Winter Retreats: A Romance and A Bromance
Our homes are often a reflection of our relationships and in this edition of Brooklyn Interiors we’ve got a real queer romance and two straight boys in a serious bromance. Both charming apartments are in Prospect Heights and offer a very zen design. Peak inside your neighbor’s homes with another installment of modern apartment porn!
Burgess Bub, 25 and Tiffany Watson, 33
Live in Girlfriends/ Prospect Heights
Queerespondence: How long have you been living together?
Burgess: We’ve been sharing collective space together for almost three years, and have been living together in this room for about a year and a half.
Queerespondence: Where are the mounted pieces from?
Tiffany: The mounted pieces are from an art gallery in the tiny town of Phoenicia, NY. The artist’s last name is Fraser, and he collaborated on this Revolver LP series with his teenage son (these are only two pieces from a series of eight). The Frasers took each LP and printed a “No symbol” atop a print of a revolver. Each piece in the gallery had a different color combination and we liked these two the best. On each of ours, only one word remains visible from the original LP; the blue reveals the word “Spin” and the yellow one shows “Harm” (from Harmony records). The idea is that each record can mount on the wall and spin in whichever direction you choose.
Queerespondence: What items are from your travels?
Burgess: The Picasso poster hanging above the bookshelf is one that I picked up while in Barcelona with my godmother. We went to Museu Picasso and saw an amazing collection of his early works. I loved this poster of Picasso because of the playful yet dubious look on his face. We bought another Picasso poster in Paris this summer, but it hasn’t been framed yet.
Tiffany: We picked up those shells along the beach while visiting my brother Luke and his family in Lake Worth Fl this January. That is our beautiful nephew Kai in the picture; he is 15 months old. Kai tasted most of the shells he gathered.
Queerespondence: Where are the super neat bikes from?
Burgess: Our bikes came from this guy in Sheepshead Bay (his name escapes me). He has an entire garage of bikes that he fixes up right in front of your eyes. He and his wife were really nice. They even make their own in-house wine, which we got to sip upon while we watched him change the tires and tighten the brakes on our new bikes. Tiffany’s is a Schwinn Caliente and mine is a Saint Tropez.
Queerespondence: Lots of McSweenys, big fans?
Burgess: Tiffany is a big fan of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and is a subscriber (I like them too). Four times a year, we get a new and unique issue delivered to our home. McSweeney’s loves to play with format and themes: the last one we received was shaped like a gigantic newspaper with “magazines” inside.
Adam Delehanty, 24 and Nathan Karp, 24
A Cozy Bromance / Prospect Heights
Queerespondence: How did you guys meet?
Adam: We met in college. In Rhode Island. When I met Nathan, he had this Bay Area dialect that sounded like a foreign language. We became hella good friends later on.
Queerespondence: Who found the apartment?
Nathan: My friend Rene found the apartment and worked on it a lot with his dad. He always said it was a great first apartment. He moved back to California to make a film. (Check out Whizmob.tv)
Queerespondence: How much of the stuff did you guys inherit?
Adam: A good amount was here beforehand, but we’ve rearranged and re-done. There was this huge antique brass fixture (pictured) lying around and we figured out a way to hang it up proper in the living room. We filled the space where glass used to go with brown wax paper… it looks better than it sounds.
Queerespondence: This blue in the bedroom is so neat, what’s it called?
Nathan: Wythe Blue, with “cotton balls” trim. It was between “cotton balls” or “bavarian cream”, and even though I preferred the name of the latter, I opted for the former.
Queerespondence: What’s with the piano?
Adam: The piano is a big reason I moved here. An older lady who was here two tenants ago left it, out of tune, without pedals. It’s tuned now. I play it every day. Made-up stuff, but also classical.
Queerespondence: Do you have a favorite piece?
Adam: “Gaspard de la Nuit” by Ravel. Plus everything I hear on Q2live.org.
Queerespondence: You must do a lot of cooking, where do you shop?
Nathan: We do lots of our shopping at the Park Slope Co-Op.
(Photos by Isabel Watson)
