Neal's Apartment

Another short one; there's not a lot to say about the place. We only see it three times, but I have a strange love for this set. It isn't painfully empty, like Emma's in Boston, or implausibly large, like Mary Margaret's in Storybrooke. It looks lived-in and real. Maybe it's the micro-kitchen that does it.

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They spent so little time on Neal's present-day character, this set provides the only look we get at the person he turned out to be, ten years after his encounter with August. I'm making an assumption that he lives here alone and that none of this is Tamara's stuff -- there's only one plate on the table, and nothing about the place looks to me like it matches what we see of her style. There is a heart-shaped wooden box on the desk, which is a bit odd for a man to have, but I can't see anything else that doesn't seem to fit.
Neal has an apartment in Manhattan, so he's got an income. He's moved up from janitorial work and presumably from theft (no one even mentions what he's doing for work these days, but he can up and go to Storybrooke for a week or so). He doesn't have a car, but that's not unusual in the city.

Apparently, he's a tea drinker.
I thought in 2.01 that it was an efficiency, but you can see in 2.14 that there's a separate bedroom; for some reason the couch was folded out before.

It looks like a place that's been lived in for a while. He's got a record player and a lot of books that suggest a quiet life, a collection of old radios, clocks, microphones, and cameras (no photographs), a few pieces of art, and what look like concert advertisements or similar so he's not a complete homebody.
There's a dish of apples on the table, although not Regina's trademark Red Delicious. The bed is made; the desk is tidy; there are a few dirty dishes. The dream-catcher in the window is the only visible reminder of Emma and of his previous life.
No microwave, no computer, a small and elderly TV in the bedroom, and that's a shockingly old phone on the desk. Not a high-technology guy.
He has a thing about 13 (a Lost reference? I never watched it, but I vaguely remember that numerology was a big thing with that show).

That oddity aside, like Neal himself, the place looks... normal. There's nothing magical, nothing larger-than-life going on here, no towering symbolism. For all of his bizarre upbringing, years in Neverland, street life, etc., Neal appears to have made a complete and successful transition to life in the Land Without Magic. He never wanted to go back.