I grew up in Brooklyn but now find myself in central Connecticut, which is isolation central. It seems to me, from talking to my suburban neighbors, that everyone's dream is to live in an environment where nothing is different, nothing is threatening in the slightest, everything is comfortable. Of course, then their kids grow up like that and are accustomed to it, and the cheek-by-jowl living, the unpredictability, the diversity, and all the other stuff that makes urban living great seems that much more frightening and exotic to them. I don't get it.

So to answer your questions, until seven months ago (when I lived in Somerville, Mass., and before that, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn), everyone in my neighborhood *didn't* look like me (I'm white), and that was good. Now everyone in my neighborhood *does* look like me, and I feel like I just landed on the moon. Can't wait for the opportunity to move.

I live in the Lower East Side in Manhattan and this place has a mix of Jews, Puerto Ricans, Yuppies, Hipsters, and Blacks peppered around.

It doesn't really matter to me that the Black population is smaller. It would help if there were more Black people out here just because of the convenience of beauty supply stores and hairdressers. I've gotta go to Brooklyn for stuff like that.

An LES girl, huh? My fave part of NYC or at least it used to be before it became tragically hip.

Carry on.

I like diverse areas, where there is a generally even mix — not too much of any ethnicity. I live in the suburbs in the Los Angeles area now, where everyone is either white or Jewish or both. When we moved there, my husband (who is black) and I (Filipino) joked we changed the demographics of Agoura Hills all by ourselves. But we seem to be seeing more faces of color at the grocery stores lately, so that's good.

Lots of eastern european, filipino, mexican, columbian, korean, japanese, persian, lebanese, greek, vietnamese, and cuban in the general area. It's starting to become less diverse though. That worries me a little bit. In my city, the biggest assholes come from Michigan or Ohio or Iowa or Naperville. They seem to believe that you need to homogenize an area to make it "safe." I have never lived in a "safe" rural or suburban area, but I don't think you are ever safe walking around by yourself drunk off your ass at 3:30am. Are you?

There's very little color in my immediate neighboorhood of Noe Valley (an area of San Francisco), but I seem to see more black faces (read: one or two a week vs. one or two a month) in my hood. Of course, this being San Francisco, I see lots of Chinese faces, but that's of no import to me.

There's more color (latinos, a few hipster/hippie/boho type blacks) in the Mission which is right next to my area. And, of course, there's a little color (gay black men) in the Castro which borders my hood to the northwest. Oddly enough there are several black families in Diamond Heights which is in the hills above Noe, but they NEVER come down into my hood. LOL.

darlene - Agora is considered the valley, right? the valley sucks. I lived in Silverlake for 8 years…lots of diversity. You need to get out of the valley. Silverlake, Los Feliz, Echo Park…that was my old hood and I loved it. So home sick.