Moving In: Learn Your Area

By Lev Novak

Just like rappers have told us, you have to rep your neighborhood. At the very least, you have to know it. So how do you find out where you’ll be living for the year?

1. Walk It Out

Walk. For the first week of living in your apartment, spend time- a serious amount of time- walking around your area. This makes more sense in an urban location, but even by your campus neighborhood, it’s important to know your physical space well.

Walking it out doesn’t just mean a stroll with headphones. It means looking around- take wrong turns. Go past your house. Come at it from different angles, in the day and at night. It’s a small initial payment of your time, but it’ll pay off; you’ll have mastery of the area. Is one angle sketchy at night? Now you know. Is there a hidden laundry-mat nearby? Now you know. Besides all that, walking- physically moving across the land- gives you an understanding and a feeling for your area. Mentally, you’re marking your area, all without peeing.

2. Use Computers

Using computers isn’t an excuse not to walk around your area. You still have to do that to get the physical understanding of the space you inhabit. After all, “six minutes” on Google Maps can feel very, very different in practice than it does in theory.

Still, you should use computers. Go to Yelp and put in your address: then, search the listings for everything within walking distance to you. These are your staples- if you have a laundry mat, a grocery store, a cheap and good restaurant, and a liquor store, you’re on top of the world. If you have two of the four, you’re still doing fine. But this is an important step as a hidden place might be awesome, and having these places listed will help you plan harder mentally. What’s missing? From there, you can type in what you’re missing and find the nearest (barber/bakery/vegan cafe) that you would like. It’s not your area, but knowing what your area has- and lacks- can help dictate where you’re willing to go for the other things.

3. Try Everything

Go to every spot. If a place looks bad, it might be bad, or it might be awesome. If it’s bad, whatever- now you know. If, on the other hand, it’s awesome? You just won a secret prize given to explorers. You are a genius and everyone will throw a parade in your honor.

So, you know, try stuff.

4. Check The People

Besides the stuff in the area, it’s important to see- and, as an extreme measure, to talk to- the people living in the area.

Are there a lot of young people around? It’s probably an affordable fun area. Are there young couples? Keep your eyes peeled for nice bakeries and tell your parents your area is safe, so they can stop worrying already. Is it full of shuffling, living corpses? It’s a zombie apocalypse, or maybe a “Walking Dead” convention. Either way, you should leave before they bite you.

Talking to the people in the area will tell you a lot about the area as a whole, and they might have some information to share. Look, if this was Skyrim you’d talk to them, right? Might as well do it now.

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