Tag: apartments

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My Framed LIRR Monthly Ticket

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“I’m never leaving the city again; I’m terrified of leaving the city.” – Anna Hillen, from a recent NY Times article about the suburbs.

Back in March, 2000, after living at home for 9 months post graduation, I moved into my first NYC apartment. It was a 2 bedroom converted to 3, my room was formerly part of the living room and my roommates were one of best college friends and another guy who happened to not only be a co-worker of my friend but a great friend of one of my best high school friends. In a small world moment, we figured out that we had actually all crashed in the same hotel room in New Orleans during Mardi Gras in 1999. It was exciting and exhilarating to be once again on my own and it was like being a freshman in college all over again, except that I had the riches of all of New York to explore.

A few weeks prior to this momentous event, when my family took me out for a good-bye dinner I raised my glass and gave this toast, “To, unless I really screw up, never having to live at home ever again.”
There were many reasons as to why I hated living at home. A grand sense of emasculation was one. I had so much freedom at college and I basically lost it all when I lived at home. My parents wanted to know where I was going, what I was doing, who I was with and when I would be home. They wanted to know if they should prepare dinner for me and a million of other little things that may seem nice and loving when you’re on the outside looking in. When you are on the inside, its annoying, grating and very quickly it made college feel like it was merely a dream.

Another reason was that I hated the commute with a passion. Mine was about 1.5 hrs one way when you took into account the drive to the train station, the trip in and the walk to work. My father drove me to the station each day (there was a severe lack of parking if you got there after 7:00 AM) which added to my fun as I needed to make arrangements to and from the station each and every day. I hated the way the commute turned people into automatons and I still have a vivid memory of one man who would sit in the same seat each day and would robotically wake up the second the train arrived in Penn Station, stand, grab his briefcase and walk off the train. I found it really scary yet soon enough, I was carrying a travel pillow in my messenger bag because the train motion lulled me to sleep like I was a mere baby.

I hated the way a train schedule dictated my entire life. I hated how I almost missed the train one morning and got into a fight with the trucker driver that caused my delay. He tried and failed repeatedly to properly back his rig up to a loading dock and wound up blocking the street for minutes on end. I was forced to get out of my dad’s car to run about 5 city blocks in order to make it work on time. Of course I had to yell at the guy too – “Don’t you know the train schedules asshole?! There’s only 1 every half an hour and you choose now to fuck this up! Don’t you realize that people need to get to work?!” Sure enough, he got out, hopped down and wound up grabbing my coat and throwing me against a fence. He was about to hit me too until I taunted him with, “Go ahead and hit me, please hit me. My father is in that car back there. He’s a lawyer. I’ll own you.” Definitely one of my prouder moments. Anyway, he put me down, my father yelled at both of us and I ran and just caught the train. Suburbia was making me crack and I needed out.

My hatred for my commute was such that I vowed that when I was finally able to move into the big city, I would frame my monthly LIRR pass as a reminder of what I left behind. A week or so after the trucker incident, I called up one of my friends (my future roommate) and said, “Dude, It doesn’t have to happen immediately but I cannot live at home any longer with no hope. I need to know if you want to look for apartments together. Again doesn’t need to be now. Frankly, I’m not sure if I have the money yet. However, I can’t afford a studio so I need a roommate and wanted to know if you wanted to look together.” His response was miraculously, “Actually, I was just talking to a co-worker today who you sort of know about getting a triple. Would you want to be the third guy?” “Would I? YES!” The second apartment we saw we took and the rest is, as they say, is history.

So, I now have a slightly tattered February, 2000 light green Long Island Rail Road monthly pass sitting on the shelf above my bed. I framed it when I moved into the city in 3/00 and its been with me ever since. I used to think that the house, the deck, the yard, the space, the neighborhood, the car and all the other things the ‘burbs bring with it was worth it if you had a family. I used to say, “This is great for the future. But for now, this sucks.” Now I’m not so sure about the future. I don’t think I ever want to leave the city. Each time I go out to the ‘burbs I have the same feeling: I love to visit but can’t wait to leave. Who needs a house that constantly needs something redone or repaired done when I can live in a hotel? I can’t fathom living outside of an urban environment again, thus my love for that Times article.

My favorite phrase in the entire article was “Adding insult to tedium,” which was used to explain how a mostly non-pedestrian lifestyle caused 15 lbs of weight gain for one commuter. Here are some other good quotes from the article:

“It’s like death out there. I can’t wait 15 minutes in a bagel store to get two bagels. I can’t have people looking at me like I’m crazy when I walk in and put a quarter on the table to get my paper and walk out. I go home and there’s, like, people doing their lawn every five minutes. They seem like normal people but they spend, like, hours working on their lawn.” – Ronn Torossian, President and CEO of 5W Public Relations

“The suburbs have some way of sucking the city out of you” – Brian Lover, VP at the Corcoran Group
“When we come home and walk from the train to our apartment, there’s no one on the street between 7 and 10 p.m. It’s just that feeling of being alone. You walk the dog and there’s no one there.” – Sara Mendelsohn

“I spent many depressing nights at the Hoboken station. If you go out for a drink with friends, you’re always watching the clock” – Andrew McCaul, photographer

ramblings

I Am Still Being Stalked

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Update on a past post: The NY Times real estate section which has in the past stalked me is once again stalking me by writing an article titled “Settling for the Upper East Side.” Since I wrote that previous post, Jessie and I wound up buying an apartment after all in the, what else, UES and yeah, I felt like we “settled” at first. However, in the end we both couldn’t be happier. Central Park & the Met are only 2 blocks away, affordable restaurants abound, many of our friends are nearby and there is a store for everything we could ever want right at our fingertips, which is something we definitely lacked downtown at 50 Murray. As cool as that building was, it was an island in a sea of nothing and we barely took advantage of half that the island offered. While I do miss being downtown, the great architecture and the grandeur of living closer to the pulse of the city, I am going to enjoy watching my dog Bingham pee on the Temple of Dendur’s window (if he can reach that high) as we play in the park. To every season, turn, turn, turn…

Anyway, if this continues and I still receive no credit or acknowledgement as the inspiration for a years worth of NY Times stories, I will be forced to take the appropriate action.

ramblings

Lack of Posts

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March was an incredibly busy month for me, I closed on my first apartment and spent a week in the UK (in essence celebrating), so my apologies for not posting in a while. I actually just noticed that it has been over 1 month since I last posted which I find completely galling.

So, this is to let you know that I’m back, I’m recharged, and there will be a slew coming shortly. Hold tight…

ramblings

The NY Times Real Estate Section Is Stalking Me!

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As my wife so acutely pointed out today, the NY Times Real Estate section has been mirroring our life for the past few months. Actually, its consistently about a week or two behind actual events. Here’s how:

First, a little background. Jessie and I are currently looking at apartments to buy. When we first started looking, we thought that we would buy an apartment in Harlem because its up-and-coming and the prices are so much cheaper than the rest of Manhattan. A week or two after we began looking in earnest, the Times printed an article on August 29th entitled “In East Harlem, Developers Find The Next Frontier.” We laughed and also were a tad dismayed; what if everyone adopted the same strategy as we had based on this article and whatever deals remained would be quickly snapped up?
After looking in Harlem for only a little bit, we found what we thought was the ideal apartment – a 3 bed room 1000 sq ft apartment on 119th and Madison. It was bigger and more expensive than we wanted and needed but as an investment, we thought that it was a “can’t miss” proposition. We bid on it the next day and although our bid was accepted, the seller later that week made up (or at least we strongly suspect made up) some story about a higher bid coming in after ours was accepted and said that we could still have the apartment but that we needed to match the higher asking price. We declined and walked away from the deal because it was just too much. The very next weekend, on September 26th, the Times published an article entitled “3-Bedrooms Soar as New York Nests” which featured the apartment we walked away from as the only 3 bedroom apartment that is available in Manhattan for less than $500,000. Jessie and I laughed and said, “I guess that apartment is going to be even more popular now.” In fact, it wasn’t sold and its now off the market. We both think that the seller was fucking about and just wanted to see how much he/she could get for it. If the price was high enough, he/she would sell. I guess the price isn’t high enough yet.

We continued to look for an apartment, working on our own and with the aid of our broker. We have a very ambivalent feeling towards him because while we like him, we don’t love him and often feel that we are finding more and better apartments to look at than he is finding for us. True to form about a week or two after we started to feel this way, the Times wrote an article on October 3rd entitled Your Broker as Your Friend, or Maybe Not.

After looking at a number of different apartments over a few weekends, we found one that we liked alot and placed a bid on it. Ours was one of five bids but after a day’s worth of negotiations, it was the winning bid. The apartment is an awesome loft space one block from Washington Square Park in the heart of NYU’s campus. Its basically a big white box which needs some work so we would put in a new bathroom, new kitchen, new closets and even build a nice second level because it has 13 foot ceilings and we can – we saw another apartment in the same building that did this already and we were really looking forward to this design project. However, when talking about the building to our friend Keri she said, “Aren’t you going to be living above a restaurant?” We didn’t know – the entrance was on a side street and we hadn’t been back since the open house. So, Jessie did some recon on her way to work and sure enough, the ground floor has a mexican cantina, a coffee shop and a caterer. The apartment we “won” was on the second floor. So, once again we walked away from an apartment, although this time rather reluctantly. Sure enough, this past weekend the NY Times followed our lead with an article on October 10th entitled Rushing to Buy Can Bring Regrets on Moving Day”. This is now just plain weird.

Now we are thinking about simply renting for another year or two instead of buying because the market is so inflated. If the Times writes about this as an emerging trend, I’m going to crap myself and seek a restraining order.