u/Emily_Cheezus

Hello everyone! I’m going to be in Florence for four days next September (I know, so long from now but I’m really excited) with my boyfriend. We are going to be at a wedding in Perugia afterwards and were looking to go to a winery while in the Umbria region, but the schedule is going to be pretty packed.

Any recs for wineries that we could reach via train around Florence? We’d be willing to do as much as an hour and a half each way for a nice spot to spend the afternoon.

Just moved out of a building (1 Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn) after two years and wanted to send out a “proceed with caution” if you’re planning on renting with Watermark Management. They have a couple different aliases behind the admin for the building (The Bridge Building LLC, Watermark Living) and I’m not sure what other buildings they own, but they definitely have a few around the city.

Management was abysmally unresponsive, and were very lucky we never got locked out or had any major mechanical failures on the weekend because there would’ve been no shot for us to get help. You email their contact in the tune of 5-10 times on the same issue and they will not respond unless they need something from you. If you tried to call their phone number (which is not easy to find), their voicemail is perpetually full.

They gave us the wrong Con Edison registration so we were paying for another apartment’s electric for 9 months when we first moved in. Our water heater broke and we didn’t have hot water for 3 days last winter because the repair didn’t work the first time and it was not treated as an emergency. Packages were constantly stolen from the lobby, and we were told by another tenant that the cameras they have throughout the building are largely not working aside from the one at the front door. Midway through our residency they switched from “Watermark Management” to “Watermark Living” and it definitely felt like some scummy way to dodge taxes or legal issues, but I’m unsure if anyone has other insights into larger issues in other buildings like that that are going on.

On the day we moved out they requested we make ourselves available for a walk through, and we proposed a time. They never responded confirming it and never showed up, so my boyfriend and I had to call the super and have him do it (to his chagrin, he said he’s not supposed to). When he came up, he was remarking on the insanity that we moved in with clear water damage on the ceiling that was shoddily patched and said he’d only been there for a couple of months and was considering quitting. Then when we told him new tenants were planning on moving in the next day, it looked like he’d seen a ghost and said there was no way they’d be able to come in when they were told because they’d have no time to fix up the apartment ahead of time. But we were in touch with the new tenants and they were under the impression that they’d be coming in the next day, but COULD NOT GET IN TOUCH WITH MANAGEMENT TO EVEN PICK UP THE KEYS (like what do you even mean bro)

Maybe we just had an unlucky draw of it with them and people have had better experiences, but signs point to other people having similar annoyances and issues for sure. I am so happy every day that I moved to Gowanus into a lovely 3-family building with a sweetheart landlord living downstairs, even if it’s an older and not as fancy looking building. We were lucky to have no pests or anything like that, but us renters absolutely deserve better. Sorry for the novel, just figured the people should know.

I’m going to be moving a place on 9th street right next to the 4th-9th train stations, and from looking around the area I can’t tell what the best grocery shopping will be around there. There’s a Whole Foods close but that’s def more expensive than what I’m looking for for my week-to-week stocking up. I don’t have a car but have a cart.