This is a map from 1660. I of course had to combine my internet research skills with my I-temp-in-an-architects' office-skills and figure out exactly where my house is. It would have been beachfront property. And it would have been inside the wall. That's how old my patch of Manhattan is. 
Spent eating and drinking and laughing in the most grown-up apartment of all of my friends in New York. Walls! Art! Silverware! In a solid, old Brooklyn building, too. You can feel that 
generations of families lived in those apartments.
Then I took the N train home with a surprising number of people, for 2 am.
Jesus Christ, all I talk about is real estate and the subway.
There was a bug in the bathroom, and it was small, but it was moving in the nastiest, most unnatural way. I grabbed a wad of toilet paper and smashed it before I had a chance to think about it. Problem was, the fucker didn't die - instead just unnaturally sidled under my shelves. So I screamed. Then I thought, "Oh shit, I hope my neighbour doesn't respond to that," since my neighbour's apartment is 3 feet from my bathroom. And then I thought, "Oh, wait..."
Here's a clipping from a 1931 issue of the Brooklyn Standard Union.
"[redacted] died yesterday at his home, [my address], New York City. He was born in Beirut, Syria 71 years ago and lived in New York for 38 years. He was the proprietor of a restaurant at [redacted] Washington street, Manhattan, for 10 years. He is survived by his son, Francis. Funeral Saturday..."
I found a picture of him on the internet, in fact.
I live across from a preschool. When I first moved in I didn't have blinds and after a few days they got annoyed and actually closed their blinds.
Well come on, preschool marms. This street is known as "Sodom South". There's a strip club and a sex shop and a giant wall of porn in the corner bodega. You can get a lapdance in the back room of one of the sandwich shops.
The new pad is now tricked out with wireless internet. And wireless printing. And wireless playing of music from the iTunes. I'm getting microwaved as we speak. Yes, but there is air conditioning.
I also enjoy the cooking with gas, the 20 minutes of direct sunlight at 11:00 am, living near every subway line, and free exercize in the form of four flights of walk-up.
Retroactive posssssts.....
Temporary crash pad neighbour-hood was the site of the largest urban oil spill - six million gallons more oil than the Exxon Valdez. Now moving back to the Financial District, this time even closer to Ground Zero. Because I would rather breathe my environmental toxins than drink them. Well, if it's on the 2/3 and the 4/5!
I don't know if I've mentioned this part yet, but I did spend $200 on a couch and futon and then $150 moving them (and my boxes) only to give the furniture away on Craigslist. Met the people outside the bug apartment today and watched them haul the futons off. I had no place to put them, of course, and just needed to be rid of them asap, so as to bear as little responsibility as possible for that place, get out sooner rather than later, justify not paying any of that rent. Also had pulled my stuff out of storage two already-paid weeks early. Which will be ironic if I end up living in the Financial Distict again - where they were stored - since that is where rents seem to be cheapest.
Sitting outside near the projects (which I did, for two hours, waiting for these furniture pirates to show up) is kind of nice. All the middle-aged Spanish women say hi because they don't know who you are yet. Cutest, though, was a four-year-old girl walking with her dad, who asked him "Do you like that girl, daddy?" To which he said, "No, I like your mama. I ain't allowed to like any other girls." "What's her name?" "I don't know her name! I don't want to know her name. You want mama to beat daddy up?"
Then got home to find a fly infestation in the crash pad. Infestation. Lord of the flies. Eventually, 100 of them dancing in the see-thru dustbuster, since, pace the honey/vinegar apothegm, apparently there is no better way to catch a fly. Had to unpack and repack each one of my boxes, terrified that a sticky little sac of maggots had crept in there during their four-day sojourn at the bug apartment.
It's been a great ride, folks.
P.S. NY real estate continues to kick my ass. You can't even live on top of three other people for less than $1000 a month. Not even in Brooklyn. You wouldn't believe the shitholes. You wouldn't believe the prices. The terms and conditions. The asshole brokers. "$1295 Studio in the East Village. [And by that we mean $1900 studio in the East 90s.] 28 square feet. Gut renovated. ***A REAL GEM!!! TONS OF SUNLIGHT*** through the sole window in the bathroom. Fee: 86%. Bring fourteen paystubs and proof of a diversified investment portfolio. ***WON'T LAST!!!***" The jackass roommates. "Show up between 3:55 and 4:00 pm on Friday for the open house. Vie with 50 others for a chance to live on our ugly furniture and share our idea of hygiene. Also, bring first, last, second last, and fifth months' rent. And a security deposit. 123 4th Street, just sixteen blocks off the L in East East East Williamsburg."
No idea.
That place I had? I was thinking something along the lines of that scene in Coming to America where Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall move into that shithole in Queens, with the guys out front warming their hands around a fire in an oil barrell, and the apartment has missing plaster exposing raw wood, and cockroaches and a brown stained sink and a door that doesn't lock. I was thinking that, and then I was thinking of the scene in Coming to America where Eddie Murphy comes home and Arsenio Hall has tricked out that apartment with a Jacuzzi and neon lighting and a mini bar.
Yeah, well. Ain't happening. I have come crawling back to Craigslist. And I can tell you, just when you think you've swallowed every last compromise, in terms of nearby transportation and full kitchen and on-site laundry and closet space and windows and not a fifth-floor walkup, NY real estate laughs in your face, doubles the rent, and asks for a 15% broker's fee.
I shit you not, I saw a place today about 300 sq ft with NO KITCHEN SINK and it wanted a $7000 broker's fee.
Who will vacuum the cockroaches out of the kitchen cabinets of your new apartment and pull up the disgusting lino in the bedroom and carry trash bag after trash bag of crap to the curb.
I started a new job today. My job is to file files in a filing system without a system.
I moved today. The Russian movers tried to shake me down for more tips. I refused.
I broke my full-length mirror when lugging my boxes out of my upper-tier storage compartment. Pray for me.
Living out of a suitcase is its own kind of pleasure, but even funner (read: more fun) is when all of your other belongings are neither ready-to-hand nor present-to-hand, because they are in a storage locker in Lower Manhattan. So yesterday when I secured a job interview 4:30pm, for a 10:30am time slot the following morning, and the apocalypse was going down outside (blackened skies, ripping wind, pouring rain), all I had to do was buy a new umbrella, take the subway to City Hall, walk eight blocks, swipe my card at Manhattan Mini Storage, take the elevator to the fourth floor, find the movable staircase, manoeuvre it over to my aisle, climb up there, unlock my locker, drag the ironing board and clothes rack and other odds and ends off my big tupperware bin with all the clothes in it, unseal the bin, root through it for my suit jacket and nice pants, close it up again, re-shift everything again and unseal my shoes & coats box, dig through it for some black dress shoes, close it back up again, repack my storage locker, then carry my dress clothes around in a duffel bag on the subway for the rest of the evening as I went to meet a friend.
By the way, those guys that sell knock-off stuff on Fulton from off a queen-sized bedsheet? They keep their stuff at Manhattan Mini Storage.
And sort this puzzle out for me, before I get kicked out of residence in five days.
I need an apartment, but I have to avoid:
a) brokerage fees (which are somewhere in the order of 10% of your rent for a year, that is, thousands of dollars)
b) the kind of place that wants first and last months' rent and a damage deposit up front (that is, thousands of dollars)
c) a scary neighbourhood
d) living with a pervert or an actor
e) paying more than, say, $1000 for a room [note: incompatible with mandate (c)]
f) living in Coney Island, or Queens, or Jersey City, or anywhere else that none of my friends will ever want to take four trains to come and see me (also: where I will have to take four trains home from the LES when I am drunk) [note: incompatible with mandate (e)]
g) paying to subscribe to a listing service (and so instead having to use craigslist to find the place) [note: incompatible with mandate (d)]
h) nah, fuck it - I'm not even going to list cockroaches.
