New York City, May 14, 2025
I’m officially looking for an apartment in NYC. And the listings are… Hilarious. The best line yet:
*Images shown are not representative of the apartment.*
I’ve lived in more apartments in this city than anyone I know. The rentals: Upper East Side (a 1BR share with three other 20-somethings), Chelsea (three times), Hell’s Kitchen, Alphabet City (twice), East Village, Lower East Side, Soho (twice), Downtown Brooklyn (twice), West Village, and Tudor City. Plus two two-month sublets, in Red Hook and Noho.
So I know how to find a place.
But it’s never been this expensive, dismal, or absurd.
Still, I know I’ll find something.
I mean, in the midst of all kinds of circumstances I found all these places, seen here in reverse chronological order:
Morton Street, 2009. I was on staff at Modern Painters magazine. The recession arrived, the magazine was closed, and this is me soon before packing everything into storage and heading to a friend’s in Long Beach, CA, for two months to figure out what happens next. The Morton Street apartment was a studio. Refrigerator in a closet across from the tiny kitchen. Kitchen window faced the neighbor’s kitchen window. In the mornings, though separated only by a narrow air shaft, we pretended we didn’t see each other.
Tudor City, 2009. A coworker knew someone looking to replace his longtime tenant in Tudor City. The studio apartments there are generally 11 x 15, plus a short hallway. The rent: $1400. Doorman building with laundry. Of course I took it. Beautiful light through the casement windows and, as a gorgeous prewar building, everything made with integrity. But Midtown East…
Red Hook sublet, 2009. Just as the job hunt was about to finish beating my ass in Long Beach, a freelance client in the city asked if I’d start a photo blog for their agency. The commitment was a few hours a week. I decided to go back to New York, where I could be in proximity to them and hopefully build out a larger role for myself. I had nothing to lose and figured it would somehow work out.
Noho sublet, 2009. Red Hook was (and is) a very cool place. But the sublet was grotty, and I hated be so far from a subway. Checking Craigslist for alternatives, I could barely believe it when I found a $1,200 Noho loft sublet. But it was real. A painter who’d been there since the 70s. She needed someone to feed her cranky cat while she spent two months in Maine caring for her elderly dad. I said yes.
East Village, 2003. Through a friend, I got hooked up with a rent-stabilized 1 BR in the East Village. A real bedroom with a door. Three closets. A foyer. If you know, you know.
Soho, 2002. My girlfriend and I had broken up and I needed to move out. A coworker, the music critic at the New York Post, had a ground-level one-bedroom available in his building on Watts Street. I moved in October 2001, when the air was still poisoned from 9/11, and I was quite sick. But I made it through.
Soho, 2001. My then girlfriend’s rent-stabilized apartment on MacDougal Street. We were arguing with each other from the moment we decided to move in together but went forward anyway. As one does in their early 30s. It lasted a year.
Alphabet City, 1999. After five years in Hell’s Kitchen, I moved downtown. All my friends lived there, and I spent all my time there. I had recently left the magazine where I worked to go freelance, the rent here was $225 a month more than what I was paying on 9th Avenue, and I did not have steady work. I did it anyway and took whatever work I could find, including taking a bus to NJ several days a week to copyedit for some flimsy women’s magazines. Not only was I able to pay the bills; I actually saved. The apartment was a studio, the former lower level of a duplex owned by my landlord, who lived alone upstairs after his divorce. His pattern was to go to Doc Holliday’s and booze up, then weave his way up the five flights to his place, literally zig-zagging across the hallway as he ascended. Once, when I told him my ceiling was leaking from his apartment—a sagging blister of paint from which water dropped into a bucket on my floor—he came to my door drunk and told me he was going to jump off the roof and kill himself and I could have his place. So I decided to move. Even though he later apologized.
Hell’s Kitchen, 1994-1999. My first rental in the city. A former boyfriend and I had driven my things up from storage in Orlando, and I had a futon that my godmother helped me buy. One sink, in the kitchen. Four flights up. At $675 a month, it was more than my biweekly paycheck from my job as an editorial assistant. I took freelance projects to make up the difference.
Chelsea sublet, W. 15th St., 1993. I was new to the city by a few months. Someone who worked on my floor, a really cute guy named Eric, was looking for someone to finish out his lease at his studio apartment in Chelsea. It had a half fridge, which I knew about going into it, and roaches everywhere, including in said fridge and in the shower, which I was unaware of till I moved in. It cost $700 a month. There were times when I couldn’t afford subway fare. Fortunately, it was only 30 blocks to work and I knew New York would be hard—it’s why I moved here—and I was good with it.
I’m officially looking for an apartment in NYC. And the listings are… Hilarious. The best line yet:
*Images shown are not representative of the apartment.*
I’ve lived in more apartments in this city than anyone I know. The rentals: Upper East Side (a 1BR share with three other 20-somethings), Chelsea (three times), Hell’s Kitchen, Alphabet City (twice), East Village, Lower East Side, Soho (twice), Downtown Brooklyn (twice), West Village, and Tudor City. Plus two two-month sublets, in Red Hook and Noho.
So I know how to find a place.
But it’s never been this expensive, dismal, or absurd.
Still, I know I’ll find something.
I mean, in the midst of all kinds of circumstances I found all these places, seen here in reverse chronological order:
Morton Street, 2009. I was on staff at Modern Painters magazine. The recession arrived, the magazine was closed, and this is me soon before packing everything into storage and heading to a friend’s in Long Beach, CA, for two months to figure out what happens next. The Morton Street apartment was a studio. Refrigerator in a closet across from the tiny kitchen. Kitchen window faced the neighbor’s kitchen window. In the mornings, though separated only by a narrow air shaft, we pretended we didn’t see each other.
Tudor City, 2009. A coworker knew someone looking to replace his longtime tenant in Tudor City. The studio apartments there are generally 11 x 15, plus a short hallway. The rent: $1400. Doorman building with laundry. Of course I took it. Beautiful light through the casement windows and, as a gorgeous prewar building, everything made with integrity. But Midtown East…
Red Hook sublet, 2009. Just as the job hunt was about to finish beating my ass in Long Beach, a freelance client in the city asked if I’d start a photo blog for their agency. The commitment was a few hours a week. I decided to go back to New York, where I could be in proximity to them and hopefully build out a larger role for myself. I had nothing to lose and figured it would somehow work out.
Noho sublet, 2009. Red Hook was (and is) a very cool place. But the sublet was grotty, and I hated be so far from a subway. Checking Craigslist for alternatives, I could barely believe it when I found a $1,200 Noho loft sublet. But it was real. A painter who’d been there since the 70s. She needed someone to feed her cranky cat while she spent two months in Maine caring for her elderly dad. I said yes.
East Village, 2003. Through a friend, I got hooked up with a rent-stabilized 1 BR in the East Village. A real bedroom with a door. Three closets. A foyer. If you know, you know.
Soho, 2002. My girlfriend and I had broken up and I needed to move out. A coworker, the music critic at the New York Post, had a ground-level one-bedroom available in his building on Watts Street. I moved in October 2001, when the air was still poisoned from 9/11, and I was quite sick. But I made it through.
Soho, 2001. My then girlfriend’s rent-stabilized apartment on MacDougal Street. We were arguing with each other from the moment we decided to move in together but went forward anyway. As one does in their early 30s. It lasted a year.
Alphabet City, 1999. After five years in Hell’s Kitchen, I moved downtown. All my friends lived there, and I spent all my time there. I had recently left the magazine where I worked to go freelance, the rent here was $225 a month more than what I was paying on 9th Avenue, and I did not have steady work. I did it anyway and took whatever work I could find, including taking a bus to NJ several days a week to copyedit for some flimsy women’s magazines. Not only was I able to pay the bills; I actually saved. The apartment was a studio, the former lower level of a duplex owned by my landlord, who lived alone upstairs after his divorce. His pattern was to go to Doc Holliday’s and booze up, then weave his way up the five flights to his place, literally zig-zagging across the hallway as he ascended. Once, when I told him my ceiling was leaking from his apartment—a sagging blister of paint from which water dropped into a bucket on my floor—he came to my door drunk and told me he was going to jump off the roof and kill himself and I could have his place. So I decided to move. Even though he later apologized.
Hell’s Kitchen, 1994-1999. My first rental in the city. A former boyfriend and I had driven my things up from storage in Orlando, and I had a futon that my godmother helped me buy. One sink, in the kitchen. Four flights up. At $675 a month, it was more than my biweekly paycheck from my job as an editorial assistant. I took freelance projects to make up the difference.
Chelsea sublet, W. 15th St., 1993. I was new to the city by a few months. Someone who worked on my floor, a really cute guy named Eric, was looking for someone to finish out his lease at his studio apartment in Chelsea. It had a half fridge, which I knew about going into it, and roaches everywhere, including in said fridge and in the shower, which I was unaware of till I moved in. It cost $700 a month. There were times when I couldn’t afford subway fare. Fortunately, it was only 30 blocks to work and I knew New York would be hard—it’s why I moved here—and I was good with it.
Orlando, May 1, 2025
It's nearly confirmed: two weeks in a bright sublet in PLG, Brooklyn, starting next week. I'm thinking about how it will feel to be in a friendly stranger's space, to be in a neighborhood that's entirely new to me, to be back in NYC and experience it differently, not tracing old paths but wandering new ones…
This is a collage from my notebook, made in my early days in Kingston, New York, in the fall of 2023, right there in my kitchen with the mint-green shelves you can sort of see in the background. I had begun the collage notebook in a Berlin sublet the summer prior. Then, as now, new environs, a shuffle of emotions and observations, everything always coming together, if always a bit askew.
It's nearly confirmed: two weeks in a bright sublet in PLG, Brooklyn, starting next week. I'm thinking about how it will feel to be in a friendly stranger's space, to be in a neighborhood that's entirely new to me, to be back in NYC and experience it differently, not tracing old paths but wandering new ones…
This is a collage from my notebook, made in my early days in Kingston, New York, in the fall of 2023, right there in my kitchen with the mint-green shelves you can sort of see in the background. I had begun the collage notebook in a Berlin sublet the summer prior. Then, as now, new environs, a shuffle of emotions and observations, everything always coming together, if always a bit askew.
Los Angeles, April 11, 2025
A truck parked outside my Highland Park sublet. An assemblage on wheels.
Today I went to see David Hammons’ “Concerto in Black and Blue.” I can’t speak to what it “is” or means, only to how I experienced it.
Push through heavy black velvet curtains, corporeal in their heft. Encounter silent dark rooms. You’ve swathed your phone in a wetsuit-like sheaf, per the rules, no photos allowed. You’ve picked up a blue clickable LED light that must be squeezed to illuminate. The device is the size of a nickel. To orient yourself, you press this device tightly between forefinger and thumb, and a blue light shines, casting a jubilant circle.
The walls are painted a kind of cobalt blue. The cool concrete floors are textured, scarred. The circle of light flicks on and off (is the battery dying from use?) as you move it around, searching, like an explorer in an “undiscovered” land. Depending on where you cast this impersonal light, the circle is bisected by the seam where wall and floor meet. Or wall meets wall. The light finds shadows—the people ahead of you who are speeding through other rooms, looking for something—then goes dark beneath your thumb.
What to make of all of this. What if you take it slow. Look into the light for a moment, shine it toward your eyes, and let the light go. “Look” around, eyes stymied. See nothing. And everything. Sit against a wall, and listen. Look. It’s darkness but it’s not nothing.
Is all of this—this experience—a thing because the artist said it is? Who sets the terms for our experiences? Or, more pointedly, whom do we allow to set the terms? These are exciting questions…
A truck parked outside my Highland Park sublet. An assemblage on wheels.
Today I went to see David Hammons’ “Concerto in Black and Blue.” I can’t speak to what it “is” or means, only to how I experienced it.
Push through heavy black velvet curtains, corporeal in their heft. Encounter silent dark rooms. You’ve swathed your phone in a wetsuit-like sheaf, per the rules, no photos allowed. You’ve picked up a blue clickable LED light that must be squeezed to illuminate. The device is the size of a nickel. To orient yourself, you press this device tightly between forefinger and thumb, and a blue light shines, casting a jubilant circle.
The walls are painted a kind of cobalt blue. The cool concrete floors are textured, scarred. The circle of light flicks on and off (is the battery dying from use?) as you move it around, searching, like an explorer in an “undiscovered” land. Depending on where you cast this impersonal light, the circle is bisected by the seam where wall and floor meet. Or wall meets wall. The light finds shadows—the people ahead of you who are speeding through other rooms, looking for something—then goes dark beneath your thumb.
What to make of all of this. What if you take it slow. Look into the light for a moment, shine it toward your eyes, and let the light go. “Look” around, eyes stymied. See nothing. And everything. Sit against a wall, and listen. Look. It’s darkness but it’s not nothing.
Is all of this—this experience—a thing because the artist said it is? Who sets the terms for our experiences? Or, more pointedly, whom do we allow to set the terms? These are exciting questions…
Collage © Kristina Feliciano.Orlando, March 21, 2025
I've been thinking a lot about the concept of betrayal. Experiencing it is like encountering an ominous shadow around a sunny corner, finding yourself suddenly alone. It's often unexpected and always undermining. It leaves you speechless, paralyzed. But betrayal is also an assailant that can be left behind.
Today's collage is composed of a sunprint I made at someone's house on one of those sunny days now gone, a cut-out piece of an old magazine, and a wrinkled detail from a stunning portrait by Paola Kudacki of Rhiannon Giddens that I saved from an old issue of The New Yorker, all mounted on a discolored sheet of construction paper.
I've been thinking a lot about the concept of betrayal. Experiencing it is like encountering an ominous shadow around a sunny corner, finding yourself suddenly alone. It's often unexpected and always undermining. It leaves you speechless, paralyzed. But betrayal is also an assailant that can be left behind.
Today's collage is composed of a sunprint I made at someone's house on one of those sunny days now gone, a cut-out piece of an old magazine, and a wrinkled detail from a stunning portrait by Paola Kudacki of Rhiannon Giddens that I saved from an old issue of The New Yorker, all mounted on a discolored sheet of construction paper.
Photo © Kristina Feliciano.Minnewaska State Park Preserve, Kerhonkson, New York, February 1, 2025
The plan was to do a loop at Minnewaska: a hike comprising Lower Awosting, Rainbow Falls, Upper Awosting, and Mossy Glen Trail. 5.8 miles and maybe a couple of hours.
What actually transpired: 7 miles, almost 4 and a half hours, and fearing that I wouldn't finish the hike before dark. A hike whose last couple of miles wound through the woods, over large sections of dangerously smooth ice, gnarled roots, and frighteningly smooth uneven rock formations. My pace was quick, but with a long way to go and the clock rounding 5 pm, yikes. And though I was warmly dressed, it was 19 degrees and dropping…
It wasn't always this way. About an hour into the hike, when the sun was still high in the sky, I met a pit bull in a pink fleece. Her name is Lucy. I reached out to pet her, and as she lunged for my hand her owners exclaimed, "Watch out! She likes to steal gloves." (Not what you were expecting, huh?) And then halfway through the hike, I arrived at Rainbow Falls, epically frozen and legitimately jaw-dropping to witness up close. About that time, Endorphina, Queen of Elation, joined me, and I was feeling pretty triumphant for having navigated through relative peril to get here.
But all that was nearly forgotten now as panic crept in. And then, as I was considering how to traverse a wide swath of ice, I saw a light across the way. I turned on my phone flashlight and waved it. It was a couple. One of them made his way toward me. "Are you okay?" he asked. "I was afraid I would be hiking in the dark," I said, and that's when I realized just how frightened I was. "I'm so happy to see you." His name was Dan, and her name was Christina, and they were two of the kindest people ever ever ever. They invited me to join them for the end of the hike. They, unlike me, were properly equipped with hiking poles and, um, water. (I know, I know.) I followed them feeling like a lost child with a new appreciation for being obedient.
The plan was to do a loop at Minnewaska: a hike comprising Lower Awosting, Rainbow Falls, Upper Awosting, and Mossy Glen Trail. 5.8 miles and maybe a couple of hours.
What actually transpired: 7 miles, almost 4 and a half hours, and fearing that I wouldn't finish the hike before dark. A hike whose last couple of miles wound through the woods, over large sections of dangerously smooth ice, gnarled roots, and frighteningly smooth uneven rock formations. My pace was quick, but with a long way to go and the clock rounding 5 pm, yikes. And though I was warmly dressed, it was 19 degrees and dropping…
It wasn't always this way. About an hour into the hike, when the sun was still high in the sky, I met a pit bull in a pink fleece. Her name is Lucy. I reached out to pet her, and as she lunged for my hand her owners exclaimed, "Watch out! She likes to steal gloves." (Not what you were expecting, huh?) And then halfway through the hike, I arrived at Rainbow Falls, epically frozen and legitimately jaw-dropping to witness up close. About that time, Endorphina, Queen of Elation, joined me, and I was feeling pretty triumphant for having navigated through relative peril to get here.
But all that was nearly forgotten now as panic crept in. And then, as I was considering how to traverse a wide swath of ice, I saw a light across the way. I turned on my phone flashlight and waved it. It was a couple. One of them made his way toward me. "Are you okay?" he asked. "I was afraid I would be hiking in the dark," I said, and that's when I realized just how frightened I was. "I'm so happy to see you." His name was Dan, and her name was Christina, and they were two of the kindest people ever ever ever. They invited me to join them for the end of the hike. They, unlike me, were properly equipped with hiking poles and, um, water. (I know, I know.) I followed them feeling like a lost child with a new appreciation for being obedient.