There is something odd about the first floor apartment in the Williamsburg townhouse my boyfriend rents: specifically, it’s unclear who lives there. The foot traffic through the front door makes for fodder for the speculative kind of gossip common in an intimately dense city like New York, where fights and guitar strumming sessions are audible and you occasionally glimpse the guy across the street sitting in front of his computer in the throes of an oily, full frontal Friday night odyssey of self-pleasure. So what’s more uncomfortable: seeing your neighbor naked, or knowing that they’re operating an ad-hoc hostel out of your building? ”I think the people downstairs are doing Airbnb,” the boyfriend stage-whispered suspiciously the other weekend. Read More
