Adversity, New York Style

On our second day in New York City, we hit the ground running. We parked our car in a Brooklyn neighborhood where we were scheduled to view apartments later in the day. From there we walked about ten blocks to the Subway and rode it into Manhattan.



If you are not familiar with New York City, it is divided into five boroughs. These are independently governed portions of New York City.



The Five Boroughs of New York City: 1: Manhattan 2: Brooklyn 3: Queens 4: The Bronx 5: Staten Island

More info can be found here

Upon arrival into Manhattan, we headed to The Natural Gourmet Institute for our tour, which was scheduled for 11 AM. Jenn met with Merle, who is in charge of admissions for the school. She walked us through the building and showed us everything from the lockers to the kitchens where Jenn will be learning. The students were hard at work making desserts when we entered one of the kitchens. We found out her class will have the maximum 16 students permitted by the school. Several applicants were turned away as the school makes good on their promise to keep the class sizes small in order to give the students the full learning experience. The tour lasted about thirty minutes and when we finished Jenn was floating in anticipation. We left the school and walked around Manhattan for a little while but had to leave to meet the real estate agent in Brooklyn.




We hopped back on the Subway and headed back to Brooklyn. It was after lunch time so we stopped in a local Vegetarian cafe/wifi hotspot called Tilly's as we had a little time before our appointment. I had a sandwich made with tomato, basil and mozzarella and Jenn gave the hummus and sun-dried tomato sandwich a whirl. Both were very tasty and we got another taste of the types of foods she will be learning about at school.

After we ate, we went to meet the agent out front of an apartment building in the Clinton Hill neighborhood at 3:00. When I began contact with her in July, we made plans to be here September 1st and to look for apartments beginning that day. She confirmed this with us weekly leading up to our arrival. Once we got here, however, she was not available to show us apartments on the 1st, so we waited until this day, Thursday September 2 to see apartments. And upon arrival to the city there was only one left, so we were hoping to hit a home run with this apartment. We did too. The live-in super showed us the apartment and it had brand new appliances complete with a dishwasher, and a very convenient location to the Subway and Downtown Brooklyn. It was in the younger diverse neighborhood that values natural eating judging by the number of such eating establishments. The rent for the studio was $1400 which was in the middle range of what we wanted to pay. Since we only plan on being in New York for six months, we were told this was the only option as most landlords require year-long leases, a trend that just recently began. We decided that we would take good fortune when it comes and apply for the apartment. The super called his boss to have it removed from the market only to find out it had been rented earlier in the day. This communication did not make it to the agent or the super prior to this. We were disappointed and not sure what to do. Thoughts of being stranded in a new city without an apartment began to surface as well as what could have been had we looked at the apartment the day before as planned.

The agent mentioned another apartment to us that she thought we might be interested in. The price was $1850 per month, which was higher than I wanted to pay, but we decided to look anyway. We walked a couple of blocks to the location and went inside. The apartment was older and needed work. The appliances were well over a decade old and the bathroom was so small, it felt like a small closet. It had a deck off the back porch which the agent referred to as premium "outdoor space." I looked at her in disbelief as I viewed this backyard with a deck no bigger than three cubicles long and found humor in a New York City agent trying to sell two Kansans an apartment with outdoor space. Because of this outdoor space, the rent for this apartment was $450 more even though the apartment was in worse shape than the first one we were shown. The agent kept repeating how it would be really tough to find an apartment for only six months, but these folks would do it. She offered to cut her fee in half and we thought we should do it since we needed a place and according to her, we would not be able to find one. The agent fees in New York are generally one months rent, so we would have had to pay her $925. As we drove to sign papers I was getting knots in my stomach. The price for such a crappy apartment was eating me alive, and I cared nothing about their definition of outdoor space. Jenn was uneasy too, but was also worried we might not find a place. As we approached the real estate office in downtown Brooklyn, my gut feeling was giving me trouble breathing. We walked into the office, and the agent started unloading with stipulations and how we needed to hurry and bring money first thing Friday morning before the holiday weekend so that we could have a chance to move in right away. Right then, I just couldn't take it, and I told her that I didn't feel right about the situation. There have been too many times in my life where I have ignored my gut and paid the price and I was not going to let it happen here. I told her thanks for her time and walked away. We had no leads and faced a holiday weekend in a hotel, but we both carried our faith with us. As soon as I told the agent we didn't want that apartment, I felt like a heavy weight was lifted, even though it meant we would have to pay for four more nights in a hotel.

We walked back to our car and I noticed that there was very little air in our back tire. I found a small pin-sized hole that was spewing air out. Perfect timing. We drove to a service station on the rim where the Full service attendant aired it up for us, but they couldn't fix the tire because it was 5:45 and the shop closed at 6:00. They directed us to a 24 hour tire shop nearby. I guess only part of the city never sleeps. When we arrived at the tire shop, they said the tire could not be saved but we could get a new one for 120 bucks. Terrific!

They fixed the tire with my car parked on the busy street where the business resided. This particular street was under construction and had been stripped of its top layer of asphalt like many of the roads nearby. The overall condition of roads in Brooklyn are terrible and I was not the least bit shocked to have popped a tire. It made me appreciate the condition of the roads in Manhattan, Kansas and I am sure many of us can attest to complaining about potholes there.

Let's take a break from the story to view a lighter sign we found here that nobody pays attention to:



After our tire was replaced, we ventured back into the potholed racetrack back to the hotel. Though exhausted, we had to come up with a plan before morning. We called another agency to ask about apartments in other areas of Brooklyn and were told that we would be called by an agent in the morning. I then booked a hotel on Staten Island for the weekend that saved us $60 bucks a night. It would be a further drive into the city, but our current hotel was raising its rates to $180 for the Labor Day holiday and it was already in a very questionable neighborhood so we had no problem leaving. We went to bed without an apartment and with no leads except the promise from another agency that we would hear from someone the next day.