One thing I really must chronicle before I forget all the painful details is my NYC apartment search. I remember I once had these delusions that my best friend in high school and I would move to NYC and live in some fabulously decorated loft and still have money to see Broadway plays, date scads of attractive and brilliant men, and have all the trappings of Texan transplants/nouveau Northern elitists.
Oh, were we wrong.
Finding an affordable NYC apartment is hard. It is harder when you’re trying to find one from Texas. Even harder when you have no connections and you’re in Texas. Harder x 1000 when you are a recent college graduate with no trust fund from Texas. Finding an apartment broker makes the process a bit easier, but not on the pocketbook. Rather, my parents’ pocketbook. If you choose to find an apartment on your own or through a broker, you will be jerked around by the most exaggerative salespeople you’ve ever encountered. They (brokers, apartment owners, landlords, etc.) will tell you a closet is a “cozy bedroom.” A hole in the wall is a “great view with lots of natural light.” A dead body on the floor is “some furnishing.”
That is, if you qualify to talk to these people. Many of the powerful in the apartment world won’t consider you as a possible tenant unless you have recent pay stubs, rental history, and if you don’t make enough money, guarantors. My parents have two homes, two daughters, four cars, one English bulldog, and too much technology. They’re in no position to be guarantors for a NYC apartment. This may come as a shock, but I have no money of my own. I spent the last few years working at a job that paid me in housing, so I don’t have a rental history either. (Not that having a rental history in Texas means that it will necessarily be considered adequate in NYC. Apparently, there is still the notion up there that Texans pay for many goods and services through a bartering system, as in, “I’ll trade you three bales of hay for one studio apartment, pardner”).
I had a tentative roommate plan at the beginning of the summer. My former potential roommate is cool, musical, and poetic. Like me, she does not come from the land of trust funds and rental history. Unlike me, she will soon start paying back college loans on a useless theater degree from Yale. (Read: She is crazier than me). She and I planned on finding another cool, progressive girl to live with. We’d live in the Hamilton Heights area of Harlem in a huge apartment we would pay a reasonable amount for.
Things kind of fell apart when she was having trouble getting a teaching job in NYC (with TFA, I might add), and I secured a job early on and needed to find a place to live. At one point, I nearly sublet an apartment in East Harlem for six months without ever seeing it. (Read: Okay, maybe I am crazier).
I was in NYC two weeks ago for a week long apartment hunt. I eschewed brokers and all those hidden fee apartment finder services. I couldn’t wait to see if my tentative roommate situation would ever work out, and I couldn’t bring myself to rent my very own apartment. With what I make, the one bedroom apartment I could afford right away would not be worth living in. After all, vermin don’t chip in with the rent. I was going the shared route. It couldn’t be all that different from getting potluck roommates every year, could it? New York was in a heat wave, of course, and I was pounding down the pavement with all my printed Craigslist findings.
Yep, I did Craigslist. It’s pretty addictive, but must be used at your own risk. Some crazies will come right out and mention that they need a roommate who is a fellow nudist or at least comfortable with someone else’s naughty bits rubbing on all the furnishings. Others will seem normal enough on paper and then scare you at the open house. I’ve heard of these situations. I haven’t yet experienced one myself.
My first Craigslist initiated apartment viewing was okay. The bedroom turned out to be extremely small. The current occupant was huffily packing up his patchouli/b.o.-smelling things. I found out that he was being kicked out, because a roommate’s sister’s yorkie had gotten into his room, eaten some illegal drugs, and nearly died. Of course, maybe there was a “You can’t kick me out, because I’m leaving!” situation. Most illegal drugs are so expensive these days, can you blame the guy? (I’m kidding…kind of. No, really, yes).
My next visit was a brownstone in Hamilton Heights - a fourth floor walk-up in a building with no air conditioning. It had utilities included, free wireless internet, and a roommate who is a nanny in midtown and almost always gone. I took it. Never mind that if I walk three blocks up from my street I am the one white person and everyone gawks. The Lone Gringo.
When I found an apartment, Sam immediately asked, “Does it have wooden floors?” Of course it does. But they’re old. The brownstone is old. That’s why it’s hot as hell and the stairs are ill-lit and steep. If the building ever catches on fire, I will have to jump out of one of my fourth floor, street-facing windows.
My apartment has its advantages and disadvantages. I’m hoping to find a different place in Morningside Heights that I can move into in September. This way, I could relish all the Columbia University vibes in the neighborhood and possibly take some classes there. Plus, it’s just a nicer area. I can see the good and bad in my current humble Harlem abode, however.
The Good (hHabode):
1. I practically don’t have a roommate.
2. My building is small and secure.
3. There is a library nearby.
4. I live close to where I work.
5. I live close to the subway.
6. My neighborhood would look really pretty covered in snow.
7. FREE UTILITIES, INCLUDING INTERNET.
8. My street is quiet and tree-lined.
9. My landlord and super live in the building.
10. I live in the same neighborhood where The Royal Tenenbaums was filmed. I didn’t think the film was all that great, but hey, it might have my hHabode in it. That’s cool.
The Bad (hHabode):
1. There’s no air conditiong.
2. It’s a steep, fourth floor walk-up.
3. There’s very little storage in the apartment.
4. I couldn’t stretch out in my tiny bathtub.
5. An extensive supermarket where English is spoken is not within walking distance.
6. The Lone Gringo situation.
7. No laundry in the building.
8. The blocks surrounding my hHabode might get kind of sketchy at night.
9. There aren’t a lot of tidy, bland looking places to eat within walking distance.
10. Living in a historical district is aesthetic perhaps, but it also means that there isn’t a really close independent movie theater.
This is great! I am extra late in reading this [about 6yrs late maybe], but it had me laughing out loud in the office. Hope the apartment worked out. Later.