Avoidance Behavior Go! (Do not collect 200 dollars, land on Baltic Ave.)

[serinde]

I'm not ready to talk, or think, about Grandma just yet so I've been looking at apartments again. This is twitchy enough to make me start down other avoidance behavior roads, but I'm keeping mostly en point.


(0. For various reasons, I'm only looking in Manhattan at the moment. I would be happy to look 'round Astoria, would love lots of Brooklyn, but for this starting-off point I need to be able to get to Jersey with greater ease. Yes, Your Neighborhood Is Awesome but I've given this a lot of thought and these are my current parameters.)

1. I'm in an interesting budget place where I can afford a 1 or, depending, even 2 BR place in Inwood, Wash. Hts., Harlem, and East Harlem, or a studio on the UES, but nothing anywhere else. The more I turned over missionista's suggestion of taking a cute, well-situated "jewel box" for the first year, the more I liked it; but the fact is that my budget limit doesn't get me anything central. I nudged up the top range a tiny bit, and that opened up a few studios on the far edges of Midtown, but most of those listings look like they might be bullshit.

1a. Inwood/Wash Hts. is too much of a pain to get to work, so I'm disinclined. Harlem is a bit better, but having taken the crosstown bus at rush hour a few times I don't know how spride and the various other colleagues do it every day without going postal. East Harlem is dead easy to get to work, no harder to get to Penn than, well, what I do every evening, and it has the interest of being one of the few neighborhoods left in Manhattan that's actually still a neighborhood; but parts of it are still sort of run-down and I don't know what it's really like behind closed doors and it might be hard to get anything that's not Hispanic food/groceries, which though I want to explore that cuisine I need a bit more variety to hand. (I also have to find out where they were putting up the giant Target and avoid that spot like the goddamn plague.) And, then, the UES. I really enjoyed walking around it before I started going to the gym, particularly the norther-easter bits, which is what I can best afford; it's quiet, and tree-ful, and there are lots of little neighborhood Things--but it is so goddamn far from anything but the 6, and it's even a hike to that. East Harlem you can at least pop over a couple blocks and grab a red train of choice.

1b. I realize I was in error for not carving out more time in the fall to go walkabout. Walking in the winter tells you diddley-squat. There's a farmer's market nearby, supposedly, but does it suck? Is it a neighborhood where people sit out on their stoops in the evening, or one where there are stereos blasting on the street all summer long? Etc.

2. I suspect that nycdirectrentals.com is a scam. They have sample listings on their web site, which look quite good, and say if you pay their fee you can search their other listings for 6 months. There are legit sites like this, which Real Estate Maven John told me about when dariodevil was trying to get an apartment (only the sites he mentioned were of course in NJ); but this one, I paid my money and could see nothing additional whatsoever--you get sent back to the same listings anyone can see. Now, it could just be that their web site is stupidly programmed, so I both emailed the contact address and used the "contact us" web form, and have gotten no response after ten days. I will try to reach them by phone tomorrow (they don't have one listed, I just realized) and if that fails, it's off to the credit card company to dispute the charge.

2a. I trust no listing that says "Negotiable rents, bad credit OK" and has no real information about who or what is offering the listing.

2b. I'm really not sure about manhattanapts.com, either. They have listings all over Craigslist but a bunch of them show the same "representative" photos for what are clearly, not just different apartments, but different buildings. This skeeves me.

I have other thoughts, but Mom is sniping at me for random petty shit that I had better tend to in order to avoid squabble, so I shall record them later.

Comments

[elibalin.livejournal.com]

I suspect that nycdirectrentals.com is a scam.

I don't like to be the one to say "I told you so," but...

I can't see the wisdom of giving anyone money before papers are signed, just to look at listings. If they're actually in a position to make the apartment available to you, I would think they should be able to show you the apartment.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

I know you told me so, but I was also told by actual real estate people that various of these sites are legit. And I've got accounts on two others that are.

[nancaurelia.livejournal.com]

Have you talked to Museum Beth? She normally takes sublets. I wonder where she finds them, and whether she uses an agency?

[missionista.livejournal.com]

Have you looked at listings online at nytimes.com? those tend to be legit, although possibly a little pricey. I have found apartments that way, although Craigslist is usually good too. Have you checked the East 20's and 30's? Still too expensive? Also, I had a friend who lived WAY east (like at York or First) and 65th, and he had a pretty reasonable deal.

And as far as the UES having only the #6 train, this is why the elusive 2nd Ave subway has been the holy grail for so many years...

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the east-of-Second UES is what I can afford; which is kind of okay, because it's a bit more real and a bit less precious. (TAKE YOUR DOG CLOTHING STORES OUT OF MY SIGHT.)

There doesn't seem to be much out there in the E. 20s and 30s. Though I've had to be at E. 25th and First for visiting at our Brookdale campus, and Jesus Fucking Christ what a wasteland. There is nothing out there. You have to walk a half mile just to get a cup of decent coffee.

[spride.livejournal.com]

> but having taken the crosstown bus at rush hour a few times I don't know
> how spride and the various other colleagues do it
> every day without going postal.

The trick is not to do it at rush hour. That cross-town route is chaotically sensitive to initial conditions. In the morning, you need to get there by about 8:30 at the latest (and going the other way, before 5:10 in the evening). If you get there after it'll be slow but not impossible. Later than 8:40 and it gets nasty; it's exacerbated by the fact that between ConEd ripping up Madison seventeen times in 2008 and forty fucking film crews taking up whole blocks in the east 60s, the roads are usually jammed once you get out the park. But it's not intolerable. Podcasts on the iPod and a sense of resignation help.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

I am bad at resignation, and I don't love buses to begin with. They're so inefficient (except in comparison to individual cars).

[spride.livejournal.com]

Well as we discovered in London, if you want to extend urban transport you're more or less stuck with buses in the short term; getting large scale capital projects such as the Jubilee Line Extension off the ground and delivered takes so long it's a miracle they get done at all. So in London we went with the quicker fix of a congestion charge to clear up the roads and the deployment of more buses on more routes. Something like that would really help here. I don't know how the MTA is financing the 2nd Ave subway line; I do wonder if it'll manage to survive the next year or so.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

Oh but the 2nd Ave Subway is going to be ready in 2015! The ads on the 6 say so!! /sarcasm

No, I know, buses are what there is. And I know they are not, in abstract, a terrible thing. Only that for my own personal tolerances, buses tend to vex me at a constant low-medium level, so I'm not sure it would increase my happiness to be in a place where I must needs depend on them.

[spride.livejournal.com]

Right. I hear you. I'm an ex-Londoner who feels uncomfortable being more than ¼ mile from an Underground | Metro | Subway station, but I have to say my experience of the M66 hasn't been bad, at all.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

The Green Line extension (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_(MBTA)#Future_plans) is also supposed to be finished by 2015. Coincidence… or are there strange forces at work?

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

I don't know how the MTA is financing the 2nd Ave subway line; I do wonder if it'll manage to survive the next year or so.

They've been planning it for the past, what, century? That is not dead which &c.

[nancaurelia.livejournal.com]

Actually, buses within Manhattan have vastly improved while I wasn't watching. I started taking them after my knee surgery when I couldn't walk stairs, and sometimes the limited-stop buses are actually faster than the subway, and way more comfortable. (This does not apply to cross-town buses which always suck.)

Too bad Marrus let her place go. It would have been perfect.

Harlem Food Issues

[(Anonymous)]

While I totally respect your desire to not become an exclusive consumer of Spanish Harlem cuisine, if you lived there, Fresh Direct would deliver to you for not TOO much, and it is also possible to get to the Fairway at 125th.

[solomita.livejournal.com]

I know in California that there are legitimate sites that charge you a one-time fee before they'll show you listings. I don't know if that's the way it works in NYC, though, or if your specific company is legit. But out here, everyone just uses craigslist.

I'm sure you've probably considered it, but if quick access to Jersey is important, then something in Queens/Brooklyn that is a short walk from a LIRR station would fit that bill. Plops you right in Penn Station. And some of them are also very close to subway lines with one connection to the 6.