New York, I love you, but you're bringing me down ...
So, I moved to NYC early June. It's great, I love it, blah. I had a several graphic design projects I was finishing for a company in Boston and my girlfriend wanted to move to NYC, she won. We arrived, no job, no apartment, and most importantly ... NO HOTEL! I could have never guessed that there was even a remote possibility that every reasonable (or even moderately expensive) hotel could be booked in the enitre city. Apparently they do. Anyway, after a little less than a week of constant craigslisting and arguments induced by tiny hotel room claustrophobia, we found a sublet. An awesome little 1 bed in Gramercy next to Union Square. Things were good, I finished my project, got paid, turned 25, saw good music, went to the museums, blah. Very fun and it gave me and my girlfriend some great quality time before she moved back to Japan for a while.
Now, it's July 24th. She's back in Tokyo for a while. I'm feeling overwhelmed, lonely, and a little sad. I've resorted back to what I always do when these sorts of emotions lurk their way into my life, I draw, and I read, and I paint, and I draw more. However, although therapeutic, I must be more productive in ways that the general public (or at least my family) can appreciate. Within the next week I must find an apartment. Within the next month I must find a job at an Arch. firm. Within the next two months I must take the GRE and finish the distance physics course I've been procrastinating with. Within the next three months I need to go to Japan. And last, certainly not least, within the next four months I need to complete my M. Arch I applications as well as my portfolio. Is it normal to think your portfolio looks great, go to sleep, and then want to tear it up in the morning?
The apartment search is my most imminent problem because I will go from being a Gramercy subletter to a Gramercy homeless person on August 1st unless I make moves. Are there any secrets to finding an apartment in NYC? I would really like to stay close to Union Square/East Village, I love it down here, although maybe just because I haven't lived anywhere else. I've perused every management company's vacancy listing I can find and craigslist is ... well ... craigslist so my experience there has been not so great. I would love to not pay a fee, is this realistic?
I'm turning to you guys because I know other people here have been in similar situations and honestly I'm feeling pretty damn scared and confused. It's beginning to get to me. So much uncertainty. One of the only constants in my whole life right now is my passion for architecture and design. Thank you GSD-cdisco. (Friends and family too. But we'll leave them out of this because they are 200 miles away!) This path is tricky for someone like me who has a finance background, but I could never look back. Love and passion is all we need. No matter how far you go down the wrong path, turn back.
Advice, encouragement, and heckling will all be accepted readily and rewarded with frozen karma. Even if you don't comment, but actually made it to here reading, you get a couple pieces of karma. :)
Unless you can pay, give up the dream of living in Manhattan, especially if you think that you don't/won't pay a broker. When I lived in the East Village, it was only through sheer craigslist luck that I found a place. Even in Brooklyn, where I eventually moved, I had to pay a broker. Almost everyone I know in New York has paid a broker for an apartment, unless it was a hand-me-down.
My best suggestion is to figure out what your priorities are: space, light, quiet? Move to Brooklyn. Action, convenience, excitement? Keep looking in Manhattan.
Had I not made the decision to leave Brooklyn/New York to go to grad school elsewhere, I was planning to look for an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill, and Park Slope. All neighborhoods with trees, unlike Greenpoint, where I was living before.
Good luck; Real estate hunting in New York is truly Darwinian.
My experience in NY was not nearly that complicated, as I went on co-op and the whole thing was quite organized. Well, as organized as it could have been driving into the city on September 18, 2001 with the ruins of the WTC still smoldering.
However, I hate to break it to you but we did have to pay our whole sublet's rent up front, I'm pretty sure. We basically dropped about $2400 each like that. It was just a sublet but we also had to pay a broker too. I can't remember how much.
As much as I will recommend living in NYC to anyone, I think that finding an apartment there is sheer torture. Be persistent, be earnest, and be willing to shell out some dough if you want a place to live. Good luck to you.
It is absolutely normal to go to sleep thinking your portfolio's great, and then wake up wondering what sort of crack you'd been smoking to think that... just keep working on it, and eventually either it will drift towards a place where you aren't conflicted about it anymore, or you'll just have to accept the risk and run with it. Good luck.
you guys are the best. i love you all. i went out to grab a couple slices of pizza and came home to words of encouragement! well, maybe encouraging is a little stretch but, hey, they were words!!!
brooklyn vs. manhattan- i dig the manhattan culture for the time being. i would prefer to stay here but like you say there are several hurdles. i'm rummaging through as many union sq. apt's as possible tomorrow (neighborhoods: east vill, greenwich, west vill, soho, chelsea, gramercy, murray hill, flatiron, stuy-town, etc., etc.) this damned fee may just be inevitable.
meta, that is an intense story. i hope you find something nice that suits you. i wish i could offer something more than my diminishing moral support but ... you know. same boat.
mr. b, is that site legit. i got scared away from them by a broker. i took it with a grain of salt but the salt left a bad taste. she claimed they scam you for the fee and then produce no results. the site looks good though and they have seemingly good stuff.
anyone have suggestions about a good place or type of job for someone with a non-arch background? i'm a "skilled" graphic designer, also familiar with autocad and a little touch of rhino. am i better off following the graphic design route or looking for some office manager/administrative job with a smaller arch firm? I called the admissions offices at each of the lovely schools I'm applying to. They say practical experience will be meaningful on the application. That said, I need to make money, I was doing very well as a graphic designer. I don't need a lot but I need enough for pizza and ramen at least. basically, i want to do what will look the most attractive to schools for that next fun filled process ... applications without ruining my stay in nyc.
for the moment, i'll drown my sorrows in pizza.
i really appreciate everyone's comments, the sensation of having very few of the closest people in your life not understand what you're trying to do is such an empty feeling.
haha. so dramatic. things could be much worse. on a lighter note, anyone check out the restaurants LTL did? very cool, imo. i've been told ini ani is gone, i loved that place.
my first apartment was in soho. rented from two seemingly nice nyu students just for 6 weeks to give me time to look for some thing more permanent. i arrived to find they also rented the living room, and other bedroom to 2 - 20 year old 'jersey girls'. not really knowing the stereotype of 'jersey girl' upon my arrival i thought no big deal. but now i know. there were no less than 30 random young boys sleeping in our apartment during those 6 weeks - sometimes side by side on the living room floor. one morning i stepped on pizza stuck to the kitchen floor, and there was no end to the bob marley, grateful dead, michael jackson posters added to the wall decor.
now i share a beautiful place in the west village with a highend sex worker. and believe it or not, it's much calmer than living with the jersey girls.
good luck on the apartment hunt. if it doesn't smell, isn't rotting, doesn't have bed bugs and you share with less than 8 people, take it.
MSArch - don't give up on the neighborhoods on your list. it's doable. it's a huge hassle, it may take a few weeks of focused apartment hunting, but it's doable.
in my opinion DO NOT pay a website like rent-direct.com or inapts.com a single dime. basically, they promise 'exclusive' listings or direct contact with landlords (bypassing the broker) but they really don't have anything that's not on craigslist.
the listings they have are not exclusive (you can find most of them yourself on craigslist or just by walking around an area looking for "rental available" signs at bldg entrances),
much of their information is inaccurate (they will give contact info to a landlord for a given property, you will call, and the landlord/property managment company will say, "sorry, we haven't owned that property for 2 years, or similar),
many of their newly listed apartments are already rented,
blablablabllalbllalaldon'tdoit.
the GF and I live in a studio w/sleeping loft in Gramercy. our rent is within the typical range (typical range being $750-1000 per person), our place is relatively spacious, but it took us 3 solid weeks of hunting to find it, and we ended up paying a broker.
Out on the street, asked a guy where was the store? He pointed us down 8th Avenue. Approached by guy, did we want to buy pot? No we said. Girl comes up, hey do we want to party? No, we just want to find the grocery store. She takes us there, we buy beer. Look out the window of the store, there's a car doing like 60MPH down the street in reverse. Hey, that's cool. Took off back towards Penn Station. Get back to the train platform, conductor says we can't get back on the train without tickets. Our tickets are on the train we said, and you said it's okay. Well, it's not okay now he said. Just then a cop comes up, starts arguing with the conductor. "Let 'em back on the train, quit fuckin' around" he said. Somewhere during their argument we got back on the train, beers in hand.
I forget how much i fucking love New York, but it was probably cooler in the 80s when it was still fucked up. Can't wait to get back in September.
the nice part of new york not being so f'ed up is that you can walk
pretty much anywhere without having to worry about getting held
up...i've lived here 4 years and haven't even sniffed a mugging...
just one fight at 4am, but even that was relatively tame.
I remember moving to New York in the summer of 2000. A friend of a friend was working on his house in Vermont, so he subleased his East Village studio (E 9th and A) for $500. Upon arriving I walked in the front door of the building to find a note posted by a cop next to the stairwell:
Two break ins in the last week. Keep doors locked. Found homeless man smoking crack in stairway. Make sure he stays out.
As I walked into the studio, I realized that the bathtube was in the kitchen, there was a hole in floor big enough to see the people down stairs and in the back there was a tiny little closet that ended up having a toilet inside. I loved that place! I had everything I could ever need in that neighborhood and didn't have to go north of 14th, west of Broadway or south of Houston to find it.
Aah, Alphabet city back in the good ol' days before developer-itis occured. There were never any security problems on my block in the East Village since I lived across the street from the Hell's Angels headquaters in Manhattan. They kept the block quite safe.
msarch
i know you want to stick to manhattan but really don't rule out brooklyn. just got back from an apartment search there and found a very nice 2 bdrm for 2000 in parkslope right off 5th avenue a block away from the f,n,r trains. personally i would have prefered the carrol gardens neighborhood (a little grittier, younger and not as many families with kids but) but felt the parkslope area was a little safer for the wife.
i found it isn't craigslist that sucks, it's nyc market that does. a simple equation of supply and demand. after losing out on 2 apartments we literally carried our laptop around and checked every hour and when we saw an apt we were interested in we called ASAP!!! and tried to set it up so we would be the 1st people to see the apartment.
also suck it up and pay the brokers fee. its just the way the market there works.
good luck and don't worry, things always have a way of working out.
...we literally carried our laptop around and checked every hour and when we saw an apt we were interested in we called ASAP!!! and tried to set it up so we would be the 1st people to see the apartment.
sounds familiar. our place was posted to craigslist on a Saturday eve, we called within 30 minutes of the post, set up a visit for the following [Sunday] morning, first thing, and said we wanted it 10 minutes after walking in the door...he still showed it to others that day, but basically just in case we didn't show up to sign the paperwork the following [Monday] morning...
I found an apartment! It's pretty small but it's an actual 2 bed in the EV on St. Marks by Avenue A. $2300 with a one month fee. Management company seemed like nice guys and the apartment was just renovated. 3rd floor walkup with lots of light and it's on the backside of the building facing a backyard/garden thing so I hope it won't catch too much of the street noise from St. Marks and Ave A. who knows. it seemed like a deal to me compared to the 3000-3500 2bed flex apartments that seemed to be the norm.
Any thoughts? I'm happy but I hope I made a good decision. After leaving the apartment I, as usual after seeing 30 places in 2 days, completely forgot what it looks like. My roommate is working up on Fifth so he's gonna have a little bit of a hike.
Jul 28, 07 4:51 pm ·
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Lost In NYC, Part 1 (long)
New York, I love you, but you're bringing me down ...
So, I moved to NYC early June. It's great, I love it, blah. I had a several graphic design projects I was finishing for a company in Boston and my girlfriend wanted to move to NYC, she won. We arrived, no job, no apartment, and most importantly ... NO HOTEL! I could have never guessed that there was even a remote possibility that every reasonable (or even moderately expensive) hotel could be booked in the enitre city. Apparently they do. Anyway, after a little less than a week of constant craigslisting and arguments induced by tiny hotel room claustrophobia, we found a sublet. An awesome little 1 bed in Gramercy next to Union Square. Things were good, I finished my project, got paid, turned 25, saw good music, went to the museums, blah. Very fun and it gave me and my girlfriend some great quality time before she moved back to Japan for a while.
Now, it's July 24th. She's back in Tokyo for a while. I'm feeling overwhelmed, lonely, and a little sad. I've resorted back to what I always do when these sorts of emotions lurk their way into my life, I draw, and I read, and I paint, and I draw more. However, although therapeutic, I must be more productive in ways that the general public (or at least my family) can appreciate. Within the next week I must find an apartment. Within the next month I must find a job at an Arch. firm. Within the next two months I must take the GRE and finish the distance physics course I've been procrastinating with. Within the next three months I need to go to Japan. And last, certainly not least, within the next four months I need to complete my M. Arch I applications as well as my portfolio. Is it normal to think your portfolio looks great, go to sleep, and then want to tear it up in the morning?
The apartment search is my most imminent problem because I will go from being a Gramercy subletter to a Gramercy homeless person on August 1st unless I make moves. Are there any secrets to finding an apartment in NYC? I would really like to stay close to Union Square/East Village, I love it down here, although maybe just because I haven't lived anywhere else. I've perused every management company's vacancy listing I can find and craigslist is ... well ... craigslist so my experience there has been not so great. I would love to not pay a fee, is this realistic?
I'm turning to you guys because I know other people here have been in similar situations and honestly I'm feeling pretty damn scared and confused. It's beginning to get to me. So much uncertainty. One of the only constants in my whole life right now is my passion for architecture and design. Thank you GSD-cdisco. (Friends and family too. But we'll leave them out of this because they are 200 miles away!) This path is tricky for someone like me who has a finance background, but I could never look back. Love and passion is all we need. No matter how far you go down the wrong path, turn back.
Advice, encouragement, and heckling will all be accepted readily and rewarded with frozen karma. Even if you don't comment, but actually made it to here reading, you get a couple pieces of karma. :)
Unless you can pay, give up the dream of living in Manhattan, especially if you think that you don't/won't pay a broker. When I lived in the East Village, it was only through sheer craigslist luck that I found a place. Even in Brooklyn, where I eventually moved, I had to pay a broker. Almost everyone I know in New York has paid a broker for an apartment, unless it was a hand-me-down.
My best suggestion is to figure out what your priorities are: space, light, quiet? Move to Brooklyn. Action, convenience, excitement? Keep looking in Manhattan.
Had I not made the decision to leave Brooklyn/New York to go to grad school elsewhere, I was planning to look for an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill, and Park Slope. All neighborhoods with trees, unlike Greenpoint, where I was living before.
Good luck; Real estate hunting in New York is truly Darwinian.
are cupckes still soo popular in new york is that now like so 2004 or something like that?
msarch - try this site if you don't want to pay a broker fee.
meta, I'm exhausted just reading that.
My experience in NY was not nearly that complicated, as I went on co-op and the whole thing was quite organized. Well, as organized as it could have been driving into the city on September 18, 2001 with the ruins of the WTC still smoldering.
However, I hate to break it to you but we did have to pay our whole sublet's rent up front, I'm pretty sure. We basically dropped about $2400 each like that. It was just a sublet but we also had to pay a broker too. I can't remember how much.
As much as I will recommend living in NYC to anyone, I think that finding an apartment there is sheer torture. Be persistent, be earnest, and be willing to shell out some dough if you want a place to live. Good luck to you.
It is absolutely normal to go to sleep thinking your portfolio's great, and then wake up wondering what sort of crack you'd been smoking to think that... just keep working on it, and eventually either it will drift towards a place where you aren't conflicted about it anymore, or you'll just have to accept the risk and run with it. Good luck.
you guys are the best. i love you all. i went out to grab a couple slices of pizza and came home to words of encouragement! well, maybe encouraging is a little stretch but, hey, they were words!!!
brooklyn vs. manhattan- i dig the manhattan culture for the time being. i would prefer to stay here but like you say there are several hurdles. i'm rummaging through as many union sq. apt's as possible tomorrow (neighborhoods: east vill, greenwich, west vill, soho, chelsea, gramercy, murray hill, flatiron, stuy-town, etc., etc.) this damned fee may just be inevitable.
meta, that is an intense story. i hope you find something nice that suits you. i wish i could offer something more than my diminishing moral support but ... you know. same boat.
mr. b, is that site legit. i got scared away from them by a broker. i took it with a grain of salt but the salt left a bad taste. she claimed they scam you for the fee and then produce no results. the site looks good though and they have seemingly good stuff.
anyone have suggestions about a good place or type of job for someone with a non-arch background? i'm a "skilled" graphic designer, also familiar with autocad and a little touch of rhino. am i better off following the graphic design route or looking for some office manager/administrative job with a smaller arch firm? I called the admissions offices at each of the lovely schools I'm applying to. They say practical experience will be meaningful on the application. That said, I need to make money, I was doing very well as a graphic designer. I don't need a lot but I need enough for pizza and ramen at least. basically, i want to do what will look the most attractive to schools for that next fun filled process ... applications without ruining my stay in nyc.
for the moment, i'll drown my sorrows in pizza.
i really appreciate everyone's comments, the sensation of having very few of the closest people in your life not understand what you're trying to do is such an empty feeling.
haha. so dramatic. things could be much worse. on a lighter note, anyone check out the restaurants LTL did? very cool, imo. i've been told ini ani is gone, i loved that place.
move to LA
my first apartment was in soho. rented from two seemingly nice nyu students just for 6 weeks to give me time to look for some thing more permanent. i arrived to find they also rented the living room, and other bedroom to 2 - 20 year old 'jersey girls'. not really knowing the stereotype of 'jersey girl' upon my arrival i thought no big deal. but now i know. there were no less than 30 random young boys sleeping in our apartment during those 6 weeks - sometimes side by side on the living room floor. one morning i stepped on pizza stuck to the kitchen floor, and there was no end to the bob marley, grateful dead, michael jackson posters added to the wall decor.
now i share a beautiful place in the west village with a highend sex worker. and believe it or not, it's much calmer than living with the jersey girls.
good luck on the apartment hunt. if it doesn't smell, isn't rotting, doesn't have bed bugs and you share with less than 8 people, take it.
<i>not really knowing the stereotype of 'jersey girl' upon my arrival i thought no big deal. but now i know.</i?
so what do you know now? you're obviously not from jersey...so i'd be curious to hear more about these 'so-called' jersey girls.
i mean, i'll be the final judge on that if you know what i'm saying.
just sayin' is all.
Fogey, I was there in August 2001 too, and I did the same thing.....almost went up but decided not to. It was August 11.
MSArch - don't give up on the neighborhoods on your list. it's doable. it's a huge hassle, it may take a few weeks of focused apartment hunting, but it's doable.
in my opinion DO NOT pay a website like rent-direct.com or inapts.com a single dime. basically, they promise 'exclusive' listings or direct contact with landlords (bypassing the broker) but they really don't have anything that's not on craigslist.
the listings they have are not exclusive (you can find most of them yourself on craigslist or just by walking around an area looking for "rental available" signs at bldg entrances),
much of their information is inaccurate (they will give contact info to a landlord for a given property, you will call, and the landlord/property managment company will say, "sorry, we haven't owned that property for 2 years, or similar),
many of their newly listed apartments are already rented,
blablablabllalbllalaldon'tdoit.
the GF and I live in a studio w/sleeping loft in Gramercy. our rent is within the typical range (typical range being $750-1000 per person), our place is relatively spacious, but it took us 3 solid weeks of hunting to find it, and we ended up paying a broker.
best of luck!
I forget how much i fucking love New York, but it was probably cooler in the 80s when it was still fucked up. Can't wait to get back in September.
the nice part of new york not being so f'ed up is that you can walk
pretty much anywhere without having to worry about getting held
up...i've lived here 4 years and haven't even sniffed a mugging...
just one fight at 4am, but even that was relatively tame.
there's still enough color for my taste though.
I remember moving to New York in the summer of 2000. A friend of a friend was working on his house in Vermont, so he subleased his East Village studio (E 9th and A) for $500. Upon arriving I walked in the front door of the building to find a note posted by a cop next to the stairwell:
Two break ins in the last week. Keep doors locked. Found homeless man smoking crack in stairway. Make sure he stays out.
As I walked into the studio, I realized that the bathtube was in the kitchen, there was a hole in floor big enough to see the people down stairs and in the back there was a tiny little closet that ended up having a toilet inside. I loved that place! I had everything I could ever need in that neighborhood and didn't have to go north of 14th, west of Broadway or south of Houston to find it.
Aah, Alphabet city back in the good ol' days before developer-itis occured. There were never any security problems on my block in the East Village since I lived across the street from the Hell's Angels headquaters in Manhattan. They kept the block quite safe.
i like the idea of a bath tube..just not sure how it works.
there's still those signs about breakins and homeless people...
fortuneately i never had anyone break in when i was living on the
lower east side.
I tried going out in the EV a few months ago. Just awful. The bars and people there suck. Now you have to go below Delancy to find anything good.
msarch
i know you want to stick to manhattan but really don't rule out brooklyn. just got back from an apartment search there and found a very nice 2 bdrm for 2000 in parkslope right off 5th avenue a block away from the f,n,r trains. personally i would have prefered the carrol gardens neighborhood (a little grittier, younger and not as many families with kids but) but felt the parkslope area was a little safer for the wife.
i found it isn't craigslist that sucks, it's nyc market that does. a simple equation of supply and demand. after losing out on 2 apartments we literally carried our laptop around and checked every hour and when we saw an apt we were interested in we called ASAP!!! and tried to set it up so we would be the 1st people to see the apartment.
also suck it up and pay the brokers fee. its just the way the market there works.
good luck and don't worry, things always have a way of working out.
sounds familiar. our place was posted to craigslist on a Saturday eve, we called within 30 minutes of the post, set up a visit for the following [Sunday] morning, first thing, and said we wanted it 10 minutes after walking in the door...he still showed it to others that day, but basically just in case we didn't show up to sign the paperwork the following [Monday] morning...
I found an apartment! It's pretty small but it's an actual 2 bed in the EV on St. Marks by Avenue A. $2300 with a one month fee. Management company seemed like nice guys and the apartment was just renovated. 3rd floor walkup with lots of light and it's on the backside of the building facing a backyard/garden thing so I hope it won't catch too much of the street noise from St. Marks and Ave A. who knows. it seemed like a deal to me compared to the 3000-3500 2bed flex apartments that seemed to be the norm.
Any thoughts? I'm happy but I hope I made a good decision. After leaving the apartment I, as usual after seeing 30 places in 2 days, completely forgot what it looks like. My roommate is working up on Fifth so he's gonna have a little bit of a hike.
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