Exposed Brick Blues

If you own a brownstone and you have exposed brick somewhere in your house, please stand up. And walk yourself to the hardware store for a bag of plaster and a trowel. I am a future tenant of a park slope brownstone garden apartment (TBD …tbd), and as I search the listings high and low, I can’t seem to find a single one fitting my criteria (dogs, private garden, north slope) that does not have exposed brick. It is a bigger offense than the white painted over fireplace+grate look. To me, exposed brick is just fine in a warehouse loft, but in a –let’s face it – NARROW apartment with minimal window action, it just looks like a cold, damp and depressing basement rec room. At best, it is reminiscent of something cool seen somewhere else, somewhere very different. Exposed brick is definitely not “original” detail. Listing after listing I see this brick, usually around the fireplace – either ever so restrainedly just on the chimney, or tastefully not on the chimney but on the main wall, or just balls out all over the entire frickin apartment. Is this an instance of the emperor wearing no clothes? Can’t you all see that you are looking at a very very wrongly naked wall? Please plaster it. Then you can, rightly, claim that the wall is AUTHENTIC. Or just drywall it & send me your listing.