Neighborhood near Penn Station (apartments, to rent, living in)

[Atsushi]

Hi,

I'm hoping that someone will share their insight about living in the neighborhood of Penn Station.

Pros, cons, etc. ?

My girlfriend and I are considering to rent an apartment there because I work in NJ and she works in Long Island. We've figured that living near Penn Station and by commuting by train may be a good way for us to experience life in NYC.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Atsushi

Chelsea/Koreatown is pretty expensive. That's your only major con.

[Fred314X]

One commuter to New Jersey, and another to Long Island? Let's see...

Assuming you didn't want to incur the expense of living in Manhattan, you could always split the distance and look somewhere in Brooklyn.

[Atsushi]

Hi

We are a couple in our early 40's. We have lived in other parts of the country in the past, like IN and CO for a few years, but the longest time that we spent was in Connecticut. A couple of years ago, job opportunities brought us respectively to NJ and LI, and we are now investigating if it's even possible for us to live together without changing our jobs. One of us could always change the job, yes. But since both of us are still relatively new at the job, we prefer to stay with our current job at least for the next two or three years.

Geography wise, we looked at everywhere, like Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Jersey City, and we have come to realize that using public transportation may be the only way for us to keep the commuting time reasonable for both of us (a little over an hour). So the only place to shave off the time seems to be proximity to Penn Station. If we could walk to Penn in 5 minutes, it seems commuting time is going to be reasonable.

Neither of us wants to live in NYC for good (We are basically suburbanites). But we consider ourselves to be young, curious, adventurous and adaptable enough people, and if it's for two or three years until one of us change jobs, we've figured that living in Manhattan may be fun.

We are sure that it's expensive, but if we keep the rent under $2,500, it would still be cheaper than the combined rents that we are currently paying for the two apartments. Sure, the train pass will be a couple of hundred dollars too, but even with that, if we find a small apartment for around $2,000, we think that we won't be spending much more than what we already are.

Needless to say, we don't like the NYC tax, but if it's two or three years, it seems acceptable as part of the cost of the unique experience.

So that's why we are curious to hear from people who live near Penn Station. Perhaps, some people may have similar reasons why they live there. Others may have completely different reasons. But whatever the reasons are, we would like to hear personal experiences, opinions about life near Penn. Certain things must be difficult to do and other things may be easier, like going grocery shopping there. We have never even done grocery shopping using anything but our cars (no, we'll get rid of our cars...or keep it our our offices in NJ and LI if we do live in Manhattan). Some must have dogs (and we do too), and where do you go to take them for a walk?

Anyway, that's the reason for our posting.