TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

A friend of a friend is in the process of buying a place in Brooklyn Heights. It’s a nice neighborhood one subway stop outside Manhattan. As such, when realtors call it an “Up and Coming” neighborhood, it really is. It’s not a hole that someday might be up and coming… it actually IS up and coming.

So, since his landlord wasn’t really down with giving him a month-to-month lease until he was able to get everything coordinated, he’s looking for someone to sublet the apartment when he moves. The apartment was on the Upper East Side, the same area where the apartment with no bathroom was located. It’s out on First Avenue, which means it’s going to be a half-mile hike to a subway… or for me a mile hike to my office. Doable.

The apartment was really nice. One of the nicer ones I’d seen thus far. It was smaller than the place we have now and there was no dishwasher, but the kitchen was located in a nice little alcove (which we could use our liquor cabinet to extend the alcove space and make it more defined), the bathroom was a reasonable size, closet space was good, and the bedroom and living room was actually separated by a little hallway. The window overlooked First Ave which made it a prime location for an NY Marathon party.

Unfortunately, our lease is up at the end of October and he doesn’t expect to be out until Mid-November… which makes me very sad, because I dug the apartment and it was under $2k/month. It was also no-fee (since it’s a sublet) and dubbed “pest-free” by the current resident.

Now I’m officially bummed.

On Sunday we continued or tour of “Not Manhattan” by checking out Riverdale in the Bronx. Riverdale is actually a pretty ritzy location. It boast two Metro-North Stations and the end of the 1. The apartment complex I looked at was Skyview. It’s a co-op; which just means that all of the apartments are individually owned while the building association takes care of maintenance and the grounds. Unlike Manhattan, Skyview boasts space… space enough to have a large pool, tennis courts, a dog run, and parking. Glorious, lovely parking.

We looked at one apartment, an alcove studio, which was roughly the size of our current apartment if you took out the wall that makes this place a “one bedroom”. Bonus: it was fully furnished… which means that we’d save a little bit of cash by putting off replacement furniture for a couple of years. This led to the following conversation:

Ms. L: Doesn’t it creep you out a little to sleep on a used mattress?
Me: I spent six years of college retrieving furniture from the dumpster at Raymour and Flanigan. I’ll get over it.
Ms. L: But it’s gross.
Me: Is there any chance that we’re not buying a mattress cover anyway?

Interestingly, Riverdale’s right next door to another neighborhood in the Bronx that I didn’t know existed: Fieldston. Fieldston’s like… real houses with real yards located in the Bronx. Most of the places are absolutely gorgeous and probably worth millions of dollars. In fact, driving through it in my buddy’s Matrix, I was pretty sure we were going to be asked to leave.

Negatives. The commute is on the Metro-North, an Express Bus, or a MTA Bus/Subway combo. Neither of which is great. The Metro-North is a pain because I’d have to live on a train schedule (even though I work near Grand Central). Express Buses, while great in theory, are a disaster because they have to deal with traffic. Absolutely pass on the bus/1-train combo. The lease is a maximum of 2 years. That’s the maximum that the building allows people to rent their places. Then they have to either shit or get off the pot. Negative number 3: It’s a co-op… which means we both have to go through a whole interview process followed by the board voting on whether or not we’re worthy to stay in their building. The problem with this is that by the time the application process is completed it would be the end of the month. Negative number 4: the girl doesn’t like it. It’s a studio, the owners want double the security deposit because they don’t trust the Ninja on their furniture.

Unfortunately, I love the place. The terrace (Good Lord, I’m going to end up turning down a place with outdoor space all my own) even had a nice view of the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge. For $1400/month + $100/month for an off-street parking spot I get a place in a complex that I like, my car back, and 1 building over from one of my old college roommates.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure the 51% of the vote that women own will over-rule me.

Chapter 3 starts the “look outside Manhattan” portion of our jaunt to find digs that won’t run us $3,000/month. A lot of people I know who live in the city have found apartments out in Astoria, Queens. Astoria is located just outside Manhattan; I’ll call it 10 subway stops from midtown. As borough locations go, Astoria’s a pretty money spot. 1 bedrooms apartments in Astoria range from $1200 - $1800 depending on the location. Two bedrooms are a little more. Either one is less than this place.

One of Ms. L’s co-workers is a life-long Astoria resident. He offered to cruise us around the neighborhood in his car to show us the decent places to live.

We didn’t actually look at any apartments there as Saturday was mostly a walking tour, but I kinda dug Astoria. I’d only ever been out there to visit a different one of the girl’s co-workers. It’s kind of a weird neighborhood with equal parts Greek and Middle Eastern. It was the only neighborhood in New York I’ve been through where women were wearing the full on burka get-ups. Literally nothing visible but their eyes… head-to-toe in black. If that’s your gig, cool… I guess.

Long story short, the neighborhood was nice. It was kind of a Manhattan-lite that I could deal with. Of course, Ms. L is in charge of finding apartments in Queens… which just about seals the deal that we’ll end up living in one of the 3 boroughs I’m in charge of trolling.

Speaking of fake listings… I came across an apartment on craigslist a couple of days ago for an apartment on the Lower East Side for $1850/month. This is not completely unreasonable as transportation on the LES kind of blows.

There was no contact info on the post so I e-mailed the link given in the listing. Someone responded to me within an hour giving me a link NYC Rent No Fee.com. The gimmick: register as a member for the low, one-time fee of $49.99 and you’ll be allowed to view all their listings. A quick Google search determined that, once you pay the fee, none of the apartments they list exist (shocking) and the give you a long list of no fee apartments in like… Bushwick.

I e-mailed a response asking if the scam really worked more than it didn’t. I’m still waiting for a reply.

As it’s getting close to October, Ms. L and I have finally started contacting some apartment brokers to get some idea of what we’ll get when we move. One thing that two years have wiped for my memory is that apartment brokers tend to be a lot about as trustworthy as used car salesmen. One quick run around Craig’s list reminded me of this as I find apartments listed as Upper East or West side when they’re in Harlem, Queens, or New Jersey, oversized studios listed as one bedrooms, and Ye Olde Bait’n'Switch.

For readers who haven’t dealt with the city, an apartment broker is a real estate agent that deals in apartments. Buildings list their apartments with the broker. The broker deals with filling the apartment. The broker gets a fee. The broker’s fee is usually 15% of the annual rent of the apartment. Therefore, if the broker finds you an apartment worth $2000/month the annual rent is $24,000, so you owe the broker $3600. Some buildings do this, some buildings don’t… buildings that do list their apartments exclusively through a broker. Why buildings do this I really have no idea. The broker is an all right way to go. They do most of the leg-work and are supposed to show you apartments that fit your budget.

So, this first broker I found in the The Village Voice. I was going through the apartment listings in the print version and stumbled across a number attached to a few underpriced-looking apartments. I Googled the number to see if it came up as a scam and it led me to the website for New York City Apartments, Inc. A quick web-search reveals a bunch of apartments with decent floor space for under $2000. The website promises that they’re the “best no-fee and rent stabilized apartment broker in the city.” Well, fine then. Rent stabilized apartments tend to be a little cheaper than the regular deal so I figured it was worth a call.

So we went to the office to meet with one of the brokers. I told him our budget and what we were looking for. He mentioned that the rental market is very tight right now and what we were looking for would be tough. “But,” I ask. “There were a list of apartments on your website right in our price range. A whole lot of them, actually. Like… 84 of them to be exact. They let us know that the Manhattan rental market changes quickly and availability changes rapidly. Strike 1.

So we sit down and start discussing what we want. One bedroom, preferably dishwasher, preferably elevator, somewhere between $1700-$2200. They send us out with a junior agent who brings us up into the far reaches of the Upper East Side. I was bright enough to bring the camera but not bright enough to make sure it had batteries.

Apartment One: East 72nd Street, Apt 8

Summed up by the following conversation:

Ms L: Where’s the shower?
Agent: In the bathroom.
Ms L: Yeah, that’s the first place I looked.
Me: It has no shower.
Agent: It must have a shower.
Me: No wonder it’s empty.

The smallish place, roughly 2,000 miles from the nearest subway line had a small living room and a small bedroom connected by an exposed kitchen. And no shower. And they were still looking for about $1700/month for it. Strike 2. This led to the following conversation with my friend Mike:

Me: It had no shower. Not only that but the broker made us wait half-an-hour past our appointment. I thought she was going to kill him.
Mike: The creepy part is that, not only would I not be surprised if she’d killed him, I’d be surprised if her heart rate broke 77.
Me: It is New York, I think the NYPD would understand. “Officer, he showed us an apartment with no shower in the middle of the work day.”
Mike: “Carry on, ma’am. We’ll call in the clean-up crew.”

Apartment Two: East 72nd Street, Apt 13, $1800/month

Same building but a higher floor and a little larger. Bonus: it had a shower. Unfortunately it was trashed with clothes. Matter of fact, it looked like someone was getting ready to move out. Ms. L smacked down the immediate kaybosh.

Apartment Three: East 89th Street, Apt B13, $2395/month

Hey, look at that. The first apartment they show us that’s really worth looking into was more than our budget. Not only that, but a fee! Color me shocked. We actually liked this apartment. It boasted a decent-sized living room on the 4th floor. The front window overlooked the back of the building, which was a collection of small backyards. The kitchen was a tiny stove and refrigerator with no dishwasher. Down the hallway was a tiny bedroom featuring the only bathroom in the house. This was the best apartment we saw all day, but the bathroom being located through the bedroom was kind of put-offish. We actually considered getting this apartment for a few minutes today until someone pointed out that if we divided out the broker fee, it would work out to be about $2600/month for the extent of a one-year lease.

So out of curiosity, I went back to the website and, lo and behold, the same 84 apartments were returned in my search results… surprisingly the Manhattan Real Estate market had changed quickly enough that the same apartments that were available on Thursday but not on Friday were back on the Market come Tuesday. Imagine my surprise.

Next plan: meander through TriBeCa and Downtown to see if I find random “Apartment Available” signs.

We got our lease renewal form from our management company last week. The verdict: my rent is being “bumped up” to $2950/month. When we moved to that apartment two years ago, our 650 square feet of prime label-whoring was $2150.

Welcome to Manhattan… please bend over.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve watched the rent and apartment prices in our neighborhood soar. It isn’t really surprising; our neck of Manhattan is a planned neighborhood, full of doorman buildings and penthouses with prime location near the major subway lines. It’s quiet: no bars or restaurants open after 11pm. No clubs with drunken fools staggering home to scar precious little kids… and full of people who make way more money than me raising kids. Kids in your neighborhood in Manhattan is a pretty good sign you’re around people with lots more disposable income than you have. When we moved in, there was still a little touch of the 9/11 douchechills because of it’s proximity to the World Trade Hole. The rents were down and the rental-agent fees were non-existent. As we’ve watched 600 square foot apartments start to sell for $600k-$700k, the writing has pretty much been on the wall for eight months. I’m sure the management company was patiently waiting to soak us for the two-year lease that’s kept them honest.

So, with a little bit of sadness, we enter back into the awful world of hunting for an apartment in New York City. Of course, even though we know we’re moving it’s next to impossible to find a November availability apartment in September. We’ll really have to wait until early October before we’ll be able to find November availability. No pressure of course.

Let the Craig’s List mining begin.

I went to see Les Miserables for the second time this year. I’m not sure if I wrote about it the first time but it rocketed to the top of the “Favorite Broadway Show” list, kicking Rent out of the top slot. So, when Ms L’s aunt and uncle came into the city for their yearly US Open jaunt, we decided to take them to Les Mis.

The post isn’t so much about Les Mis, although I will say that the show takes on a whole new meaning when you don’t particularly hate the actress portraying Fantine and, thus, aren’t rooting for her to hurry up and die. It’s more about the events afterward.

Ms L’s aunt & uncle are older folks from Western New York. I think they’re in their late 50s/early 60s but I won’t swear to it. They’re also creatures of habit. They stay at the same hotel every year and, as I’m discovering, like going to mostly the same restaurants. Last year, when we saw Spamalot, we started the night at a small Irish Pub called The Pig ‘n Whistle, went to the show, then visited the The ESPNZone in Times Square. On the surface, there isn’t much to hate about the ESPNZone. It’s huge, it’s got games, and it has TVs everywhere (including in front of the urinal AND in bathroom stalls). I imagine it’s a hell of a place to watch football… but that’s before you get into the $8 Coors Light and $10 mixed drinks. This year, we went to the Pig n Whistle for dinner and then tried to go to the ESPNZone but, since things in Times Square close crazy early, it had already called last call….. at 11pm. In some states, that might be normal. New York’s bars close at 4am. Yet another reason I hate mid-town.

Thus, we put our evening in Ms. L’s capable hands. I rarely, if ever, choose to spend my free time in the Times Square/Hell’s Kitchen part of Manhattan. Her job is in Times Square, so she’s got some idea of what’s in the area. We ended up walking over to 8th Avenue and finding a small bar called The Playwright’s Tavern. We went in to the bar to discover that the taps were all out but the bar did have a Late Night Happy Hour. One thing to love about Manhattan is the Late Night Happy Hour… when the bar decides that the 4-7pm Happy Hour just isn’t good enough so they schedule a 2nd one for 12-3am…. on a Wednesday night (This, by the way, is on my impending list of 25 items listing why living in New York City is essentially like an extended stay in college). Usually, a late night happy hour during the week has “bad idea” written all over it in 22 separate languages. I figured tonight would be pretty safe, though.

We get into the bar about 11:30. Sportscenter was on all the TVs as we came in. After we had ordered our first round (totaling $12… God bless Late Night Happy Hours Not at the ESPNZone) a group of guys came in to the bar. They were generally non-descript, save for all four of them and their girlfriends were a pretty tattooed-up bunch. They asked the bartender to put on Letterman, which he obliged.

To make a long story short Letterman eventually got to his musical guest; a band called: Against Me. As the band started playing we realized that it was the group of dudes who had come in earlier and were sitting behind us. I turned to watch the lead singer staring at the television, mouth agape, with an arm around his chick. He looked at me and said: “that’s totally me, dude” with a goofy grin. At the end of the song, the bar just kinda burst into applause for them. It was a pretty cool moment.

We left pretty much right after that, but was just one of those random nonsense things that happen in Manhattan that kind of makes it worthwhile to live there. Like going to a comedy club and seeing Chris Rock for free.

Igniting jealousy amongst most people I’m friends with, The Lovely & Talented Ms. L managed to land a luxury suite at Shea Stadium for Friday’s game against the Dodgers. There’s no good way to describe how this came about while keeping everything anonymous, but her tax accounting “team” got it as a reward for services rendered. Up until about two hours before the game I was ready to get into a suit for this trip, but Ms. L said I would be the most over-dressed guy among the people going. I told her that I was dressing in case I ran into Omar Minaya or someone important who could get me a job (which happened to a member of our party… who ended up riding the elevator with Omar). Alas, rolling in the suit was kayboshed.

First, we got to use the Diamond Club entrance. The suite entry is far less efficient than the standard gates. The standard gates at Shea have two bag search tables and a team of friskers. The Diamond Club entrance had one table and three friskers. The bag search was a bit more intense. The girl went through every inch of my laptop bag while the guy actually used a metal detector wand in lieu of the standard joke of a pat-down.

Once inside, we walked up to the suite level before going through a door into an air-conditioned, carpeted room that included the Diamond Club Bar and Grill. Skipping the bar (as we’d been informed there would be cocktails in the box) we were directed out toward the press box with directions to the suite.

We were let into the box and the first thing I noticed was the fact it had its own toilet. For the first time ever, I was able to take a leak at Shea Stadium without waiting in an absurd line. This was approximately 150 bonus points all on its own. When we actually walked in to the air-conditioned, glassed-in box, I got the first good look around. As you entered, the bathroom (and closet!) was immediately to the left. A very short hallway then opened into the box proper. To the left was a small “living room” with two leather couches, each with a 42 or 46 inch HDTV mounted above them (Aside: how did bars and various places function before there were televisions that took up no more room than a picture-frame? The Plasma/Flat Screen/HDTV is one of the most under-rated inventions of the last 10 years. I was reminded of this recently when I went to a friend’s house. He still has one of the giant 50 inch projection TVs. Like… the really old school console ones that are roughly the size of a room. Now, bars hang these giant 46 inch televisions all over the place like they’re going out of style. One of my favorite bars in Manhattan, now closed, boasted like 35 of these. I can’t be the only one who now goes into bars and gets kinda ticked if they don’t have at least one.) with another two chairs grouped around a table. The table had a full shrimp cocktail spread.

On the right was the “kitchen.” There was a full spread of food. One station had hot dogs, fries, and a make your own Slider section. The next station was your standard catered ziti. The next station was the crown jewel… a full sushi layout with every type of sushi I’ve ever tried. Moving down the line was the beverages. Bottles of Tanqueray, Grey Goose, Captain Morgan, and Jose Cuervo made up the liquor while buckets of Bud, Bud Light, Beck’s, Amstel Light, and some god-awful Budweiser/Clamato Hybrid beer that was opened just for every one to pass around, taste, and make the same “guh” face.

At this point, I started running through my phone book calling every Met fan I knew. Those who I couldn’t reach, I texted. Had my Blackberry had a camera, it would have been the first time in my life I ever would immediately started snapping pictures like a giddy tourist and started just mailing everyone on my list.

To the front was a glass wall with doors at each end that led to three rows of 10 seats. The boxes are underneath the Loge section… so they’re situated above the last row of field level seats. Seatdata.com doesn’t give you the option to look out the window of luxury boxes, but this is pretty close.

I started with a Tanqueray and Tonic because, well, I could and then proceeded to plow through sushi and sliders at an unheard of pace. I assume the pace was unheard of because I can’t imagine sane people pairing sushi with sliders. (Aside 2: for the non NYers that read this, the Slider is the staple of White Castle. It is, essentially, a small cheeseburger grilled on a bed of diced onions with cheese and mustard. These are the little slices of delicious that Harold and Kumar went on an all night jaunt to acquire. I can’t say that I blame them. Paired with sushi? Well… I was drinking and it was free.) After the Gin and Tonic was over, I started in on the beer. I would have made it a night of various mixed drinks, but I was hanging with Ms L’s co-workers (and bosses…. and partners) so I had to behave. After about the third inning, they brought in ice cream. Had it not been awesome before, it had certainly reached awesome now.

I honestly can’t tell you much about the game. I know the Mets won and I know the game was followed by Fiesta Latina, a concert put on for Latina night; I remember it fondly because it gave us more time in the box. As they called last call in the box, I made myself my 2nd Tanqueray and Tonic while completely unstealth-ly lining my pockets with Bud Light. We bailed out of Fiesta Latina after the first wave left the stadium but before the concert-goers left. While I wasn’t expecting the aftermath of the concert to be as adventurous as the aftermath Puerto Rican or Dominican Day Parades, I didn’t much feel like taken any drunken chances.

The ride back to my apartment is a bit of a blur, but all I know is that Shea Stadium is now spoiled for me. I mean… not waiting for a bathroom? Seriously.

For those keeping track at home. So far this week I’ve found out that my couch, chair, and bed had bedbugs and my cat almost died. So Wednesday, I took a personal day to help the exterminator take out my furniture before he treated the apartment for bugs.

Now, I don’t have much experience wrapping and moving furniture. I’ve seen furniture wrapped exactly once, by the people who moved me from Mechanicville to New York. Three very efficient Russian dudes came into my apartment, used bubble-wrap, and had the stuff wrapped up and gone from my apartment in about an hour. I presumed, of course, that something similar would happen here… that, I don’t know, the exterminator would have done this before.

Imagine my surprise.

The guy showed up with no bags and a roll of construction grade plastic sheeting. I can’t actually put into words the nonsense that followed and the six hours it took to remove the furniture from my apartment. Why did it take six hours? Because instead of just using the plastic wrap to wrap up the furniture and take it out… we instead set to disassembling the furniture with screwdriver and a SawZall and placing it all in garbage bags. Why did we do this? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why. After being burnt out from previous stress and not really getting any sleep for the previous five nights (since, you know, we found out we had bed bugs on Thursday and pretty much had to sleep on the same mattress until Wednesday… you haven’t lived until you’ve spent a night on a bagged mattress freaking out every time anything touches your skin… and then do it for five more nights) I was just pretty much following along with whatever the guy told me to do. Instead of just going with a: “for f*ck’s sake, let’s do it this way”, I just let him take the furniture apart and helped him bag it up.

Later, I stayed out of the way as he sprayed my apartment down with some mixture of alcohol and awful. Then, after having a fifteen to thirty minute period where I thought about going to the store, buying a bunch of boxes, mailing my clothes back to Mechanicville, and punching out of this whole “City Experiment” I instead turned the air conditioning on, filled our fancy new air mattress, took a shower, and took a nap.

This was about three weeks ago now. Since then, we’ve gotten the cat back who is recovering nicely after a couple of weeks with a cone on her head. We’ve seen two more bugs and had the exterminator back only once. We’re still in the process of washing the sin out of all of our clothes and sealing them up into canvas bags and only discussed throwing in the towel on this New York City thing in passing.

Now, I just have to hope and pray that, when I brought laundry up to Mechanicville, that I didn’t bring a surprise up there with me.

Cats puke a lot. Fortunately for us, we have wood floors in our apartment, so a little hairball or creepy cluster of God knows what is really not that big a deal. A couple paper towels, some Fantastic or Windex (I subscribe to the “any spray product that doesn’t smell like vomit wins” theory), and a garbage can and no biggie. The problem was, Ninja Kitty started puking on Friday and didn’t stop, well, for four days. Toward the end, after she’d stop eating, she’d moved on to just throwing up the water she was drinking to stay hydrated. Bad stuff. Every once in a while she’d throw up a piece of shoelace (she has a bad habit of eating string… cue ominous music) and I would think “oh, that’s the hairball… it’ll be fine now” but it kept not being.

So, The Lovely And Talented Ms. L packed her up in the crate and brought her to a branch of our local over-priced vet (conveniently located next to one of my favorite bars). The cat looked like hell. She wasn’t really moving… at all… when she put her in the crate. She gets to the vet and, after a quick examination, they determine that she’s extremely dehydrated from the vomiting so her kidneys had shut down, and to give her an IV and put her in a warm bath wrapped up in a towel. Ms. L said it was one of the cutest and most pathetic things she’d ever seen. After an X-Ray or an MRI or some other procedure I thought was only done on human beings they discovered the culprit. A giant mass had taken up residence in her lower intestine. Dandy. So, the diagnoses was “we need to get her hydrated, then we’ll perform some exploratory surgery on her intestine and see what’s up. If necessary, we’ll remove part of her intestine.”

Now, so far there’s been at least three things done to my cat that I thought only were done to humans: First being an IV, second being an X-Ray, and Third being exploratory surgery. And the verdict? My cat’s inane habit of chewing up shoelaces turned out to be an inane habit of eating up shoelaces and, over the last two years, she’d amassed a grotesque little wad of shoelaces (think, about the size of two fingers) in her intestines. So, they cut into her intestines, removed the shoelaces, and sewed her back up.

Now, I was definitely one of those folks who pointed and laughed at people who were stupid enough to fall for the Pet Insurance scam. However, the grand total of the bill for my cat came to a whopping $2,000.00 for the hospital stay, surgery, and whatever. Had I actually gotten an insurance policy, the grand total would have been…… fifty bucks.

So, when she finally came back, doped up on pain-killers and in one of those plastic cone things (which has earned her alternating nicknames of Satellite Cat, Fat Chick Surgery Cat, and The Six Million Dollar Kitty) she was minus some shoelaces, minus some intestine, and eating some kind of bland cat food that smells worse than standard cat food. She also has a hard as fuck scar up her belly that looks pretty similar to my grandfather’s heart-bypass-surgery scar.

And the exterminator hasn’t even come to visit yet.