I lived at West Village for 13 months in 2001-2002.
I picked it because it was beautiful and the area had sidewalks (coming from Europe, the scarcity of sidewalks in Durham was a major shock) and despite the very high rent (but I only was going to stay for a year).
I took a two bedroom, because the one- bedroom apartments were narrow and dark. The ceilings were very high, and I loved the hardwood floors and exposed bricks. It was a bit like living on a movie set, because it was pretty spectacular. The fitness room (which I only used twice) was quite cramped, but the laundry facilities were OK.

I realized pretty soon that I would have to partake very closely in my upstairs neighbor's sports passions. He also returned home late at night with friends, all of whom walked incessantly with tip-tap shoes and played marbles for long periods of time (at least, this is what it sounded like). If he had a cough, I suffered with him, and could hear most of his phone calls.

Within a month of my arrival, a guy simply entered my apartment from the deck (while I was there) to ask for money. Management blocked the bedroom window so that I could keep it open without anyone larger than a child coming in (but the intruder had used the patio door). They also installed a motion-activated light, but it did not give me a lot of security (and was terrible if I wanted to read outside, because I had to keep flapping the book and generally become very agitated every two minutes to get the light to come back on).

Three months later, another guy walked in (but the light came on just before he did...), with the same story of having run out of gas. I called the police promptly (as I had been told that I should have done that the first time around), and later the policeman called because he could not come in (strange, because everyone else could). Later, a cat came in (did not even activate the light), and after that a dog did. Anyway, I was never physically harmed, but it certainly made my evenings pretty tense. A colleague put a chain to my deck door, to limit access (but also air flow). Once I saw a guy on my neighbors' deck, while they were out of town, and when I called him about being there, he told me that he was a police officer engaged in an undercover operation... Three times water suddenly rained into my apartment from upstairs.

Management was pretty decent with me, friendly, added 1 month to my lease without raising my rent, and returned my deposit pretty promptly. I did not feel that they were sufficiently concerned about the security issues, though, but they pretty much responded to everything else.

Parking was a bit difficult at night, as I did not like parking on the street, given my experience with security (or lack thereof). Panhandlers approached me two or three times (but I was outside, so I took it better).

It was a very exciting year, but when I returned to the USA I went for a safer (and cheaper) place, alas- without sidewalks... BuLYzGcKAVo8MQPlcXJq

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