NYC Apartment Search
I moved to New York City right after college. I wanted to have the New York City experience and figured it was best to do while I was lean on funds and before I was too complacent in my life to take the challenge.
I moved to New York City as a 21 year old thousandaire. I had a friend who had a place in Alphabet City for $100 a month, so you know it was a swank place. Actually it was a condemned building and with no heat or hot water. The apartment was nine feet wide by twenty feet long. It had a working gas stove that provided the heat and a hot bath was accomplished after heating several pots of boiling water and dumping them into the bathtub which was situated smack in the middle of the room. As bad as the accommodations were my friend said I had to leave because he had a girlfriend who wasn’t cool with the situation.
I went to a cattle call of a waitressing audition and got the gig over 1000 other applicants by being as rude to the owner as he was to me. He asked how long I had been a bleach bottle blond and I responded with probably as long as you have been covering up your grey hair. I was gainfully employed making $200 a day and was able to go in search of an apartment.
In any other city this would have been a day long search, but not New York City. I got the Village Voice and circled everything within a 30 minute radius of Greenwich Village where I worked. The first stop was a great apartment on the water, too bad the guy was a perve. He started out by asking me if it would be OK if he had to come into the bathroom to fetch something while I was taking a shower. The inquisition became distinctly more perverted once I answered yes to the first question. I mouthed the word no to the next girl who was coming to view the apartment after I left.
At the next place the guy didn’t like my karma, but at the third apartment the guy liked my karma well enough to ask me out. The fourth apartment was with a female roommate and I was encouraged until I found out that she dressed up as a heart and gave people hugs for a living.
I finally found a place on McDougal right by NYU. The guy was a little weird, less than 5 feet tall and wanted to be called Eric rather than Paul the name on the lease. He didn’t want me to have any guys over which was fine with me since I didn’t have boyfriend. I moved my stuff in and he wouldn’t let any of my guy friends over the threshold of the door. By no guys over he meant no guys, not even friends…warning bell! He wanted to help me unpack my lingerie and I declined and locked my door before going to bed that night. It was a good thing I did because I saw the knob on my door moving in the middle of the night and when he couldn’t get in the shower in the adjacent bathroom ran all night. I awoke to find a peephole from the bathroom to my bedroom. I was horrified and went to work the next day and told my friend Betts who said I could live with her for the next t week. I enlisted every tall guy I knew to move my stuff out of the apartment to small Paul as I referred to him.
Under the gun to get an apartment in a week I got the Village Voice as soon as it came out. I saw an apartment in the Village a block away form were I worked. The apartment was great and the girl seemed normal. She was an actress who hailed from Texas, when I found out that she went to SMU with a friend of mine, I broke down and told her the sordid story of my search for an apartment. She started crying and told me to move in immediately. We became instant best friends and moved from sublet to sublet together the entire time I lived in NYC.