The Hunt

If you want to live in New York, you have to find a place to live. This is where the weak are weeded out. It is Darwinism at its best. It is hell.
If you think I’m exaggerating, just take a stroll through the real estate pages from a New York City paper. You will be amazed, I guarantee. In most major cities, $900/month will get you a nice apartment. Do you know what you get for $900/month in New York? Nothing. There is nothing you can find for $900/month. You can’t get a cardboard box on the street for $900 a night. Not in a good neighborhood, anyway.
It’s also such a tightrope walk. You can’t start too early, because you’ll see something you love and by the time you’re ready to move, it’ll be gone. But start too late, and you’ll be looking at a $900 a month cardboard box in a bad neighborhood. It’s the most stressful two months.
I started in May. I had until the end of June. I figured that was enough time. I made an appointment to see a studio in Hell’s Kitchen. Hell’s Kitchen is “up-and-coming.” That means still crappy enough to be affordable. A lot of my friends live there, because they are also poor. It would make it easier and I could save money on cab fare back to my “up-and-coming” neighborhood. I would like to stay in my neighborhood, but people got wise to the up and comingness of my hood and moved in and now it’s evolved to trendy/gritty. In New York, trendy/gritty means pricy. Who ever thought gritty would mean pricy? Shabby chic killed all us poor people.
But I digress. I’m sitting on a Sunday afternoon, waiting for an agent to come and show me a bunch of apartments, including the one in Hell’s Kitchen. I get there. The agent I talked to is not there (he’s also not an agent, I come to find out, just the guy who answers the phone. But he has a dream, dammit). I talk to a woman named Lee. Lee reminds me of a math teacher in middle school that I hated. I’m already suspicious. She hands me a form to ask for my financial information. One of the questions on the form is “What will you do if you can’t find a place by your move-out date?” I am tempted to answer “Cry.”
Lee starts in with what I have come to find out is the NY real estate agent philosophy: PANIC NOW!!!! I feel like I started too late, I’m starting too early, I’m broke, I’m unworthy, what am I even doing in this office? When I truly feel like shit about myself, they finally let me see an apartment.
It’s not the apartment I went to see, though. There’s a problem with that. The landlord’s not in/the apartment is only showing in open-houses/the apartment doesn’t really exist. Something like that. The bait-and-switch is part of the PANIC NOW!!! Philosophy. They finally take me to see an apartment. A studio they say is “tiny,” about 300 square feet. The introduce me to the “shower.” A “shower” is a young kid who needs a day job while they’re waiting for their big acting/recording/songwriting break comes through. They get a cut of the fee, but not a big cut.
My shower looks like he’s about two red blood cells this side of albino. He is the palest human being I’ve ever seen. EVER. This is when I called M, who lives in the neighborhood. I was not getting eaten by night of the living dead over here. I mean, I want to stay in the city, but some things are not worth your life.
“Is he creepy?” M asks.
“So you said to meet you on 58th and 8th?” I responded.
“Guess that’s a yes. Meet you in 10.”
We walk over to the apartment, which is behind Lincoln Center. And when I say behind, I mean almost in Jersey. We finally get to the building and walk in. M walks in first and snorts.
The room is about the size of most closets. And I’m not talking big walk-ins. You could fit a twin bed on a metal frame and a folding chair. It’s 9x9. The last time I checked, that was 81 square feet, not 300. The shower offers to show me the kitchen. It’s a good thing he pointed it out. I would have missed it otherwise. It’s a mini-fridge with two burners on it. No oven. No cabinets. You would have to have talent to make Ramen in this kitchen.
“Would you like to see the closet?” Lurch asks.
“I thought we were in the closet,” M says.
“Does it contain the other 200 square feet that are supposed to be in this apartment?” I ask.
He opens the door. It does not.
The landlord’s there. He’s actually showing this place with a straight face. I keep looking at him, waiting for him to crack up and go, “Just Kidding. The real apartment is upstairs. This is a supply closet.” That would be OK. I can appreciate a good joke.
Instead he says, “You’re paying for the neighborhood.”
Excuse me? Unless I’m paying for the neighborhood’s groceries, I can’t see where my $1200 a month (oh, that’s right, it’s $1200 a month, plus a 15% of the annual rent fee to the broker. And Lurch. I’m sure he gets a cut. Although what he spends it on, I have no idea. It’s nothing with iron in it) is going.
But this is what you have to deal with when you live in New York. Buying, renting, it’s all the same. And it’s all bad. Jail cells are bigger than some apartments you see. And you don’t have to pay for jail cells. And they have tuition reimbursement in jail. I bet Lurch won’t cut me a check for early registration.
My parents think I’m crazy. My relatives think I’m insane. This has very little to do with the fact that I pay so much for rent. But it plays a factor. It’s hard for me to believe, myself. But I went out to look at an apartment in Queens and I almost cried. It was $1000/month. It was huge. The landlord was nice. But it was QUEENS. Nobody’s going to visit me in Queens. The apartment was almost IN LaGuardia Airport. People could stop by on their way to vacation.
Living in New York is like a drug. It’s an expensive, it’s bad for your wallet, it’s bad for your health, it makes your skin look bad, you don’t eat as well as you would in the suburbs because all your money’s going to feed your habit, you get your apartment from a sketch dealer in a bad neighborhood, you could die. But I’m addicted. As soon as I could, I jumped a train to my pipe and got back on-line, looking for an overpriced closet I could live in.