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.