Rents

Friday after haircuts Craig and I joined our friends LC and GR for dinner at a Richmond hot spot to which we had not yet been, called Comfort. After some wine, fantastic meatloaf, braised greens, okra, and a pork chop for Craig and me, and a plate of various comfort vegetables for GR and LC, we returned to the apartment (I spent another hour or so downstairs with GR discussing miscellaneous while Craig played one quick round of video game baseball upstairs in our apartment) and it was off to sleep before our scheduled 4 a.m. alarm announcement that it was time to shower for our 6 o'clock flight to NYC. In the meantime, I struggled with sleep yet again, what with the stress of this, and right around 3 a.m. our phones started shrieking from where they had been left in the kitchen. Craig groggily ambled to see what was happening: so began our NYC apartment hunting experience: Jet Blue canceled our early bird flight due to 'weather' and they were re-booking us on the 10 o'clock. In between fitful and fragmented half hours of sleep I realized that this delay could potentially result in a late arrival to view the six apartments we had scheduled to see without a broker, which, in New York City apartment hunting terms, is a rarity (broker fees are common, standard, to be expected, and outrageously unaffordable, so we've been dreading and dreading the whole thing, until I unearthed a very rare management company who, if you apartment search directly through them, does not charge the fee, the oh ever dreaded fee). Nevertheless, what would additional fretting do but further strengthen the hurricane of stomach aches that I've been enduring since the onset of this very stressful, while all too exciting, adventure. So we woke a few hours later than scheduled, got onto a plane a few hours later than scheduled, landed at JFK in perfect time to hussle to a cab and trek the 40 minutes into Manhattan, rolling to a stop on E. 82nd street in the Upper East Side right on target time to make our appointment. During the cab ride I had received a voicemail from Nina, our charming apartment guide, verifying our appointments, and when I called her back immediately, she informed me that our showings were of the group variety, not at all private apartment showings just for Craig and me as we had naively presumed. Craig and I debated the impact this might have on our search: what if everyone in the group loved the same apartment unit? Mad dash back to the leasing office to be first in line? And as we soon learned, beginning with the very first unit we viewed with the super huge group of twenty-some apartment hunters, New York City apartments (the ones in our price range) are not spacious, are not luxurious, probably have plumbing issues, likely have heating and cooling issues (central air? what?), might be on the 5th floor of a building with no operative elevator (no elevator at all, that is) and will cost a fortune to get into. We asked the male apartment guide, Nina's counterpart, how the application process would go, and he advised us that the applicants with the best financials would be selected for the units. Insert defeated heavenward eye roll: the best financials? Without admitting to too much, that hardly describes Craig and me. We're not irresponsible, but we're human. Guaranteed, our financials cannot compete with a wealthy NYU student's whose trust fund and parental monetary contributions carry their burden from one New York City apartment to the next. And whose credit card debt consists of a healthy-sized card filled with Tiffany & Co. purchases tearfully and apologetically begged to be paid off by said wealthy parents. Nevertheless, that's about as far as I want to go with the remainder of the apartment hunting experience, just yet, because we're still awaiting a verdict and I feel too fearful to continue, as if I haven't already jinxed the whole thing as it is.*Following our application process, we walked to the burger establishment recommended to us by Nina: JG Melon, which serves legendary burgers (the burgers were incredible) and french fry coins. We sat at the bar and had a couple of beers, subdued by the reality of the apartment search. But I think Craig and I worked well together to bring each other back to our other reality, which was that we were in New York City, one of our favorite cities in the world: why not enjoy it as we always have in the past? We walked a lot Saturday, later wandered into a bar whose sign boasted "Drinking Consultants Since 1998" and had a couple of beers, then took the subway to our hotel to check in. Our hotel room was fine (one never travels to New York City in search of a fancy hotel stay, at least, not at our financial status) but we decided we needed to get back out and wander some more. We headed back to the Upper East Side to snap some jinxing photographs of the apartment we'd love to live in if things work out (did I say that?) and we browsed the Food Emporium on E. 87th which could possibly become our neighborhood grocery store. By this time we had decided we could eat an early dinner, at which point we discovered our first restaurant as To Be New Yorkers: Jasmine Thai. We sat next to an older emotional woman who huddled cloaked in a red satin or velvet cape thing and whose husband (boyfriend?) had clearly said the wrong thing, because she was crying (if I recall from a quick glance over, there was a large glittering rock on her left hand). But this didn't distract from the fried dumplings appetizer, spicy coconut noodle dish that Craig ordered (no chance we could recall the name of what he ordered) and my Pad See Yu (likely not spelled as they did) which were all divine. Craig had two Thai beers and I had two glasses of red wine, so by the end of dinner, we sat back so satisfied, it was easy to forget the stress of wondering whether we will be housed in Manhattan or not. We loved Jasmine (despite the fact that it may not be New York's finest Thai, because it was reasonably priced and full of flavor and that's all we could have asked for, at that point). This story promises to be continued, but as it nears midnight, and the weight of so much walking (climbing several flights of stairs, to say in the least) and traveling has me wiped out. There is more, plenty more to follow. I love NYC.