I worked an early shift yesterday and walked home the long way, on the Old Timey Shopping route, so we could finally make dinner on our brand new stove. First things first, I stopped at Astor Wines for something celebratory. Then down Houston to Sullivan before I remembered that Joe's was closed on Monday (rather, I forgot it was Monday, oops). I was more successful at Blue Ribbon Bakery where I got a small baguette and learned if you want your Pullman loaf sliced thin you can walk across to their restaurant where the more advanced slicer is. Murray's provided me with some overpriced eggs and milk, a can of tomatoes, fresh fettucine and two small packets of cured meats: prosciutto ends and a chunk of guanciale. It was a perfect, late afternoon West Village day and I am so going to miss all that.
But that's exactly what I said three and a half years ago when I left Brooklyn to move in with Chris. I know my memories will fade and I will develop new routes and routines and it's hard to be sad when I think of all the new apartment holds for us. There is the schmoopy stuff, like it's our first apartment that is ours, new to both of us, that we can fill up with all the beautiful things our friends and family gave us as wedding gifts. (Nearly seven months on, everything is still in my parents' house, a pyramid of boxes we haven't made room for yet. Except the new toaster which we needed after the Mouseacre.) But there are also The Amenities.
I don't know the state of amenities in other large cities; for all I know, Chicago is chockablock with dishwashers and onsite laundry. But in New York City, it's a rare mid-range priced walkup/brownstone building that has a level floor let alone any extraneous appliances. I'd been here for half a dozen years before I lived somewhere with a full-sized fridge (I'd had those sort of three-quarter sized ones never an actual half-height dorm fridge but that was always my personal line in the sand). I have not had a dishwasher since I moved out of my parents' house almost 20 years ago. We don't even currently have a microwave.
Forgive me, for here's where I crank up the braggaeton. Our new apartment is the garden level of a brownstone on a long, tree-lined block of other brownstones. The owners occupy the rest of the building so we're going from six floors of neighbors to two neighbors total. It has a dishwasher. It also has a full-sized (Stovey is 20") stove (with a hood! no more greasy cabinets!) and a brand new side-by-side door fridge with an ice and water dispenser. There is a washer and dryer in the basement and a working fireplace in the living room. We have access to the garden out back where we can put a grill and barbecue things when it's too hot to cook inside. It is way bigger overall than where we live now but costs less.
Is it completely flawless in every way? No. There are still a few very "Ah, New York" quirks and drawbacks but until we're millionaires we're not going to live in Monica Geller's apartment. But we choose to live here, year after year, with our uneven floors and strange bathroom layouts and unpleasant subway experiences because so far we haven't met a place we'd rather live. And now nothing's going to drag me away from this dishwasher.
meet stovey
I didn't even realize how long it had been since our oven worked. I just scrolled down and saw that it has been just under three months since the oven conked out. That is just straight up ghetto. Although it's at least 50% is
But yesterday, at long last, we received a shiny, new, all-American stove (Crafted with Pride!), making the rest of the kitchen look dingy and foreign. I want to make casseroles and pizza and chewy loaves of bread for the rest of our days in Apt 4C. Which, if all goes well, could be as little as two more weeks.
We're seeing a pretty fantastical apartment tonight and I am desperately trying to restrain my frantic longing by thinking, "Whatever, apartment, I never wanted you anyway. You only have one bedroom and no unicorns at all, what kind of fantasy is that?" That'll work.
in which I look at a calendar
This morning was worse but also, I guess, better. I had left messages about other apartment listings I'd seen, hoping to squeeze in as many as possible viewings last night — now that I've actually looked at the calendar it seems like the end of April is speeding its way toward me. I heard back from one woman a little before 8 last night about a 1 bedroom for a great price a few blocks away. We talked, I gave her our info, likes, dislikes and we made a plan to meet this morning and look at a few places. I was feeling much better about the process with her than I had with the other people I'd called and emailed yesterday. And of course when we hung up I looked up the ad that brought me to her and realized I'd found it in the broker section of Craigslist so duh of course she was nicer and thorougher — she actually stood to make a pile of money.
I actually have never rented an apartment in NY without a broker. I'm sure that makes me a sucker but it also made every search (and there have been many in the last dozen years) quick and relatively painless, aside from the pain of spending so much money for someone to open a door for you. So this time we're giving no fee searching a go. Or we were, until I called J.
We met before I went to work this morning and she showed me four places while I chattered her ear off with my insane ramblings about neighborhoods and buying vs renting and weddings(!) and pretty much every single thought that entered my head. If nothing else, this woman is a saint.
Everything was actually pretty nice, a completely different ballgame from yesterday's circus of horrors. Older buildings, walkups, but renovated or in good, solid shape, each with a feature that was really cool (a dishwasher! a terrace!) but each definitively smaller than our current apartment. All except one which was the apartment of my (almost reachable) dreams: great block, 2 bedrooms, well laid out, nice building. And, of course, 2 frillion dollars.
It wasn't until our last stop, on 14th & 8th (if you live alone and have $2700 to spend, I'd highly recommend this lovely 1 bedroom with terrace, it was in the back and you would never know 14th Street was behind you), that I realized why I was in such crazypants denial about the cost of living in Manhattan in 2009. I kept thinking, but I have been here for years, I have apartment hunted before, many times, I am not new, why am I so gobsmacked at these prices? Well, my most recent move may have been in 2005 but it was into an apartment Chris had already had for three years. And before that I lived in Brooklyn for three years. So the last time I looked for an apartment in Manhattan was eight years ago. Eight years! Gee, you think prices have risen considerably in almost a decade, idiot?
So I gave up. Really, I let go; I don't know why I was carrying around all that Manhattan-ey entitlement anyway. Talk about your diamond shoes being too tight. We have plans to look at a bunch of places in Brooklyn on Friday. All neighborhood rants and raves welcome.
and so it begins again
We have to move sometime in the next 37 days. I would worry about the enormous and daunting task of packing but first I have to worry about the fact that we have no place to move to. And I just met with a no fee broker guy who showed me the four most cracked out apartments I've seen in years.
I'm not in the best of moods in general these days but this search is depressing as hell already. We looked at a 1 bedroom 3rd floor walkup which had the shower in the bedroom. Lots of light, decent sized rooms and oh, a sink and shower tucked into a corner of the bedroom. I should not have to live like this! We're adults with jobs, no debt and what in non-bizarro world would be plenty of money to rent an apartment.
I know I have to give up and just work on finding a place back in Brooklyn. I don't know where this latent Manhattan snobbery has come from. Aside from Red Hook (which can still kiss my ass, seven years later and you still suck!), I love Brooklyn and I was bummed to leave my adorable block in adorable Carroll Gardens. But you cannot believe how awesome it is to walk to work, which both of us can do from here, and I guess I'm just a fickle neighborhood whore because now this is my favorite adorable block and I just don't want to go.
the last time i'm gonna say it
This morning after Chris left for work, I walked into the bedroom and saw an iPhone on the nightstand. On his side of the bed. Where my phone never is. Returned to the living room and my phone is not where I left it; Chris took it by mistake. Sadly, no wacky hijinks ensued. The strangest part is how it hadn't happened sooner. Chris would say he got the bum end of the deal since his phone didn't get any calls all afternoon and mine interrupted him semi-frequently with Twitter texts. But worst of all, my background pic is this.
I'm not a huge LOLcats fan — there's just something about that gray cat's face — or of most of Internet culture in general. But I have friends who somehow know about everything, everywhere and between them and the other blogs I read I'm in the loop on most memes and Internet-based phenomenons even though here isn't a lot I actually care about or get involved in because I'm old, bitter and hard-hearted. But at least I know it's there; I know what I'm missing.
Chris is another story. He's basically a stranger to the Internet, despite making his living on it. He knows a lot of technical information about computers and computing and networks and he's not the kind of stuck-in-1996 Luddite who refuses to utter the word 'blog' and thinks everything went to hell once handcoding became outmoded. No, he just doesn't take part in the wider Internet community which makes sense as he's not a joiner in general.
In the big picture, this just makes me love him more ("I asked you to go to the Green Day concert
You said you never heard of them/How cool is that?") but occasionally it's like living with Unfrozen Caveman. For example, when he first saw that cat background on my phone and gave me a big WTF look I took it to mean "WTF, LOLcats are so dumb" and explained, "I know, I usually hate LOLcats, but —" and there he cut me off to ask, "What's LOLcats?"
Now, I'm writing this on a blog, in 2009, so I don't think I'm crazypants for assuming that everyone reading this has heard of LOLcats. Or, at least, just knows that "pictures of cats with captions in bad english" is a thing even if they don't know the term LOLcats. But Chris had not heard and did not know. He had seen the occasional captioned cat pic but didn't know it was a "thing", as in there are thousands of them everywhere.
And so I was in the position of having to explain something as ridiculous as LOLcats. (A word I never imagined I'd have to type as many times as I am now.) A thing that, no matter how crazy and stupid I think it is, is as familiar to people who interact with the Internet as, say, the TV show Two and a Half Men is to people who watch TV. It's awful and you can't believe people like it, but apparently thousands of them do.
I struggled to come up with an analogy like that then and failed. I felt like I was trying to explain what color was to a blind person and he insisted both the word itself and the concept of LOLcats were not anywhere near as ubiquitous as I said they were. He took a poll at the office but that's useless because he works in an all-male IT dept of a Internet media company. A biased audience if there ever was. We brought it up at happy hours, also useless because our friend circle is similarly comprised of Internet-savvy people.
This blog post will likely be no more helpful for the same reasons but what the hell — do you know what I'm talking about? Do you think I'm wrong about the pervasiveness of this concept and I'm the one living in a bubble? Inquiring minds...
Posted by beth at 10:48 PM | Comments (2)
