Flatbush and thinking about your 'hood.

Not too long ago I moved to Flatbush, Brooklyn (or Kings - whatever the case may be). It's a swell neighborhood, filled to the brim with people, just like anywhere in Brooklyn. We live on the southern end of Flatbush in an area called Lefferts Garden. Our street is Parkside Ave, lined by some five or six story apartment complexes and a number of three- to four-story Brooklyn brownstones (although they are technically limestones I guess).
I live in this duplex in the third and fourth floors. I currently have three female roommates and our newest addition is about to arrive from Oregon tomorrow. He's a dude, and I'm looking forward to having some more testosterone in the apartment.
I began this current posting so that I could bookmark, in a sense, a website that I have been meaning to come back to and read, but haven't spent the effort to do such quite yet. It's a blog about Lefferts Garden, but I'm not sure how recently it was updated.
There's a lot to be said about this area of Brooklyn. We've got working class West Indians, like my landlord who's from St. Kitz. Most of them have emigrated from Jamaica, Trinidad or Tobago, although they could have hailed from parts of Africa, too, I think. Then you've got the whites that are either young transplants to the big apple, or those families who have probably been here considerably longer, and have gotten some funds together to buy one of these limestone duplexes at a much more competitve price than something you'd find on the west-side of Prospect Park or in Manhattan (but that is a foregone conclusion, really).
There is a bit of regular violence in this neck of the woods, and it hasn't created a safe-feeling environment for my female roommates. I'm sure a lot people feel vulnerable, too, but it's one of those things that you have to ultimately accept. Now, by saying that I don't mean to just shrug it off and write it off as an acceptable aspect of life in this part of the world, but to realize that you have to compassionately aware of what happens without letting it sharply affect your soul and well-being. I wouldn't have been able to adapt to living here if I weren't able to look at my lot in life in that sense.
OK, that's it for now, milkbuff.