return to the way back
I’ve spent the past week-plus in NYC for the purposes of finding an apartment for when I move there in less than a month (I just got back to LA last night). And the good news? As of December 1, I will not only be making my return to New York City, but also to the Lower East Side.
Fuck. Yes.
Hear me now: apartment hunting was MISERABLE. This was mostly related to my near-constant state of hangover whilst in NYC – every day was an endless repeat of work-apartments-World Series game-beef patty, and it really, really took its toll on me (specifically in the colon area). But in addition to the hangover, three things made apartment hunting terrible:
1) Holy crap, NYC apartments are expensive. One thing I will dearly, dearly miss about LA is the price of its real estate. A $2000 one-bedroom in certain parts of Venice (or even Santa Monica) could get you a view of the Pacific. A $2000 one-bedroom in NYC likely has a 6′x8′ living room – with a kitchen in it – and a modest to moderate bug problem. I need only to refer to you my last apartment, a two-bedroom (really 1.5) in the $2000/month range in the heart of Little Italy that was steps away to Soho, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, but whose toilet overflowed spewing feces all over my bathroom and kitchen floor anytime I went away for a weekend. And to be honest, I was devastated to give up that apartment. This should tell you pretty much all you need to know about NYC real estate.
(Also, I don’t even want to think about what $2000/month could get you in, you know, 99.5% of America. A buddy was recently offered a job paying something like $170K/year in Kansas. When he told me, it was only a matter of seconds before I was screaming, “DO YOU KNOW WHAT $170K COULD GET YOU KANSAS! YOU COULD LIVE LIKE A KING! I MEAN THAT LITERALLY – YOU COULD HAVE A MOAT FILLED WITH ALLIGATORS AND A GOLD THRONE AND A TOWER DEDICATED TO HOLDING PRISONERS AND EVERYTHING!!!!” He didn’t take the job and decided to stay in NYC, thereby assuring himself that he will not own land within the next five-eight years.)
Having lived in NYC for seven years prior to this little pit stop in LA, and also having spent three hours a day since mid-September looking at NYC apartments online, I was aware of the great disparity in value in real estate between the two cities. But it’s one thing to remember it or to see it online, and another thing entirely to walk into a building deep in Chinatown that smells of dead junkie, get shown an apartment not suitable for a war criminal, and be told it’s a “steal” at $1900/month.
Very early on, I had to learn to accept this. Many thanks go to my friend Nicole, who saw some apartments with me and would assure me that, hey, this is NYC, you know it’s NYC, you know it’s expensive, and if you don’t like, go live in Jersey. I needed that tough love. But I’m still pretty certain that the check I just wrote for first-last-security was larger than my parents’ mortgage for the South Philly rowhome they bought in 1977.
(Good thing it’s worth it.)
2) With all due respect, real estate brokers can be a very slimy bunch. I did work with some very nice brokers, including the one who ultimately got me my apartment, but goodness, some brokers are might scummy. In my experience, they fell into three categories: the salesman who’s all smiles and fake laughs and who’s convinced he’s smarter than you (but probably spends his evenings jerking off into panties he stole from his building’s laundry room and eating cookies); the walking STD of a salesman who shows up fresh from the LIRR, unlocks the apartment doors, and waits outside while you look at the apartment because his hangover can’t handle stairs or words; and the blow-off, the broker who will email and text with you for days, but then, without explanation, stop all forms of communication or not show up when it’s time to show you an apartment (I mean, I get it – the apartment’s been rented – but that’s all you gotta say and I’ll move on).
Also, I was adamant about not paying a fee. There’s no way in this economy that I, as a consumer, am going to pay an extra one month’s rent or 15% of the annual rent just to have a broker let me in to a building. The majority of brokers respected this and showed me only no-fee apartments, but there were some who’d push to show me “sweet” apartments with “negotiable” fees. Um, no thanks, buddy.
A renter choosing to go with a broker is kind of like a restaurant manager choosing to hire an ex-con. Despite the bad reputation, sometimes it’s gonna work just fine. But other times, you’re going to get shivved while closing up and your cash register’s going to be stolen. It’s all luck of the draw, really.
3) I just don’t care. For years, I have thought that the only two emotions I’ve been capable of are lust and hunger. But now, I’m realizing that lust is quickly dropping out of the running, and apathy is at the ready to take its spot.
(To clarify, I’m still capable of short spurts of lust/desire. For example, there was about three minutes this afternoon where I felt pretty riled up. But then I got a text or I got tired or something happened and it went away. Might have another such spurt tomorrow morning, but we’ll see. Meh.)
So while at first I had grand designs of finding the perfect apartment – the right mix of price, location and size – I soon saw that that was going to be way, way harder than I thought. And then it came down to what was livable: just give me something big enough, something downtownish, something that had a price I could deal with.
I was lucky enough to find two apartments that fit these criteria. The first was in Battery Park City, in a mega-complex with six buildings and 1700 apartments. The pros of this place were that it was large, it was in a full-service luxury building, and I could walk to work in about ten minutes. The cons were, well, it was in Battery Park City, where there’s not a whole lot going on.
The second apartment was in the Lower East Side, two blocks north of where I lived from June 2002 through June 2004.
Well.
When I first moved to NYC in the summer of 2001, two buddies and I moved to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, more or less because it was cheap and because two college friends (including Site Guy Brendan) grew up in Bay Ridge, and pretty much convinced us to live there.
I hated it. The place was huge and the rent was cheap, but it took me at least ten minutes to walk to the subway. Then a train would take up to ten minutes just to show up. Then I had the 30 minute commute to the city. Great. For this and other reasons, I count that year in Bay Ridge as one of the worst of my life.
(The “other reasons”: I was working 60 hours a week, all my new friends at work lived in Manhattan, my girlfriend at the time was in Australia, etc. So it’s not totally Bay Ridge – I later dated a girl who lived there, right on the subway along 4th Avenue – and it was not bad at all to go out there or get to work. Still, summer 2001 to summer 2002 was not my favorite twelve months.)
When our lease was up, I was certain I wanted to live somewhere in the city. While my two roommates would not be moving with me, my buddy Brian was looking for a place in the city. So we decided to get a two bedroom somewhere – anywhere – in Manhattan.
I found an ad for a three-bedroom for $1900 in the Lower East Side. I had never been to the LES before, but I knew enough to know that it was pretty close to my office, and that $1900 was balls cheap for a three-bedroom. So Brian and I checked out the place, took it on the spot, and soon found a third roommate on Craigslist, a British girl named Clare.
The rest, as they say, is history. I have never gone out, drank and partied as much as I did as those two years in the LES. Our apartment was the pre-game center, where six or so buddies would come over and drink for hours before going out. I found Rosario’s, my favorite pizza place in NYC. I found countless other restaurants and bars that I still frequent. The girlfriend who lived in Australia finally came back to NYC and broke up with me in about six weeks (we lasted almost three years long distance, but six weeks in the same city); I was pretty crushed at the time, but it turned out to be one of those blessings-in-disguise moments. I started this blog, which subsequently led to over two blowjobs. All in all, great stretch.
And while this time around, for my return to NYC, I was focusing my search more on Chinatown (since you can get a lot of space for your money if you willing to deal with the ever-present fish smells and 140 year-old women spitting in your stairway), I told the broker I wasn’t opposed to looking in the LES. The first place she showed me was on Ludlow Street, in a new, completely renovated building, and it was love at first sight.
And so it is done: the check has been written, the lease has been signed, and on December 1, I’m back, right where my entire NYC experience started. Since I got the place, my friends and I have been debating if this is sad or awesome. Sad because, well, I’m 30 years old, and I’m moving to the same street that I lived on when I was 23 and 24, I’ll be drinking at the same bars, eating at the same places. But at the same time, again, I didn’t seek this street out, and I’m living there because the apartment is sick; whereas my old place was a tenement building that had a stove that barely worked and heat that had two settings (“off” and “on so, so fucking much”), this is a nice building, a nice apartment, fully renovated, totally adult.
Either way, I don’t give a shit. I’ve already discovered two places on my very street that have $3 pints of everything (including Guinness) until 8pm, EVERY DAY. I’ll be down the street from Katz’s, around the corner from Festival Mexicano, and, most importantly (and damningly), a mere stone’s throw from Rosario’s.
A better location for my re-introduction to NYC, I can think of none.
