My Worst Nightmare

Just read this little number from the NY Times. It's the second item in the article. Rats on trains - the classic combination of one of the best things about NYC and the absolute dreaded worst aspect of NYC. (See my previous post on "Trains" for more rat/train action.)

Real Estate

I'm obsessed with real estate right now. I've been living in apartments for a very long time, moving from place to place, and always imagining what I WOULD do with the apartment if it were mine. Take out a wall here, paint the room a bright not-even-close-to antique white color, put some new flooring in, etc. All things I can't actually do as a renter. Right now I'm dying to put down a white laminated wood floor and take out a door in our current apartment. Not going to do it, but I'm sure I'll obsess over it the whole time we live here.

In the last apartment - the UES apartment - we had to do about $750 in improvements just to tolerate it. It was a horrible place. The floors were 2 inches lower towards the middle of the building, so everything ran down hill. The kitchen floor had vinyl flooring held down with DUCT TAPE, over a lumpy, uneven tile removal. We scrubbed the crap out of it and put rugs over it so we never had to look at it again. The bathroom floor tile was so disgusting, I covered it with press 'em tiles so I'd also never have to look at it again. We scrubbed until our skin cracked and bled, and what still wouldn't come clean, we painted over, including the pepto-abysmal pink bedroom and kitchen - ??? We used paint as a cleaning agent, caulking agent and repairing agent. The kitchen cabinets and countertop were starting to sink toward the middle and due to numerous leaks in the 100 year old pipes, they were starting to rot a little, too. It was a total rathole (somewhat too literally - the week before we moved out I found two rodents fighting over the garbage in the kitchen - eww!). It was the only apartment that I imagined torching for the insurance money if I owned it, and our rent was $600 more than the American median mortgage payment. Gack!

Our Astoria apartment is pure Grandma retro. Wood panelling, for reals. But it's really clean, has pretty good light and everything works. It's rodent free and the rent is cheap. It may not look as good superficially as the last one did after our ghetto rehab, but it's a million times more solid underneath. But it's not ours and never will be. We're priced out of Astoria already, which stinks. So, I keep web searching for what we can afford. It's amazing how many neighborhoods in NY we can't. The entire island of Manhattan, for instance. Conversely, we can afford half the apartments in the Bronx, none of which we want. There are only about 4 nabes left in Brooklyn in our price range: Sunset Park, Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach and Bay Ridge. Great water views, but WAY out there. We'll probably stay here in Queens because there are a lot of neighborhoods we can afford here, and many of them are actually less than a day's long commute to the city. I exaggerate, but seriously. Bay Ridge?!? You need a passport to get there, don't you?

The NY Times has a great real estate section online - you can look at all the pictures. Ryan made me stop looking at it and come to bed around 2am on Friday night. Like I said I'm obsessed. I can tell you exactly what $240,000 will buy you in Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, Woodside, Flushing, Corona, Bayside, Forest Hills, and all of the above mentioned Brooklyn nabes. Some of them, not much. Others a lot. I'm ready for a piece of the American dream. Even if it comes in a 550 sq. ft. package. At least it'll be mine. And I'll be able to paint it whatever color I want. Besides, who wouldn't want to live in a place called Sunnyside??

The Glory of Wash-N-Fold

I hate laundry. I don't know why, but doing laundry to me is just about the worst chore imaginable. I'd rather scrub the toilet than do laundry. At least with scrubbing the toitey, I get a sense of satisfaction when it's gleaming and smelling good. Laundry just sucks. There's the lugging of it to the mat, the loading the washer, the unloading the washer, the loading the dryer, the unloading the dryer, the folding, the lugging home, and then the putting away... Ugh.

Once I had an apartment that had a washer/dryer in it - that was a little better, but I still hated it. Instead of lugging 40 pounds of laundry to the mat once a week with an Us mag and a Dr. Pepper, I did multiple loads throughout the week at home, which made me feel like the live-in washerwoman. But no matter how onerous it was, I always did my own laundry, except for those rare times when I visited home and my ma did it before I could. (Bless you, ma!) The thought of someone else doing my laundry seemed like a luxury that only rich people who had "help" could afford. Then, I moved to New York.

Since moving to NYC, I've done my own laundry less than 10 times, because I discovered the glory that is the Wash-N-Fold service. I'm sure they existed in the other cities I've lived in, but nowhere else are they so prolific, so prominent. At my old apartment in the Upper East Side, there were two within half a block of each other - I didn't even have to cross the street to get to them. There was also a laundromat right next door to one of the Wash-N-Folds on our block, and for the first week or two after I moved I did my own laundry there. But one hot July day, after lugging 40 pounds of dirties down 4 flights of stairs, I just didn't feel like spending 4 hours in a stiflingly hot laundromat watching Spanish telenovellas on the mat tv, so I walked one door down and for the first time in my life, dropped my laundry off for someone else to do. It cost $0.65 a lb. - $26.00 to drop off the clothes, turn and walk away and not worry about it again until I had to pick it up the next day. Wow. What a bargain!! It would cost me almost $20 for me to do all that laundry myself, and in old machines that never seemed to get the smell out of Ryan's t-shirts no matter how much detergent I used.

The next day, I went to collect my laundry from the Wash-N-Fold. Like magic, the two HUGE bags I'd dragged in were now two tidy sized plastic wrapped cubes. When I got them home and opened them, the smell of freshness filled the air, and all of the clothes were folded into precise, tight little squares that let me fit about twice as many things in my drawers, which is a big bonus when your apartment is the size of a bread box. I knew right then and there, if at all possible, I would never do my own laundry again. A mere 30% differential in price for 100% freedom - delightful. Then I found out that my Wash-n-Fold picked-up and delivered... I never took advantage of that, because it was such a delicious, delightful thought, that it almost seemed perverse. I might go to hell if I indulged in that.

Over the course of the next year, Ry and I tried several of the Wash-N-Folds in our UES neighborhood. We'd evaluate them on price ("Wow, I found one that only charges $.55/lb!"), smell ("Hmmm. Not quite as mountain fresh...), fold ("Look, I can LITERALLY bounce quarters off this shirt!"), and turn around time ("Dude, they want 24 hours to do those 6 loads, who do they think they are!"). In short, we got spoiled. And it was GOOD. Manhattan is hard, and anything that makes it easier is GOOD.

When we moved to Queens, life got a little easier, and I thought I'd take the high road and go back to doing my own laundry. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, right? I was shocked and pleasantly amazed to find that it costs about half as much to wash and dry a load of laundry at the laundromats here, and like Manhattan, we have about 6 laundromats in a two block area around our apartment, so proximity isn't a problem. Again, I spent about two weeks doing our laundry before I once again realized that I HATE doing laundry. HATE it. So, I'm back to dragging 40 pounds of dirties to the neighborhood Wash-N-Fold. Strangely, the one thing that isn't cheaper here in Queens is the price of a lb. of laundry - it's around the same $.60-.65 here. Probably because no one really wants to do it, unless they're properly compensated for touching your dirty underthings. Makes sense. The only difference is that in this neighborhood, the Wash-N-Fold is run by a Latino family, and in Manhattan it was a Vietnamese family. Both can make laundry smell like flowers and fold clothes so tightly, they seem to defy physics. God bless them.

Trains

I'm totally in love with the NYC subway. It was one of the first things that I enjoyed about NYC. Being able to just catch a train in your neighborhood and take it, with a few transfers, just about ANYWHERE in the city is so amazing to me. I've lived in other cities with public transportation - New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee. The pub trans systems in these cities vary in their quality and usage. Chicago's CTA has fantastic coverage of the city and on the grand scale of things, is pretty efficient and affordable. Detroit, the Motor City, has a joke of a system, as you could probably guess. The powers that be, when designing the city, decided encouraging people to take mass transit was encouraging them to reject the very industry that made the city what it was, so the only train in Detroit, the hysterically monikered "People Mover" (thepeoplemover.com) is like the train of the same name at Disney's Tomorrowland - it just takes you on a continuous loop and only tourists ride it. The Streetcar in NO was nice. I took it to work every day and it cost a buck. But there's only one line left, and it only goes up St. Charles and Carrollton and back. There's a bus named Desire now, no streetcar. I never took public trans in Milwaukee - I think it just has buses. Someone I worked with got mugged while waiting for a bus in a generally safe neighborhood about 2 weeks after I moved there, so I walked or drove everywhere for the 10 months I lived there.

I hate buses. I will do just about anything to avoid a bus ride. Not sure why. Probably due to the fact that I've had bad experiences on buses in every city I've lived, except for Milwaukee in which, as per above, I never rode. The fact that there isn't a subway under Central Park still steams me. I'd really rather walk through the park than take the Crosstown bus. HATE it! Ryan, my fiancé says it's irrational. It makes perfect sense to me. Why ride a bus when you can take THE TRAIN.

Since moving here, I've taken nearly every train line somewhere. Even the infamous G, which everyone in NY calls the Ghost train since you almost never see it. They sometimes stink, they're often crowded, on the older unautomated trains you can rarely ever understand the conductors' announcements or if you can they're at ear-splitting levels... The trains are delayed a lot, and sometimes, like the 7 train on the weekends until the middle of April, they don't run at all, forcing you onto (I shudder to think) a Shuttle bus. Some of the lines have cars that are so old, you feel like you just walked onto the set of 1979's "The Warriors" upon entering them. But I love them.

When I lived in Manhattan, I lived off of the 4/5/6 (Green) line. All the trains are new on the 4/5/6. The announcements and doors are operated automatically and they have digital read-outs that show you what the next stop will be and what the current time is. The computer voice that announces the stops is soothing and set to a comfortable volume level. The cars are, relatively speaking, clean. But for some reason, the cars are narrow. Very narrow. AND, the East Side of the city only has one train line, as opposed to the 3 on the West. Friday afternoon in a 6 train is like taking a joyride in a sardine can - smelly, wet and extremely crowded. But the 4/5/6 trains run pretty reliably and they aren't always packed...

Now I live off of the N/W (Yellow) line in Astoria, Queens. The first time I took this line, I got on the wrong train. I was trying to get to Flushing. I got some instructions on hopstop.com (a treasure for anyone living in DC, Chicago, NY, Boston, or SF using pub trans) which told me to take the R train to a dreaded bus. Hey, I was a newbie - now I know you take the N/W to the 7 to get to Flushing. Duh! But, I was ignorant. Really ignorant. I got on the N instead of the R and as soon as we cleared the East River, the train miraculously rose up, up, up right into the daylight. I'd taken the R to the Queens Target before, so I knew I wasn't supposed to be above ground. But what a sight - just like my hometown El train! Here I was on an elevated train, looking out on the sun-dappled graffiti filled urban landscape that is Long Island City.

The big joke was I was on my way to a work assignment as a cater waiter, and as always happened to me when they sent me to Queens, I got lost. Every trip to Queens for the first year I lived here involved me getting lost, calling Ryan and asking him to look up where I was on Google maps and asking him to help me get unlost. He was my ghetto GPS. I got to the job just a little late, after taking the train all the way to Astoria (my first unintentional visit to my current beloved nabe!), getting a kind bus driver to literally take his bus PAST the end of his line (the first good experience I ever had on a bus - although the engine on it died and he had to pull over and restart it about 4 times) to drop me off at the walking path at Flushing Bay on which I literally ran a mile to the jobsite. Anyhoo, I digress.

I've taken trains at all times of the day and night. I've gotten lost, missed my stop and wound up in the wrong Borough and had to go back, I've gotten shut out from stations by using my unlimited MetroCard at the same station twice in under 10 minutes (don't even get me started on that one)... I walked 7 miles round trip to work during the MTA strike of Christmas 2005 in the bitter cold. I've watched urine roll back and forth across the floor of a train. I had a rat stand right next to me on the 53rd Street station platform while waiting for the E train on Thanksgiving morning, like he was waiting for the train, too. I've been harrassed, panhandled, yelled at by crazy people, pushed, hit up to buy candy about a million times... I've waited an eternity for a train to come - like "I could've walked home in the same amount of time" long, and yet, I love the NYC subway. I wish it could take me everywhere. I could write a whole blog entry on the brand new N trains... Maybe I will!

Qboro or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

It occurred to me this past Friday night, as I was rushing through the Times Square station transferring from the N train to the 1, that like it or not, I am becoming a NEW YORKER. It was a stunning discovery, one that's been creeping up on me for the last couple of months. January marked the official 18 month anniversary of my moving to New York and I have resisted and fought the notion of becoming a New Yorker with all my might. I am a nice Midwestern girl with Midwestern manners, values and folksy charm (or so I'm told - especially by New Yorkers: "You're so NICE!").

I've watched New Yorkers on the streets for the past 18 months, and the one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty about them, is that they are an ANGRY bunch of people. Ok, I generalize, not all of them, but a LOT of them are angry. A lot of the time. About a lot of different things. None of which really matter that much. But, it's not their fault that they're angry. Here's why - Manhattan is an island. A small island. And 3,000,000 people live on it. Several million more commute to work to Manhattan everyday, as well. Needless to say, it gets a little crowded. And as we all saw on the national news a couple of weeks ago, it's not the cleanest place in the country, either... (Anyone up for some Kentucky Fried Rat?) Manhattan is smelly, it's cramped, it's loud, it's dirty and everyone's personal space is invaded on a daily basis. You can spend entire subway rides lodged in a stranger's armpit (I'm looking in your general direction L train). Facing this first thing every morning can make people... uptight. Venomous, really.

Oh, and did I mention that Manhattan proudly proclaims itself to be the most expensive piece of real estate on the planet? It is exactly the crazy lack of space that drives up the prices on everything in Manhattan to the point where even a stinkin' apple at your dirty, dirty neighborhood Gristedes is at about a 200% markup compared to the rest of the country. You think I'm exaggerating? Then you haven't lived here. Anyhoo. All of these things led me to mentally distance myself from the place I was living. New York was where I lived, but it sure wasn't home. And I sure as HELL wasn't a New Yorker.

So... why did it dawn on me, as I juked and zigged and zagged my way through the teeming throngs Friday night in Times Square station, that I am becoming a New Yorker? That's what I will be exploring in my future posts at this very site! If you like it, bookmark it and come back and visit. Tell your friends! If not, thanks for dropping by for this one time only visit. Nice to have you. Don't forget your umbrella, it's by the door there. For the rest of you, see you in a day or two!