Is there any city in the world more people flock to in pursuit of the American Dream than New York? Immigrants from everywhere, China to Poland, Moscow to Topeka, have been streaming into the Big Apple for centuries, knowing it’s the one place they can scrape together a living for their families or where their Jell-O based performance art might find an audience.

And yet in no other city in the U.S. is it more difficult to achieve that most fundamental aspect of the American Dream: owning your own home. Unless your particular dream was to be a banker, lawyer or doctor, there’s a good chance you’re still renting. Even in the current housing “slump,” apartment prices are still far beyond the financial reach of so many New Yorkers.

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This week on The Swarm, blogger Alice, of FeistyRed and Tales of A Delectable Redhead, tells us about the online dating scene, and why normal people should not use eHarmony.

Recently over a night of fine liquor and fine friends, girls and guys alike were bemoaning their single status. I responded via my recent upbeat positive drunken way, “no guys! Online dating is where it’s all at! So many people fall in love online!” Since I don’t have any empirical evidence to support this, I offered myself up as the guinea pig.

On May 1st, a mere 7 days before my 28th birthday, I signed up for 3 dating sites- eHarmony, Match, and OkCupid. After further consulting a girlfriend, I eventually paid for eHarmony, because eHarmony is where you go to find a relationship (or so I am told). And essentially that was what I promised my friends they would find online, we don’t need a website to find a fling, it’s called Tumblr Meetups (I kid!).

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This week on The Swarm, neighborbeeblog plays host to Spinachdip NYC. One of NYC’s earliest members of the blogosphere (waaaay back in 2004!), Mr. Dip recently moved to D.C. In the following post, he tells us New Yorkers the top 5 things we shouldn’t take for granted.

It’ll happen to you someday - you’re going to leave New York. Sooner or later, you’ll find a better paying job, start a family, or decide you want to spend your $1 million on something other than a 1-bedroom walkup. And when you do, you’ll miss New York.

I’ve lived in DC for the past year, and as comfortable as it is here, it’s not the same. Whereas people move to NYC for the big city experience, people who move to DC are there in spite of the big city-ness, and it shows.

It’s really the little things I miss, like the coffee vendor on the corner and seeing the Empire State from my rooftop. Anyway, here are the five things about New York that you might take for granted.

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This week on The Swarm, neighborbeeblog plays host to Rob The Bouncer, author of Clublife (both the blog and the book). Tired of life in East Central Queens, Rob tells us about his dreams to move– not across the bridge, but across the borough… to Brooklyn.

I’ve spent most of my life thus far in the borough of Queens, home to countless little troll-men, a subject I’ll touch on momentarily. Queens, to me, has never been, nor will it ever be, “The New Brooklyn.” I can’t think of it in those terms because the part of Queens in which I was raised bears no resemblance to the yuppified, clog-wearing, McSweeney’s-worshipping, hipster-squatting parts of Brooklyn - unless you think, for example, that 50 Cent and/or the Kalua Cabaret fall under the categories of “hip” and “trendy.”

The little troll-men that haunt the dreams of my anti-antediluvian Queens wear floral-print polyester sweatshirts, straight-brimmed New Era hats cocked to the side - sticker on for authenticity - and that tricky little chin strap beard that all the women swoon over. I see them everywhere I go.

This is probably why I’ve been thinking of moving to Brooklyn lately. I pretty much woke up one morning and said to myself, “Self? You’ve published a book and you’ve been doing fairly well for yourself lately on multiple fronts, so maybe it’s time you get away from the little troll-men of Queens and try to live around some more intelligent and happening people.”

So where does a guy like me - a tourist, for all intents and purposes, when it comes to the city’s “intellectual” life - think to look when he wants to live and work amongst people he believes will make him feel a little more relevant?

Why, Park Slope, of course!

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This week on The Swarm, NYC transplant Cajun Boy In The City shares some thoughts on moving to New York, and the transformation that happens after you’re not a tourist anymore.

Have you ever accidentally run across something that you’d written years ago and just felt as though you wanted to recoil into a shell like a frightened turtle when you read it, mainly because it felt like such a rhetorical abortion? A few days ago I was going through an old email account (attempting to fully complete a Yahoo Mail to Gmail conversion if you really want to know) and found myself going through five and six year-old emails, emails that I’d written around the time that I moved here in June 2002, that had been saved into my “sent” folder. In doing so I ran across a few letters that I’d written to family and friends back home in Louisiana that detailed some of what I was seeing, feeling, and experiencing in my first few weeks as a freshly-minted resident of New York City. Truth be told, I wanted to puke when I read some of them.

“Jesus I sounded like a freaking tourist back then!”

And essentially, I was a tourist, and I saw the city through the eyes of a tourist. Even though I was more than a bit repulsed, reading these emails made me feel kind of nostalgic for that time in my life, that time of “Wow, I actually live in New York City” wonderment. So when I was asked to write a guest piece on this here blog, I figured that I’d share a few of those words that I’d written back then.

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This week on The Swarm, neighborbeeblog plays host to Jen, author of I Hate You, New Guy Who Sits Next To Me and Rubber Buns And Liquor. This week, Jen discusses the perils of office life and how to avoid any long-lasting effects.

I work in an office, a standard old boring-to-discuss job that, should I shuffle off my mortal coil anytime soon, would leave my obituary writer scrambling to describe kindly, and without using the word “toiled”.

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With millions of blogs on the internet, how is a reader supposed to know what/who to read? neighborbee blog is here to help. Every Friday, The Swarm will feature a guest blogger that we think is one of the internet’s best. Suggestions? Send ‘em to tips@neighborbeeblog.com.

neighborbee blog’s very first guest on The Swarm is The Assimilated Negro, or TAN. One of the web’s most unique and entertaining voices, TAN’s work has appeared everywhere from College Humor to Jewcy. This week, TAN tells neighborbee readers where to go in Astoria.

TAN Guide to Astoria

Waddup homies and homettes! I go by T.A.N. (The Assimilated Negro), and as you have no doubt deduced from my use of jive and aggressive tone (if not the word negro), I’m a black man. Rumor has it I do a lot of talking about race and stuff. I also take a long time introducing myself. Hi again! Word.

All that said, today I have no agenda aside from dropping some neighborhood knowledge on your dome. So! I just recently discovered Astoria, and while I had heard buzz about Queens as the New Brooklyn, I wasn’t really up on all the hip multiculti action going on out there. But it’s really kind of nice, and not yet totally hipster gentri-f’d, so get out there before it’s too late. Towards that end I’m going to shine some light on 4 jewels Astoria has to offer so you can know something besides the Beergarden.

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