Forget Rockaway, Ft Tilden, the Coney Island side and all the others, Brighton Beach is where you need to be.

I came alone and walked up an unassuming flight of stairs to the second floor that opened onto a narrow hallway with a reception desk. Before arriving at the Room, I could already sense the rich smell of damp earth that permeated the space.

Wonderful place to grab a coffee+pastry with a great vibe and outdoor-only seating. Best cold-brew in the neighborhood. Doubles as the headquarters for The Lot Radio station, so there is often a live DJ spinning pretty chill music.

The Home Depot is one of the first things I saw when the taxi brought me at the place where I live now in NYC. I am renting a room in an old feather factory, which the owner build into a very cozy loft with rooms, common places and studios over the last 12 years. The Home Depot is a massive construction store, one of the leading ones in the US if you can say something like that about construction stores...You ll find them everywhere in the states as well as in my backyard and you can even follow them on Facebook. In general everybody in Bed Stuy complains about the Home Depot, because the employees are grumpy, lazy and never know anything when you ask them for something.

This is the place where I ate my first burger just 2 hours after I arrived in 'tha hood' I loved the place immediately because of the supersweet employees. And the fact that they have al this vintage machines in the place: like an old COKE machine and a cigarette machine as well as a jukebox from the sixties. The fact that they serve ALL DAY LONG BREAKFAST really made me happy, probably because I lived in Berlin before I moved here and there people are endlessly chilling and having breakfast the whole day long anyway! On wednesdays Wally organizes film evenings with funny nineties classics and on thursday evening you can eat a 5 dollar burger menu. While eating your inexpensive burger think of Wall.E.