Ooops, I did it again. I lost my comments and counter when I changed my blog template. I thought I re-inserted all the extraneous information such as counters and comment, but apparently I not ... hmmm...

Dag nabbit. I really should learn HTML. It's like Spanish - it would just come in so handy.

I haven't felt to inspired to blog lately because most of my farting-around-on-the-Internet time has been devoted to looking for an apartment. As Paul recently pointed out, looking for an apartment is strangely life-affirming. This is true. Of course, people have said the same thing about surviving plane crashes in the Andes where they have nothing to eat but their own eyeballs, but nonetheless ...

Like so many things in life, apartment hunting in Manhattan is about the triumph of hope over experience ... the idea that somewhere out there is a no-fee floor-through brownstone with a working fireplace and a terrace and hardwood floors and gargoyles (NF FRX WFP HWF with GYLES!!!!).

Looking for an apartment is kind of like dating. Now that I won't be doing much more of that, I suppose I get to funnel my sense of hope into real estate. They say that married people eventually reach the point where real estate actally starts to replace sex. My fantasy life, at the moment, still centers around sex ... on the floor ... on the refinished, yet original oak beam floor of a 1000 square foot apartment (in New York, folks, 1000 square feet is in the realm of pure fantasy) ... doing it in front of the working fireplace, or maybe in public .... say, on the terrace? Or, better yet, doing it in the kitchen? Oh, yes. That's it. The kitchen.

Kitchens trigger automatic orgasms in the minds of most New Yorkers. Not even doing anything erotic in the kitchen. Just the idea of an apartment where a kitchen exists is enough to get most of us off.

I'm yet to have a kitchen in New York. And of all the apartments I've looked at in this round of apartment-hunting, I'm yet to even see an actual kitchen.

Ads reading "HUMONGOUS RE-FURBISHED KITCHEN!" = toaster oven in the living room closet, next to a brand new paper towel holder.

Last night, just for the heck of it, I went to see a place on 68th and CPW. It was about 350 square feet, or, what I think the broker are calling "Hobbit Fabulous!!!!!" Brokers seem to love exclaimation points!!! The place did have a "HUGE outdoor space!!!!" (small terrace) and a "full bath!!!" But the "bathtub," like everything else in the place, was for some very short person (possibly a recent immigrant from Middle Earth?), as it was only about 3 ft. x 3 ft. Like a bird bath, only for people. And it was on the fourth floor of a walk-up building. Of course, all this was not surprising as it was only $2025 a month. In Manhattan, by the park, this is waaaaaaay cheap, folks.

Apparently, the brokers and apartment owners of New York didn't get the memo about the recession, and the fact that people aren't still flocking to Manhattan like it's 1999. Last night, I saw another place that was 700 sq. ft. (if you live in NYC, you think this is huge - otherwise you think we're crazy), and only $2250, but it didn't have any character. Another place was the same price, and full of character (working fireplace!!!) but only 550 square feet - including the "massive closets!" It featured a loft bed, in which full-grown adults sleep on what amounts to a bunk bed, without the lower bunk.

I want something magical. Something weird and gothic (in the old New York sense, not the Sisters of Mercy sense), yet functional. And not too expensive (which is still ridiculosuly expensive except in the hermetic logic of New York, but nevermind). And I want a turret. Hmmm.

- posted by Marguerite @ 1:16 PM

 
To all ya'll who read this blog (yes, both of you), sorry I've been a bit remiss lately. I've been looking for an apartment.

Yep, it's that time of year again.

Actually, I've been at my current apartment for longer than average. Longer, in fact, than I've lived anywhere since I graduated from college - nearly 16 months.

The shortest time I ever lived in a place (not couch surfing, but actually lived) was 2 months. It was the apartment in Hell's Kitchen - West 40s in Manhattan, for all y'all who don't live here. Ironically enough, it caught on fire. I had to leave the previous place, a basement apartment in Brooklyn, when two feet of water flooded in. And my first NYC apartment I left, in part, because of the rats. We're not talking cute little mice, folks. I mean RATS. Put a little sweater on these fcukers and Paris Hilton would be carrying it around in her purse.

So far: fire, flooding, pestilence ...

All very biblical. I'm still waiting to be driven out of an apartment by a plague of frogs. Or boils.

Speaking of Paris Hilton, let's congratulate Paris on becoming one of "the Most Fascinating People of 2004." I think Paris was even #2 on the list, right behind library paste.

But I digress.

- posted by Marguerite @ 2:56 PM

 
Christmastime in New York is magical.

The lights, the festive decorations, the police in full riot gear ...

Last night, I was thrust into an open-air mosh pit. I mean, the crowd of nice people making their way toward Rockefeller Plaza (or is it "Freedom Plaza"? ) for the annual "lighting of the Christmas tree."

See, I had to drop off a grant proposal at a foundation that happens to be located in a building adjacent to the Tree. The propsal was due yesterday and I always wait until the last minute to finish these things, due to an innate inability to learn from past experience.

The plaza was filled with about 3 million crazed individuals who, apparently, had never seen electricity before. Or possibly trees?

Due to the crowds, it took about half an hour to progress one block, and then there were police barricades around the building. But finally, I slipped past one of the barricades (read: shamelessly begged a cop until he let me past) and got into the building.

The annual lighting of the Christmas Tree is one of the great mysteries of New York. Why do several hundred thousand people feel the need to fight (often literally) several hundred thousand other people to see a tree that will be there for a friggin month?

It's not like it's a one-shot deal. It's not like they're actually lighting the tree on fire to watch it burn to the ground as naked nymphs dance around the flames and then roll around in the ashes. Although, if they have a "suggestion box" ...

They flip a switch. Some lights come on. Little lights!!! On a tree!!! Can you b'lieve that, Maw?

Don't try this at home, folks.



- posted by Marguerite @ 9:48 AM