was one fire code violation after another (we know this because Fire Marshal Mark Carman was with us...). The walls of the building were covered in graffiti and the place looked like its most recent cleaning was about 5 years ago. Panic set in for a minute. We made our way up to our studio loft and it was just as the pictures provided (whew!). We chatted with someone in the elevator and they told us to head up to the rooftop. Once we got up there saw the most incredible views of Manhattan! Okay, so this place isn't as bad as it looks.

Later in the week we chatted with a tenant that said Bill Murray sublets an apartment in the building and has been known to randomly waltz into parties in the building. We also found out that there used to be an illegal matzo ball factory in the basement of the building and the fire department shut the building down for 3 months to destroy the factory and bring the building back up to code. So it turns out that our funky little building has become a bit of a landmark for controversy and celebrities. Who knew?!

Who also knew that at the end of our stay we'd kinda miss our divey little digs?! It really grew on us.

- Photos © Holly Copeland -