It Was More Funner During the Strike

The dog days of August are upon us, and the city is sweltering hot. News reports last week predicted an end to the heatwave we were experiencing. It finally broke, giving us the most glorious weather -- for one day. Mother Nature decided to fool us yet again and continue her vicious cycle of heat and humidity. As an additional "Fuck y'all!", she added severe rainstorms to the mix, and they aren't removing humidity from the air.

I woke up this morning to chaos. More problems from the water building. Nothing new, I thought. Apparently, the city's plumbing was overwelmed in some spots, including ours. The pipes burst in the mid-section of the building, spewing water, plaster and other mysterious matter all over the hallways. From the top to the bottom - every single floor. Thankfully, the apartments were okay. It wasn't until I got to the subway station when I realized the problem was much more severe and not unique to my building. No trains.

The crowds swelled on the platform, still, no trains. Commuters began pouring in, and with no more room down below, gathered in the hallways and sat on stairs. It wasn't until the situation was almost to the breaking point when we were informed the entire subway system was down. Forget buses, which were packing people in like sardines and skipping stops. Forget cabs, which were already using the buddy system to reach final destinations. Finally, I resigned myself to the fact that I would just have to walk to work. This wouldn't be too bad, right? Wrong.

I tried to imitate the camaraderie of a few years ago as best I could when the MTA went on strike during a December cold snap. My memories of those few days are of being bundled up and cozy in my goose down coat and Hush Puppies boots, all comfy and assured that I could take what the MTA wanted to dish out to us. Today, however, after the tenth block; stupid pedestrians amok, sweat pouring down my back - I had enough. I wasn't built for hot weather. On Madison, I overheard one person on her cell alerting whomever that the Starbucks on 36th was closed due to plumbing problems, inducing head shaking and eye rolling spasms on my part. By the time I turned that corner, an unbearable fishy sewage smell permeated the air, and I knew that Starbucks had more problems on their hands than they were ever going to realize.

I managed to get to work and greet the slow drizzle of co-workers coming from distances far beyond where I commuted from. What a day. I can't wait for vacation.

2B or Not 2B

In a monumental turn of events, for once, I am siding with my landlords. No, I haven't bought a one way ticket for a ride on the crazy train...yet. The reason involves a rabble rouser whom I'll call 2B.

Last year, when I brought my landlords to housing court over some serious issues (like no heat in the middle of March), 2B suddenly seemed very interested in getting involved with my case. Even to the point of declaring she would come to court with me. I kept my guard up, because after all, she never said so much as one word to me in all the years I have lived in this building. A bit weird for someone who not only lives on my floor, but who is also five doors down from me. At first, I chalked it up to weirdness, but now, I know the full scope of things. 2B only wants to associate with you if it involves causing trouble.

It all began several days ago, while gathering up my trash for next day's pickup, I noticed numerous things that did not compute. One was the absence of bins for both our paper and plastic recyclables. The other was the disappearance of the huge can for our regular garbage. Both the bin for plastics and the bin for our regular garbage have had a longstanding place inside our vestibule. The bin for our paper goods was always inside the foyer.

Apparently, 2B, angry over the legal change from rent control to stabilization, decided to work with her lawyer to make things difficult for the building's owners. My guess is that he is some shyster Lionel Hutz type of "law talking guy", who probably has a 1-800 number that coincides with his area of litigious expertise. Her master plan was to get the landlord to exclude her from the rent change over. So, she made several calls to 311 to complain about the "garbage problem". I put that in full-on ridiculous finger quotes because there was never a garbage problem.

The charges have resulted in the relocation of our bins to the outside of the building, and the complete loss of paper recycling for us tenants. Now the building is a major eyesore -- and has a huge potential for serious rodent problems. The landlords are also dealing with one city agency who agrees that garbage left inside the building creates a health hazard, and another agency who claims that it's a hazard to keep leaving garbage outside of the building. It is now all in limbo as the agencies duke it out, and considering it's the City of New York the landlords are dealing with, we're in it for the long haul.

Drama.

So, where is 2B in all of this? Carrying on day to day in her own merry little way, completely oblivious and uncaring that this is, in the long run, only going to bite her in her skinny little ass. Not that she actually cares about the garbage, it is merely a minor coup for all her dastardly efforts. What has happened is a loss of support for whatever offenses the owners have caused her over the years. Now, she is on the outs with the tenants, and that's something you really don't want, or need. Hey, we're suffering from this too! In several ways. We are not the only ones who got screwed by the legal ruling from control to stabilization. That was Albany's doing. Now, we also have to deal with lack a of waste facilities, and a possible rodent problem as well. All because one person went on a selfish campaign against the wrong people.

I hate you 2B! Crying wolf will be the death of you when you actually get eaten by the wolf. I really wish you had picked the proper battles.

Apartment Hunting 101

If I have any writing regrets; it’s that I failed to save the addresses and notes from my Roommate Finders contacts back in 1997.

Prior to Craigslist, there was the Village Voice. Every Tuesday night the first drop of that week’s paper would occur at the newsstand on Astor Place. This was because the Voice’s offices were around the corner. Makes sense. The flurry of activity around this poor newsstand was insane, and there would often be a huge line, then a mad dash to any nearby gross God-only-knows-what’s-on-the-receiver payphone (mobile phones weren’t quite the norm yet). The funny thing was that this ritual was such a usual occurrence that many ads required you to call after Tuesday.

Last night, while coming back into the city from a holiday weekend away in CT, right as we passed the spot, my mind jumped to one of my experiences looking at a roommate situation directly off of CPW. There are a few memorable meetings that will forever be planted in the accessible part of my brain, but this one was stuck back there in my subconscious; just waiting for a moment to bring it out. It was the second apartment share situation on the UWS that I had looked at. But like several others, it was definitely a bit weird.

A young woman showed me the room that she had for rent, which was perfectly fine in size and condition. But, I noticed that there were an unusual amount of bottles of medication in her kitchen. Throughout the entire conversation, I kept darting my eyes between her and the huge stacked up pile of Valley of the Dolls meds. It wasn’t hard to notice. We were standing in the doorway of the room to be rented which faced into the kitchen, and had a direct view of her personal pharmaceutical stash. I remember searching for signs of sickness on her, which I didn’t seem to find. Was it a temporary or long term illness? Was she contagious? Was she in fact…A ZOMBIE!? The whole time I kept wondering what exactly was wrong with her, and would she die while I was living there? In the worst case scenario, would she die right there while interviewing me?

You would think that if you walked someone through your kitchen and there was an unmistakable pile of meds stacked up like a beer pyramid in a frat house, you would somehow work that in your conversation. I guess she didn’t read up on her Amy Vanderbilt book of manners. I guess I didn’t either, because there was no way I could gently broach the subject with her. She didn’t consider me for the apartment share, and deep down, I was kind of glad.

My goal at the time was to write an apartment hunting 101 type of book. In between the references and tips would be mine and other's stories about looking for apartments. These would of course be horror stories, funny anecdotes or amazing out of the ordinary finds. I wanted it to be a cross between the Newcomer’s books and the Zany’s books, and I also wanted to include my own experiences. The chapters would be named for the neighborhood and borough where the action occurred in; each story representing a different area of the city. My goal was to get away from those formal books, and offer the reader tips and hints from the people who lived it.

Sadly, in the haste to exit my temporary abode in order to get to my newly acquired apartment, I threw out my packet of information. It was a momentary lapse of reason. Turns out, I was more motivated writing a book during the period I was experiencing my own apartment hunting. Naturally, time has made me forget many of the addresses, but the experiences are there somewhere, inside my head. They are waiting for some event to bring them up to my consciousness and I can add them here hopefully for posterity.

Rent Control, A Perspective

I know, I know. I blather on and on about rent control. I confess, it is an obsession of mine, and Curbed is all too happy to supply my demand.

After posting my own thoughts on the subject, I came across this entry on Curbed, which should give one perspective on how it affects a building.

Portrait of a Lower East Side Building

It ended up leading me to this real estate site, where I looked up a few listings and found many more drool producing rents. Including one ground floor apartment on Henry St. One tenant in this building rents a two bedroom, 800 sq ft apartment - complete with an 1,150 sq ft "private rear yard". The cost for such a pleasure? $396 a month!!

I Always Feel Like, Somebody's Watching Me

An entry in Gothamist reported of the increase in private detectives hired by landlords to seek out illegal sub-letters. This got me thinking about my current living arrangement.

For those who don’t live in the area, to have a rent controlled or stabilized apartment is like hitting the real estate jackpot. I can’t really breakdown the nuisances of rent control and how it got that way, but what I do know is that those who have it are seriously envied. To put it in laymen’s terms - Let’s say you just acquired a rent controlled apartment for $1000 a month. For as long as you live in that dwelling, that is all you will ever pay each month. Sure, there are some exceptions (income restrictions and non-repair work), but that’s pretty much the gist of it.

Fortunately, or unfortunately (however you want to look at it), after the rent-controlled tenant decides to vacate the premises, the rules allow the landlord to raise the rent to the full “market rate”. I put market rate in quotes because that amount is totally subjective. Naturally, this has created a business of seeking out those tenants who are illegally subletting their apartments in order to throw them out and raise the rents. Although this is not news to me, it’s certainly surprising the lengths some will go to in order to kick someone to the curb.

While I sympathize with landlords, after all, this is the city of tenant’s rights; I have to admit I’ve become hardened through my experiences both directly and indirectly with them.

I recall my shock and slight jealous disdain years ago upon learning that a co-worker and his family were living in a four bedroom apartment in Little Italy and paying only $400 a month in rent. When I expressed such outrage (most likely done out of apartment envy), he bluntly explained that no one wanted to live in Little Italy several years ago when it was one big shit hole, and now that it’s fashionable, why is it not okay to have these types of rents for those who stuck it out through the difficult times? His comment really sat with me.

I see the gentrification of Harlem, especially now that Columbia University has snapped up tons of land in neighborhoods now deemed undesirable. What’s going to happen to the current residents once NoCo (I just know that’s what realtors are going to christen this area!) becomes a hot address? Will the newbie’s to the area paying thousands of dollars going to be so understanding once they find out that the apartment above them occupied by someone for decades is paying a miniscule amount in rent?

There are times when being angry at a tenant’s lucky deal is indeed warranted. I remember back in the day when I was pounding the pavement, Village Voice real estate classifieds in hand, looking at potential roommate situations. This was pre-internet and pre-pre-Craigslist. While looking at one apartment share in Alphabet City, it was brought to my attention by the girl that the tenant below her in the same configured two bedroom apartment was paying only $36.00 a month in rent! You didn’t read that wrong. Can you imagine that? Her cable bill was more than her rent. To me, that is just wrong. How are the owners supposed to pay anything on the maintenance and upkeep of their buildings I ask?

I heard that there were some sleazy tactics done by my landlords in order to get people out of their apartments. One tenant was told that she was illegally subletting because she took over her ex-boyfriend’s place. Actually, she was unknowingly following the law. In the city of New York, if you are living in a dwelling and paying the rent using your name on the check or money order, after a set amount of time, if the landlord doesn’t call you on it, the apartment is considered yours. Some might say that she deserved the false eviction for not looking into and standing up for her rights. But, I think it’s pretty smarmy for them to even approach a tenant in the first place knowing they themselves missed the deadline for taking action.

And then there was the great freeze out of March 2006.

The boiler broke, and according to our landlords, the repairs were going to take “several days”. Well, several days turned into two weeks. All this time we were without heat. By law, we tenants should have been provided some sort of alternative heat, but we weren’t, and the slumlords wouldn’t listen to our complaints. Most people in the building stuck their heads in the sand and quietly complained. Me? Like the Lone Ranger, I took them to housing court. We all knew damn well what they were up to. They wanted us to be sick and tired of the situation and look for an abode elsewhere. What they got were indignant tenants who swore we would never leave, especially after this incident. Because rent-controlled tenants are often prisoners of apartment privilege, deep down, we knew we really couldn’t afford to leave.

I’ve become more of a proponent of rent stabilization laws than rent control in my time here. Rent stabilization is where by law your landlord can increase the rent only about 4% a year. This helps landlords with the upkeep of the building and stops the $36.00 a month tenants. I don’t think it’s fair for one person to have several bedrooms to themselves when there are people in the streets who desperately need homes. Also, there are building wars because controlled tenants have more rights than non-controlled tenants.

There has to be a happy medium somewhere, and stabilization, seems like a better answer. To the non-controlled tenants paying heaps of rent, I do understand their plight, but aren’t you taking out your frustrations on the wrong people? Is a crumbling tenement apartment worth some of the extravagant rents you see out there that landlords demand? No. However, my landlord just found a loophole that got my apartment off of rent control and onto stabilization, yet I’m angry about it. I don’t think my apartment qualifies for de-control. But that is simply my opinion and not the opinion of someone who desperately needs a home.

To quote perfectly from a great article on controlled tenants who get too big for their britches (“Rent Asunder”), “I'm the first to admit that it's totally unfair, but I would be crushed if I lost it. I wouldn't live the life I do without it”.

That is so true.

Now I Don't Feel So Friggin Bad

AMNY, Newsday's daily free paper, had a feature Friday about a couple living together in a 295 square foot apartment in Chelsea. I would guess that my apartment clocks in at around the same square footage, but where I have length, they have width (lucky ducks!). However, their apartment is pretty much configured the same as mine, a classic railroad flat. At first, I stared at the picture of them, cosy in their tiny abode, way jealous of the nicey-niceness of the space. Then I took at look at what they are currently paying for their pad; $1,675 per month!! Gasp! Shock! Horror! Can a place that tiny really go for so much? Well, read the article folks because apparently, it's much more commonplace than I originally thought.

I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised. Several years ago, when feeling a bit of the summer doldrums one feels when they aren't allowed to have A/C in their living space, I decided to take a looksy at the apartment pool again. What I saw, for the amount they demanded, shocked me right back into my little shoebox. It was then I learned I was officially priced out of the city forever. You see, it wasn't always like this...

When I first moved here, cheap apartments were a skosh easier to come by. However, I moved here a pauper, with not enough to plunk down for a decent broker, and certainly not enough to pay several months of rent in advance, as was expected. There were also more neighborhood options open in terms of the rental market, but they weren't yet safe for a single girl in her mid twenties. Brooklyn was a place where you moved to have kids, or for huge multiple bedrooms. Or in defeat. I settled by accident in Gramercy and watched as this neighborhood became so hot it took me years until I began to feel like I fit in. I still don't dine much on Irving Place!

Still, I don't feel so bad knowing that many continue to live in such small spaces in order to remain here. It's just another quirky, kooky aspect of city living.

Back To Normal

For now that is.

If you remember the shenanigans a few weeks ago, I had water issues.

Of course, the bumbling workmen took their sweet ass time fixing it (what's new?). They also had to install a new light fixture in my closet because water ran into the ceiling and got in the electric circuit. Well. You can guess what I'm about to write next...Yes, water did get on my clothing. Luckily, it all washed out. I spent last Saturday bleaching down my closet.

In other tenement news, yesterday, I did battle with the big white monster; and won. My refrigerator. It desperately needed a major defrosting session. It became an all day feat let me tell you, with ice at least 3 inches thick on the bottom. Naughty me. Naughty me.

Can you tell I have terrible refrigerator management skills? Weird, since I keep it flawlessly clean and bleached down at all times. If you live in my neighborhood and happened to hear loud thuds, it was me hurling chunks of ice out my window into the back garden. Since it's Antarctica cold here right now, I figure they will stay there for awhile. Right now, I'm bruised and battered from hacking away at ice, but now I can fit more than a teeny tiny box of Bird's Eye veggies in my freezer.

Scantily Clad

I just realized - I have nothing on my walls. Save for an old print that I put up using an already existing hammered in nail; my walls are void of decoration. Stark nekkid is more like it.

Lovely sight, eh?

I’ve lived in my apartment for close to 10 years now, and judging by my scantily clad walls; one would think I set foot in the place just last week. My apartment is teeny tiny. At about 350 square feet, I’m in one of those situations where I really should be utilizing the wall space to its full advantage. After all, when space is limited, it’s always best playing this up to give your digs that certain oomph.

Only last year did I have the Super put up shelving in my kitchen. I so desperately needed that. I also had him put up a few decorative shelves in the living room and the bedroom. This helped the attempts at personalization just a wee bit.

What is it about making my house a home that gives pause?

Perhaps, this is something I have to deal with on a much deeper level, but I’ll get there someday. Right now, I need to hang more stuff; especially since I splashed out on getting my most favorite print in the whole wide world framed. Now, it’s just propped up waiting for its moment of sunshine. The print was originally put up allover the NYC subways. After their run, they were sold to the Transit Museum for about twenty bucks. I have always loved this art, and was happy that I could own one.

Here it is during its subway run. Now it’s waiting for a spot on my wall.

The Saga Continues

The water building strikes again.


More drama to come...

This Old Tenement

Bob Vila would turn and run away screaming if he were to be given my apartment building as a remodeling project. Or "the water building" as I so lovingly call it. In all fairness, the building is old, but that's no excuse for the lack of upkeep by her past and present owners. I have wanted to live in a brownstone/tenement type building since I was a little girl. Blame it on Sesame Street. Unlike Sesame Street, I don't have a huge yellow bird living in my alley, I don't even have an alley. I do however have two sexually ambiguous men who are roommates living in my building, but their names aren't Bert and Ernie.

The water building produces tons of water throughout its infrastructure, hence the name I christened it. There always seems to be some leak somewhere, even in the weirdest places. Leaks abound here, and it's very annoying.

So, my turn came again. Being here nine years now, I've had plenty of turns to experience the Niagara Falls of my existence. The worst on record was a leak in my closet that got all over my stuff, rendering everything in there un-wearable. Other than that, it's been reduced to a few radiator leaks, which produced small floods. One of which surrounded a fully activate power strip. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Today, I arrived home after a long day setting up our new office only to hear the familiar sounds of drip, drip, drip. Okay, I thought to myself, where is this baby coming from? There it was. Over the fridge and leaking like crazy. Dripping allover my fridge and the contents on top; soaking through a box of oatmeal and two boxes of pasta. Can ya tell I'm pressed for space?

The mark of doom-


The thing is, I have had so many problems with our new landlord that I will, somewhat out of spite, fully expect to be reimbursed for the oatmeal and two boxes of pasta. Call me cheap, but these people have screwed around with me for too long.

Someday, I'll tell the story of how I brought those mofos to housing court. But that's another day.