Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Someplace Old, Not a Shoe. Someplace Bouroughed. Is it for Two? Part 2
To Be Continued...soon....I promise...
Someplace Old, Not a Shoe. Someplace Bouroughed. Is it for Two? Part 1
Finding an affordable spacious apartment in New York is like finding a virgin at a bunny ranch. But when you spot one you fight to be the first to jump on it –apartment that is, not euphemistic bunny. But the search is an inescapable rite of passage for those insane enough to make concrete jungle a home semi-sweet home. With 8 million people all jockeying for a spot, you have to know the right people and be in the right place at the right time to avoid being stuck in a shoe box apartment with insect squatters and rodentious invasions. And unless you have lived here before, renting a place without seeing it in person is a trial belonging in the 8th circle of hell.
Gabby (my future roommate) and I came to this realization after two weeks of exhaustive and daily, sometimes hourly, searches. I wanted to save as much money as possible and he wanted to spend as little as possible to get to New York. Sitting in my comfortable two-bedroom Florida duplex (which only cost me $600 a month), we juggled between hiring a broker and going at it alone. Having to tithe 15% of annual rent to an agent was not the ideal; we felt confident in our deductive abilities to discern the best living space for our needs based on hidden treasures buried on the Internet.
So we went where any cyber-minded person does when they need to find something fast: Craig’s List. That bastion of inexpensive trading and haggling that would put the finest Middle Eastern bazaar to shame. You can find love, a replica of your grandmother’s tacky paisley couch (with or without plastic), enough Maneki Nekos to choke on, lusty one-nighters who don’t mind being shit on (even on subway trains), and, to our benefit, a permanent place to pop a squat (not on aforementioned train).
We had friends who struck gold on the list and were very content. Nary a complaint about space or noise was registered from any of them. So how could we not succeed? In preparation for the safari, we sat down one evening with a plate of pasta puttanesca, cycle six reruns of ANTM playing in the background, and wrote down our list of needs and wants:
1) A two-bedroom apartment. This one was obvious. There are two of us and neither was keen on sharing a sleeping space.
2) Must have a bathroom with a sink/toilet/bathtub located IN the bathroom and not the kitchen. This is a matter of convenience. I certainly did not relish the idea of a post-shower shave interrupted by specks of boiling oil as Gabby pretended to be Emeril while making kitchen-sink chicken strips.
3) Anything more than a third floor walk-up and we’d need an elevator. Both sets of our knees are busted. And we’re lazy.
4) No more than four blocks away from the subway. We’re lazy.
5) Monthly rent combined needed to be between $1100 and $1400. We’re poor. We were also spoiled by Florida rental prices which we also saw as being too high sometimes.
6) The apartment HAS to be located in the city. According to Gabby, Brooklyn and Queens required visas, passports and inoculations, and Staten Island was the figment of some deranged imagination.
7) The apartment HAD to be located in Chelsea, but if not, we could not live anywhere above 110th. What better way to start off our first year living in the city than in a hot and trendy spot. And was there really anything above 110th anyway?
8) A dry cleaner, grocery store and Bank of America office, full service or ATM only, had to be within reasonable walking distance. Without a car to get to these taken-for-granted businesses, we needed easy access for all our immediate needs without wasting time walking to and waiting for subway trains.
9) There needed to be a healthy supply of restaurants around who delivered at all times of the night. We’re really lazy.
People who live in NY would just point and laugh after seeing this list, and in fact many of our NY friends did just that when we told them what we were looking for. They felt we would never find all those things. We decided to prove them wrong.
The first night’s search pulled in a net full of amazingly affordable and stylish apartments. We weeded out the ones with broker’s fees and those with one-sentence descriptors like: Tenant for great apartment needed. That just sounded like an invitation to a B-movie slashing. Only one was in the desired Chelsea location, but was completely out of our budget. Not a problem. We can live on the fringes of the area. The city is teeming with trendy and up-and-coming neighborhoods, so we had options.
Most of our finds came with images, all of which were snapshots of perfect layouts and picaresque exteriors. The blind listings could be weeded out via investigative phone calls. We were on the right track; we were going to do this. We just needed to call each listing and make sure it fit into our prescribed nine needs.
However, finding them in one apartment is like stumbling over the Holy Grail amongst your Aunt Ida’s chachkis. Actually, that would probably be easier. All the broker-no-fee apartments turned out to have a hidden finder’s fee that ranged from $100 to a month’s worth of rent. The next-day phone calls gave us a crash course in the traps and tricks of apartment listings designed to lure first-time New Yorkers into drab shitholes worthy of Vietnamese jungle interrogation shacks:
1) “Cozy apartment” means small with no room for even a daily quibble. You’ll have to do-si-do around your roommate just to get in and out of the kitchen or the bathroom (or in this case, the bathchen).
2) “Located in a quaint/unqiue neighborhood” invariably describes a heterogeneous demographic that leans towards the minority. Caucasians are free to tread these waters, but should be warned. Sure all that culture, foreign-speak, and eclectic stores look educational, but so does being knocked out by a lead pipe and mugged.
3) “Subway within walking distance” is a trap. Unless the listing tells you how far it is, chances are you will be walking anywhere from 5 to 10 blocks just to find a station.
4) “Junior bedroom” in a two-bedroom apartment means someone is going to get screwed with a space that is only slightly larger than a linen closet. Most people use the junior as an office.
5) “Price reduced” is a no-brainer. The rent may be so under your budget you get instant anxiety pit stains, but chances are that if no one else wants it and this is the 11th re-posting, then you probably want to stay away.
6) “Unique layout/design” is a warning that you need to be a creative designer and decorator to work around pentagonal-shaped rooms, low ceilings, slanted floors, exposed pipes, barred windows, broken windows, no windows, zero closets, and some sterno disguised as an oven.
7) “Hip and quiet neighborhood.” Those two things can’t co-exist. They might as well say “broken hip” neighborhood.
8) Any listing that uses more than one question mark or exclamation point and would put an anxious jack terrier to shame should be eschewed. The lister thinks too highly of the place and suffers from puffery. You can gild a fresh steamy dog loaf and call it art, but at the end of the day it’s still shit covered in gold.
This was just the tip of the iceberg. Things were beginning to look bleak, so we gave a little and modified our list to increase our chances:
1) A two-bedroom apartment. This was not going to change.
2) Must have a bathroom with a sink/toilet/bathtub located IN the bathroom and not in the living room. Neither was this.
3) Walk-ups are fine. We’ll become Tylenol addicts.
4) Subway is cool. Is there a bus stop too? Tylenol.
5) Maybe we can spare $100-$200 more for rent. We won’t have to worry about car, insurance or gas payments. We could call it even.
6) The apartment HAS to be located in the city. Gabby was not moving from this.
7) The city is just huge, any location is great. Look at all there is after 110th.
8) No stores are ok. We’ll have everything else delivered. Everyone does it in New York.
9) At least one deli would be nice. We’ll save money and become consummate chefs.
Surely the new list would get us an apartment, and one we wouldn’t be afraid to close our eyes in. But those nine items we stood immovably behind slowly faltered and changed as the impending move date closed-in and desperation abounded. I eventually gave up searching, which by now also included Yahoo chat groups, The Village Voice, The New York Times, and apartments.com. We had 4 weeks left before our moving window (No later than the last week of January – we argued that, sure, it would be freezing, but we would get winter over and done with and enjoy the rest of our first year with great weather.).
I finally got so frustrated one night, after a particularly haranguing and empty search which had me scraping the bottom of the barrel in Inwood and Rose Hill, that I opted to find a broker to do all the work for us. There was no way we could do this without an in. And deciding on a place without seeing it live and in color was no longer an option as we learned that many of the postings were using the same pictures. We were going to have to take a short trip up to scope out our options. We invested in the opinions of some more mutual friends who put their brokers on pedestals. When all was said and done, we had commissioned six different brokers to go on the hunt for us.
One of my friends, from my high school days, had not only generously offered up her broker, but also her spare bed for the week I was up there. I would arrive on Tuesday; Gabby, due to work constraints, would follow up on Thursday. I would do the initial leg work and narrow down the finds and he would provide the second, more discerning (bitchy), opinion, and by our departure on Monday night we would have a place signed and sealed.
My journey started positively with a smooth and swift plane ride with no delays. I landed 15 minutes ahead of schedule and stepped out into the crisp cool New York night. It was winter in January, but not cold and bleak enough to cause instant misery. I treated myself to one of those flat-rate towncar rides into the city and pulled up to my friend Amanda’s house.
Warning sign number one should have been the five flights of stairs I had to traverse dragging my one carry-on and overstuffed messenger bag. I could barley breathe let alone say “hi” as she opened the door on an unamused and fatigued old friend. I slogged in, dropped my luggage, took one deep inhalation and smiled as my eyes took in my temporary surroundings.
Amanda, a hip but unobnoxious Filipino, lived in a stereotypically satirized New York studio apartment with its exposed brick and rectangular shape. The bathroom was barely big enough to accommodate one person who needed to be a contortionist in order to use the toilet ( I had to perch on side saddle), or the shower stall, in which I had to keep my arms tucked in place to avoid slamming into the sides. When given the option of sleeping on the futon or the mattress in the “loft” constructed above the “walk-in” closet, I opted for the latter in search of some new experience. Of course, the walk-in was a man-made enclosed box frame with some wooden poles hung up for clothes and a rickety ladder on the right to climb to the dark three and a half foot space.
The first night I learned that the simple nocturnal act of flipping over was hazardous as I inevitably scraped my hand against the popcorn ceiling or the sprinkler. Going to sleep was the real challenge as I was rudely awakened every 10 to 15 minutes by the pop and slow hiss of the radiator pipe living a foot from my head. My friend passed it off as normal and typical of NY apartments assuring me that I would get used to it.
I didn’t. I sang the Chordettes’ “Lollipop” in my head trying to time the pop in the lyrics with that of the pipe followed by a slick counterpoint of “bu-bum-bum-bum” and “hissssssss.”
The first night I dreamed I was trapped at a convention for people who suffered from a sibilant “s.” And as the pipe had no control valve on it, I was forced to share my cubby space with a fan that oscillated coolish air towards my feet and head. I woke up the following morning with chapped feet and dried out nasal passages. My throat felt like I had worked my way through four packs of unfiltered cigarettes. For at least two hours I was Harvey Fierstein. (Note to self: Avoid apartments with heating pipes.)
After a tall glass of warm water to revive my chords, I vowed that I would find a spacious and affordable apartment. My first morning would be spent in skillfully stalking a fabulous hut where I could relax and nest in the urban jungle. Aside from the 6 brokers, we had 3 pages of researched listings in case the sextet came up short. I had an unlimited ride subway card and would look out for “Apartment for Rent” signs. There is no way we were going to lose.
Of course, the New York real estate market has a way of throwing many curve balls regardless of how prepared you think you are.
Gabby (my future roommate) and I came to this realization after two weeks of exhaustive and daily, sometimes hourly, searches. I wanted to save as much money as possible and he wanted to spend as little as possible to get to New York. Sitting in my comfortable two-bedroom Florida duplex (which only cost me $600 a month), we juggled between hiring a broker and going at it alone. Having to tithe 15% of annual rent to an agent was not the ideal; we felt confident in our deductive abilities to discern the best living space for our needs based on hidden treasures buried on the Internet.
So we went where any cyber-minded person does when they need to find something fast: Craig’s List. That bastion of inexpensive trading and haggling that would put the finest Middle Eastern bazaar to shame. You can find love, a replica of your grandmother’s tacky paisley couch (with or without plastic), enough Maneki Nekos to choke on, lusty one-nighters who don’t mind being shit on (even on subway trains), and, to our benefit, a permanent place to pop a squat (not on aforementioned train).
We had friends who struck gold on the list and were very content. Nary a complaint about space or noise was registered from any of them. So how could we not succeed? In preparation for the safari, we sat down one evening with a plate of pasta puttanesca, cycle six reruns of ANTM playing in the background, and wrote down our list of needs and wants:
1) A two-bedroom apartment. This one was obvious. There are two of us and neither was keen on sharing a sleeping space.
2) Must have a bathroom with a sink/toilet/bathtub located IN the bathroom and not the kitchen. This is a matter of convenience. I certainly did not relish the idea of a post-shower shave interrupted by specks of boiling oil as Gabby pretended to be Emeril while making kitchen-sink chicken strips.
3) Anything more than a third floor walk-up and we’d need an elevator. Both sets of our knees are busted. And we’re lazy.
4) No more than four blocks away from the subway. We’re lazy.
5) Monthly rent combined needed to be between $1100 and $1400. We’re poor. We were also spoiled by Florida rental prices which we also saw as being too high sometimes.
6) The apartment HAS to be located in the city. According to Gabby, Brooklyn and Queens required visas, passports and inoculations, and Staten Island was the figment of some deranged imagination.
7) The apartment HAD to be located in Chelsea, but if not, we could not live anywhere above 110th. What better way to start off our first year living in the city than in a hot and trendy spot. And was there really anything above 110th anyway?
8) A dry cleaner, grocery store and Bank of America office, full service or ATM only, had to be within reasonable walking distance. Without a car to get to these taken-for-granted businesses, we needed easy access for all our immediate needs without wasting time walking to and waiting for subway trains.
9) There needed to be a healthy supply of restaurants around who delivered at all times of the night. We’re really lazy.
People who live in NY would just point and laugh after seeing this list, and in fact many of our NY friends did just that when we told them what we were looking for. They felt we would never find all those things. We decided to prove them wrong.
The first night’s search pulled in a net full of amazingly affordable and stylish apartments. We weeded out the ones with broker’s fees and those with one-sentence descriptors like: Tenant for great apartment needed. That just sounded like an invitation to a B-movie slashing. Only one was in the desired Chelsea location, but was completely out of our budget. Not a problem. We can live on the fringes of the area. The city is teeming with trendy and up-and-coming neighborhoods, so we had options.
Most of our finds came with images, all of which were snapshots of perfect layouts and picaresque exteriors. The blind listings could be weeded out via investigative phone calls. We were on the right track; we were going to do this. We just needed to call each listing and make sure it fit into our prescribed nine needs.
However, finding them in one apartment is like stumbling over the Holy Grail amongst your Aunt Ida’s chachkis. Actually, that would probably be easier. All the broker-no-fee apartments turned out to have a hidden finder’s fee that ranged from $100 to a month’s worth of rent. The next-day phone calls gave us a crash course in the traps and tricks of apartment listings designed to lure first-time New Yorkers into drab shitholes worthy of Vietnamese jungle interrogation shacks:
1) “Cozy apartment” means small with no room for even a daily quibble. You’ll have to do-si-do around your roommate just to get in and out of the kitchen or the bathroom (or in this case, the bathchen).
2) “Located in a quaint/unqiue neighborhood” invariably describes a heterogeneous demographic that leans towards the minority. Caucasians are free to tread these waters, but should be warned. Sure all that culture, foreign-speak, and eclectic stores look educational, but so does being knocked out by a lead pipe and mugged.
3) “Subway within walking distance” is a trap. Unless the listing tells you how far it is, chances are you will be walking anywhere from 5 to 10 blocks just to find a station.
4) “Junior bedroom” in a two-bedroom apartment means someone is going to get screwed with a space that is only slightly larger than a linen closet. Most people use the junior as an office.
5) “Price reduced” is a no-brainer. The rent may be so under your budget you get instant anxiety pit stains, but chances are that if no one else wants it and this is the 11th re-posting, then you probably want to stay away.
6) “Unique layout/design” is a warning that you need to be a creative designer and decorator to work around pentagonal-shaped rooms, low ceilings, slanted floors, exposed pipes, barred windows, broken windows, no windows, zero closets, and some sterno disguised as an oven.
7) “Hip and quiet neighborhood.” Those two things can’t co-exist. They might as well say “broken hip” neighborhood.
8) Any listing that uses more than one question mark or exclamation point and would put an anxious jack terrier to shame should be eschewed. The lister thinks too highly of the place and suffers from puffery. You can gild a fresh steamy dog loaf and call it art, but at the end of the day it’s still shit covered in gold.
This was just the tip of the iceberg. Things were beginning to look bleak, so we gave a little and modified our list to increase our chances:
1) A two-bedroom apartment. This was not going to change.
2) Must have a bathroom with a sink/toilet/bathtub located IN the bathroom and not in the living room. Neither was this.
3) Walk-ups are fine. We’ll become Tylenol addicts.
4) Subway is cool. Is there a bus stop too? Tylenol.
5) Maybe we can spare $100-$200 more for rent. We won’t have to worry about car, insurance or gas payments. We could call it even.
6) The apartment HAS to be located in the city. Gabby was not moving from this.
7) The city is just huge, any location is great. Look at all there is after 110th.
8) No stores are ok. We’ll have everything else delivered. Everyone does it in New York.
9) At least one deli would be nice. We’ll save money and become consummate chefs.
Surely the new list would get us an apartment, and one we wouldn’t be afraid to close our eyes in. But those nine items we stood immovably behind slowly faltered and changed as the impending move date closed-in and desperation abounded. I eventually gave up searching, which by now also included Yahoo chat groups, The Village Voice, The New York Times, and apartments.com. We had 4 weeks left before our moving window (No later than the last week of January – we argued that, sure, it would be freezing, but we would get winter over and done with and enjoy the rest of our first year with great weather.).
I finally got so frustrated one night, after a particularly haranguing and empty search which had me scraping the bottom of the barrel in Inwood and Rose Hill, that I opted to find a broker to do all the work for us. There was no way we could do this without an in. And deciding on a place without seeing it live and in color was no longer an option as we learned that many of the postings were using the same pictures. We were going to have to take a short trip up to scope out our options. We invested in the opinions of some more mutual friends who put their brokers on pedestals. When all was said and done, we had commissioned six different brokers to go on the hunt for us.
One of my friends, from my high school days, had not only generously offered up her broker, but also her spare bed for the week I was up there. I would arrive on Tuesday; Gabby, due to work constraints, would follow up on Thursday. I would do the initial leg work and narrow down the finds and he would provide the second, more discerning (bitchy), opinion, and by our departure on Monday night we would have a place signed and sealed.
My journey started positively with a smooth and swift plane ride with no delays. I landed 15 minutes ahead of schedule and stepped out into the crisp cool New York night. It was winter in January, but not cold and bleak enough to cause instant misery. I treated myself to one of those flat-rate towncar rides into the city and pulled up to my friend Amanda’s house.
Warning sign number one should have been the five flights of stairs I had to traverse dragging my one carry-on and overstuffed messenger bag. I could barley breathe let alone say “hi” as she opened the door on an unamused and fatigued old friend. I slogged in, dropped my luggage, took one deep inhalation and smiled as my eyes took in my temporary surroundings.
Amanda, a hip but unobnoxious Filipino, lived in a stereotypically satirized New York studio apartment with its exposed brick and rectangular shape. The bathroom was barely big enough to accommodate one person who needed to be a contortionist in order to use the toilet ( I had to perch on side saddle), or the shower stall, in which I had to keep my arms tucked in place to avoid slamming into the sides. When given the option of sleeping on the futon or the mattress in the “loft” constructed above the “walk-in” closet, I opted for the latter in search of some new experience. Of course, the walk-in was a man-made enclosed box frame with some wooden poles hung up for clothes and a rickety ladder on the right to climb to the dark three and a half foot space.
The first night I learned that the simple nocturnal act of flipping over was hazardous as I inevitably scraped my hand against the popcorn ceiling or the sprinkler. Going to sleep was the real challenge as I was rudely awakened every 10 to 15 minutes by the pop and slow hiss of the radiator pipe living a foot from my head. My friend passed it off as normal and typical of NY apartments assuring me that I would get used to it.
I didn’t. I sang the Chordettes’ “Lollipop” in my head trying to time the pop in the lyrics with that of the pipe followed by a slick counterpoint of “bu-bum-bum-bum” and “hissssssss.”
The first night I dreamed I was trapped at a convention for people who suffered from a sibilant “s.” And as the pipe had no control valve on it, I was forced to share my cubby space with a fan that oscillated coolish air towards my feet and head. I woke up the following morning with chapped feet and dried out nasal passages. My throat felt like I had worked my way through four packs of unfiltered cigarettes. For at least two hours I was Harvey Fierstein. (Note to self: Avoid apartments with heating pipes.)
After a tall glass of warm water to revive my chords, I vowed that I would find a spacious and affordable apartment. My first morning would be spent in skillfully stalking a fabulous hut where I could relax and nest in the urban jungle. Aside from the 6 brokers, we had 3 pages of researched listings in case the sextet came up short. I had an unlimited ride subway card and would look out for “Apartment for Rent” signs. There is no way we were going to lose.
Of course, the New York real estate market has a way of throwing many curve balls regardless of how prepared you think you are.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
When One Insane Artistic Endeavour is Not Enough....
So, in addition to my personal lay blog, and my actor blog, I decided to open up a more "writerly" blog as I recently picked up pen (well, keyboard) and decided to get back to writing.
Some know that whilst in Florida I did some writing on the side. Some was scholarly stuff that got published in a few journals, some was for an arts magazine, and some was straight up newspaper writing. However, I have always been yanked to the world of more "serious" writing...which for me just means writing for pleasure not a paycheck.
This blog is a kind of extension of my new artistic leg as I want to use this space to flex my keystrokes and ideas for my narrative non-fiction writing and rants which should, hopefully, help hone and inspire my more fiction based writing.
What do I write? Think Amy Tan, but male and Armenian. Ideas of identity and generations divided by wars and language. The need to relate to the past despite such deeply rooted enculturation. And in the process, hopefully opening an eye to events that most people are unaware of without standing on a soap box and screaming: YOU KILLED MY PEOPLE!!!!
Though I want to keep a steady stream of words coming forth, given my three "survival" jobs and an acting career focus that can't be derailed, it may prove challenging.
But when the moments arise, I promise laughs, quips, unabashed criticism, and grounds for commiseration....
I hope....
Some know that whilst in Florida I did some writing on the side. Some was scholarly stuff that got published in a few journals, some was for an arts magazine, and some was straight up newspaper writing. However, I have always been yanked to the world of more "serious" writing...which for me just means writing for pleasure not a paycheck.
This blog is a kind of extension of my new artistic leg as I want to use this space to flex my keystrokes and ideas for my narrative non-fiction writing and rants which should, hopefully, help hone and inspire my more fiction based writing.
What do I write? Think Amy Tan, but male and Armenian. Ideas of identity and generations divided by wars and language. The need to relate to the past despite such deeply rooted enculturation. And in the process, hopefully opening an eye to events that most people are unaware of without standing on a soap box and screaming: YOU KILLED MY PEOPLE!!!!
Though I want to keep a steady stream of words coming forth, given my three "survival" jobs and an acting career focus that can't be derailed, it may prove challenging.
But when the moments arise, I promise laughs, quips, unabashed criticism, and grounds for commiseration....
I hope....
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