Grocery shopping in New York is a serious pain in the ass if you don't have a car and remember what life was like before you had to pay $7 for a 12 ounce box of Lucky Charms.
Rather than actually shopping, what you're really doing is foraging. People have come up to me and recommended stores 15 blocks away because "they have really good cheese" or produce or rare Asian lettuce or whatever. In the hunter/gatherer sense, that 15-block trek probably should leave me feeling more fulfilled than walking into a Super Target and picking up a brick of non-organic sharp cheddar on my way to the cereal/dairy/clothing section, but as an evolved male of the '90s, I find myself missing that homogenized experience. This is my one complaint about life up here. Hidden culinary gems are best left to the professionals; I just want bananas, milk and the essentials to all live in the same place.
So this has left me with a couple options:
1) Eat out a lot more than I normally would. Check.
2) Find someone with a car who's willing to take me to the Target in Brooklyn once a week. What is this, college?
3) Freshdirect. Wha?
Freshdirect is an online grocery store that delivers the shit you buy to you. It's better-stocked than anything else I've found around here, the prices are almost on par with flyover country and they come to my door with my sundry provisions. They charge $5.75 to deliver, only $1.75 more than the cost of a round trip on the subway, and they'll show up at your door at a time you choose. They even sell toiletries and stuff in bulk. I don't have to leave the apartment to buy toothpaste or ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream!
I hear tell it's best not to buy produce from them, and the bananas I bought were a lovely shade of green, but everything else about Freshdirect was great. It's a wonderful way to take the stress out of a milk run, and it makes those places with the great cheese seem a lot more accessible when they're not part of a four-hour journey just to get some calories in me.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
It's Finally Over
Been traveling all month, which has only compounded apartment stuff.
We last left off with a failed inspection. Since then, I've had two friends visit in two separate weeks, bought a bicycle and have been across the country twice.
On the apartment front, the building passed its second inspection with flying colors, despite the fact the inspector had to look at the place over two days because an apartment building nearby collapsed. Inspectors are like superheroes and emergency response technicians all rolled into one, because to hear the contractor tell it, the guy was out of my building so fast they only heard the crash of the collapse after he was out the door.
I moved in between the two days of inspection, which became a problem when I was still in bed as the inspector was entering the building on inspection day mk. II. Despite the fact my apartment had been deemed habitable, the guy hadn't yet verified that all the doors opened properly in other parts of the building, so people weren't technically supposed to be inside yet. Enter: Super banging on my door frantically while I crawl out of bed. I got out the front door just as the inspector was walking in, bug-eyed at the half-shaven dude slinking out the building he shouldn't have been inside.
Everything worked out, or they finally just bribed the dude, because I got a phone call that day and was cleared to live in my goddamn apartment, finally.
So that's about over. We're getting all moved in this week, and the place is pretty swank indeed. I think I about ran the gamut of the moving experience, less actually living on a buddy's couch in the questionable section of town while job hunting at the same time. But hey, I survived moving into a new building in a city full of ancient ones, and now I've got a base of operations for learning the rest of the city.
And while I still don't think of myself as a New Yorker yet, I will say how nice it felt to come home after traveling. Somehow, even a neighborhood in Brooklyn I barely know feels familiar after a 7-hour red eye. That's a step in the right direction.
We last left off with a failed inspection. Since then, I've had two friends visit in two separate weeks, bought a bicycle and have been across the country twice.
On the apartment front, the building passed its second inspection with flying colors, despite the fact the inspector had to look at the place over two days because an apartment building nearby collapsed. Inspectors are like superheroes and emergency response technicians all rolled into one, because to hear the contractor tell it, the guy was out of my building so fast they only heard the crash of the collapse after he was out the door.
I moved in between the two days of inspection, which became a problem when I was still in bed as the inspector was entering the building on inspection day mk. II. Despite the fact my apartment had been deemed habitable, the guy hadn't yet verified that all the doors opened properly in other parts of the building, so people weren't technically supposed to be inside yet. Enter: Super banging on my door frantically while I crawl out of bed. I got out the front door just as the inspector was walking in, bug-eyed at the half-shaven dude slinking out the building he shouldn't have been inside.
Everything worked out, or they finally just bribed the dude, because I got a phone call that day and was cleared to live in my goddamn apartment, finally.
So that's about over. We're getting all moved in this week, and the place is pretty swank indeed. I think I about ran the gamut of the moving experience, less actually living on a buddy's couch in the questionable section of town while job hunting at the same time. But hey, I survived moving into a new building in a city full of ancient ones, and now I've got a base of operations for learning the rest of the city.
And while I still don't think of myself as a New Yorker yet, I will say how nice it felt to come home after traveling. Somehow, even a neighborhood in Brooklyn I barely know feels familiar after a 7-hour red eye. That's a step in the right direction.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Inspection: Failed
Just got word that the inspection for the apartment failed because the inspector discovered a few bathroom doors that opened the incorrect direction. I can only assume they opened up, rather than in or out, because what else could be incorrect about a bathroom door?
Anyway, two more weeks of temporary living until we get to go through this again. The landlady has been absolutely awesome about the situation, despite the fact she must be taking a bath. Sucks, but it could be worse: This could be Philadelphia.
Anyway, two more weeks of temporary living until we get to go through this again. The landlady has been absolutely awesome about the situation, despite the fact she must be taking a bath. Sucks, but it could be worse: This could be Philadelphia.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Anonymous Sighting
Earlier this week, I ran into a guy in a familiar Guy Fawkes mask. He was wearing a tuxedo and top hat, holding balloons and a sign that read, "DO I LOOK LIKE A TERRORIST? XENU.COM." He drew a bit of a crowd and began ranting about scientology, then disappeared down the street before I thought fast enough to snap a picture. It was just weird; a total Fight Club moment.
Where Did June Go?
I admit, there's an apology in order. Unfortunately, when I started this little blog, I forgot a fun fact about myself: When I don't have any reason to go home (be it a significant other or a pet) I work 10-hour days, and the last thing I want to do when I get home is curl up in front of a laptop and talk about the high-stress world of apartment hunting in New York.
Here's my update, nearly a month in the making. Hopefully, this will help explain why it's taken me a month to get back here.
Very early in the month - just after my 100th street escapades, I found an ad on Craigslist advertising a two bedroom apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Williamsburg is in the northern part of Brooklyn, nestled between Greenpoint (a very good area), Bed-Stuy (used to be horrendous, now just not so good) and Bushwick (not great, but it's the next stop on the gentrification wagon), between one and five train stops to Manhattan. It used to be an artist mecca; now, a couple decades later, it's a mecca for people who want to be artists but have good enough jobs that they don't need to flee deeper into the urban jungle. It's also hipster central, but anyone who knows me knows I wasn't built for skinny jeans and annoying T-shirts. I imagine this will grow into a dissociative problem, but I keep telling myself that if he were to exist now, Patrick Bateman would be wearing APC jeans and prowling Bedford avenue, Williamsburg's main drag.
Anyway, the apartment itself is in one of Williamsburg's less hipster-riddled areas, closer to Bushwick than to Manhattan or Greenpoint, and there's about as many families as there are young people. It's about perfect for me, since when someone dressed like Rod Stewart, complete with the hair, white '80s suit and snakeskin shoes, walks down the street as seriously ironic as a heart attack, I have someone to laugh with. Yes, that actually happened.
I spent a Saturday morning checking out the place. What was really great is it's a new building, which means new appliances, floors and, most importantly, central air conditioning. I grew up in a place where you walked from your central-AC house to your overcharged AC car to your central AC work. I'm not sure I could function at peak efficiency in a house with rooms of varied temperature. I immediately fell in love with the building, if not the place's layout. It was a duplex with about 800 square feet - huge for NYC - but none of the rooms were really big enough to make anything work. Luckily, the couple showing the place showed me their one bedroom apartments, which were laid out a lot more to my liking: Three rooms, all big, without a lot of wasted space in the kitchen or bathroom. Before I left the place I'd pretty much made a decision to move in, but I still wanted to keep my options open and give my girlfriend a chance to look at the place before making a decision.
A week later, my girlfriend came up to visit, and she and I played tourist for a week, mostly eating tons and tons of food in a number of boroughs, both to check out the neighborhoods and expand our waistlines. She cruised around on the back of a broker's Vespa in Manhattan, looking at places on the West side. Most of what she found in our price range was about half the size of the place in Williamsburg, and when I took her out to look at the one bedroom, she liked it quite a bit, too. So down went the deposit along with my stress level.
The next week, my parents came into town and I entered week two playing tourist and eating too much. I actually saw a one-man show and caught a Yankee game, two things I haven't done in a couple years, and pretty much unwound, assured that at the end of the month, I'd have a roof over my head. Unfortunately, nothing in real estate is never sure.
It all starts with a crane falling on the Upper East Side. At the end of May, some weird act of God, uh, acted, and one of those 30-story cranes fell in Manhattan, killing the operator and injuring a number of pedestrians. Now, this alone is bad enough, but another crane fell not too long before this most recent one, which has the city in a tizzy and demanding more oversight from the Department of Buildings, which governs crane inspections. They, as all great bureaucracies do, have opted to respond to the problem by adding new layers of bureaucracy to all building inspections in the five boroughs. Including my apartment building. Go figure.
And so, July 1 has come and gone, and they've yet to perform the final inspection on my building, which means I can't sleep there yet. Luckily, my landlady, who, unlike the numerous management companies I've dealt with before moving to NYC, actually gives a damn about her tenants, has graciously put those of us who'd otherwise be homeless up in her other buildings for the cost of utilities until all this blows over.
Which brings me to now. I've got one bedroom in a three bedroom apartment so close to the new place I can hear the work crew taking down the scaffolding for the pending inspection for the time being. The talk is the DOB will inspect the new place tomorrow, but the super thinks it won't be until next week that we'll be able to move in. The moral of the story here: Don't bet on a new building, unless you've got a cool landlord or don't mind the Y.
Here's my update, nearly a month in the making. Hopefully, this will help explain why it's taken me a month to get back here.
Very early in the month - just after my 100th street escapades, I found an ad on Craigslist advertising a two bedroom apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Williamsburg is in the northern part of Brooklyn, nestled between Greenpoint (a very good area), Bed-Stuy (used to be horrendous, now just not so good) and Bushwick (not great, but it's the next stop on the gentrification wagon), between one and five train stops to Manhattan. It used to be an artist mecca; now, a couple decades later, it's a mecca for people who want to be artists but have good enough jobs that they don't need to flee deeper into the urban jungle. It's also hipster central, but anyone who knows me knows I wasn't built for skinny jeans and annoying T-shirts. I imagine this will grow into a dissociative problem, but I keep telling myself that if he were to exist now, Patrick Bateman would be wearing APC jeans and prowling Bedford avenue, Williamsburg's main drag.
Anyway, the apartment itself is in one of Williamsburg's less hipster-riddled areas, closer to Bushwick than to Manhattan or Greenpoint, and there's about as many families as there are young people. It's about perfect for me, since when someone dressed like Rod Stewart, complete with the hair, white '80s suit and snakeskin shoes, walks down the street as seriously ironic as a heart attack, I have someone to laugh with. Yes, that actually happened.
I spent a Saturday morning checking out the place. What was really great is it's a new building, which means new appliances, floors and, most importantly, central air conditioning. I grew up in a place where you walked from your central-AC house to your overcharged AC car to your central AC work. I'm not sure I could function at peak efficiency in a house with rooms of varied temperature. I immediately fell in love with the building, if not the place's layout. It was a duplex with about 800 square feet - huge for NYC - but none of the rooms were really big enough to make anything work. Luckily, the couple showing the place showed me their one bedroom apartments, which were laid out a lot more to my liking: Three rooms, all big, without a lot of wasted space in the kitchen or bathroom. Before I left the place I'd pretty much made a decision to move in, but I still wanted to keep my options open and give my girlfriend a chance to look at the place before making a decision.
A week later, my girlfriend came up to visit, and she and I played tourist for a week, mostly eating tons and tons of food in a number of boroughs, both to check out the neighborhoods and expand our waistlines. She cruised around on the back of a broker's Vespa in Manhattan, looking at places on the West side. Most of what she found in our price range was about half the size of the place in Williamsburg, and when I took her out to look at the one bedroom, she liked it quite a bit, too. So down went the deposit along with my stress level.
The next week, my parents came into town and I entered week two playing tourist and eating too much. I actually saw a one-man show and caught a Yankee game, two things I haven't done in a couple years, and pretty much unwound, assured that at the end of the month, I'd have a roof over my head. Unfortunately, nothing in real estate is never sure.
It all starts with a crane falling on the Upper East Side. At the end of May, some weird act of God, uh, acted, and one of those 30-story cranes fell in Manhattan, killing the operator and injuring a number of pedestrians. Now, this alone is bad enough, but another crane fell not too long before this most recent one, which has the city in a tizzy and demanding more oversight from the Department of Buildings, which governs crane inspections. They, as all great bureaucracies do, have opted to respond to the problem by adding new layers of bureaucracy to all building inspections in the five boroughs. Including my apartment building. Go figure.
And so, July 1 has come and gone, and they've yet to perform the final inspection on my building, which means I can't sleep there yet. Luckily, my landlady, who, unlike the numerous management companies I've dealt with before moving to NYC, actually gives a damn about her tenants, has graciously put those of us who'd otherwise be homeless up in her other buildings for the cost of utilities until all this blows over.
Which brings me to now. I've got one bedroom in a three bedroom apartment so close to the new place I can hear the work crew taking down the scaffolding for the pending inspection for the time being. The talk is the DOB will inspect the new place tomorrow, but the super thinks it won't be until next week that we'll be able to move in. The moral of the story here: Don't bet on a new building, unless you've got a cool landlord or don't mind the Y.
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