Big Apple working holidays: finding an apartment

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This was published 13 years ago

Big Apple working holidays: finding an apartment

"Don't live above 96th," the baker at the Upper East Side patisserie tells me.

He was warning me that it's dangerous up that part of town - and perhaps not quite right for an Anglo Aussie like me.

I'd just moved to New York City on a six-month overseas working holiday. My apartment-hunting experience was going to be full of unwanted surprises but a great way to see how the city really ticks.

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New York is one tough city to live in. The people are loud and have no problem with using the footpath as their personal garbage bin and spittoon.

I'd been to Manhattan many times, so I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. But living there versus being a tourist was a whole new experience.

I was beginning to wonder if I should have followed my friends to London.

The city's neighbourhoods are noticeably divided by different ethnic groups and English is almost a second language to Spanish. The Russians and Ukrainians dominate Brighton Beach. The hipsters and Hasidic Jews live side by side in Williamsberg.

Greenpoint is often referred to as Little Poland. Sunset Park is mostly Mexican. Upper Manhattan and the Bronx is predominantly home to African American and Hispanic populations. No guessing needed for Koreatown.

So where do I fit in?

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My search for an apartment began by using Craigslist.org, an online community where users can post items for sale, job listings and apartments for rent.

It was also going to send me uptown, downtown and near insanity in the search for a flat. Geographically, I knew the city well and bearing in mind the cultural divisions, I had a fairly good idea of the neighbourhoods I wanted to live in.

I was also prepared for the daylight robbery of New York rent. But I was ill prepared for how far apartment ads can stretch the truth. New York is all about appearances and things aren't always what they seem.

Through Craigslist, I'd arranged to view a "spacious shared apartment with a female charity worker" in the neighbourhood of Yorkville in Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The area ticked all the boxes - supermarkets, laundry, cafes and a family friendly feeling. But disappointment and confusion was right around the corner.

The address I'd been given turned out to be a building for the elderly. Through some loophole the current 28-year-old tenant had managed to score a place in the building.

I was to tell the doorman I was just visiting a friend. I was getting suspicious. Inside, it was apparent I wasn't going to be getting a bedroom of my own.

We'd be sharing bunk beds in the living room. For half a second I was taken back to my youth and thought the bunk beds were a cool novelty.

To top off my first New York apartment-hunting experience, a group of girls showed up at the place shortly after my arrival. The tenant taught alternative dance lesson in the three-by-four-metre living space every weekend and I was welcome to join in.

The dance troupe asked me how much the rent was. I said, $1000 a month. The look on their faces told me I was being badly ripped off. I declined the bunk-bedded-apartment-dance-studio-in the-old-folks-home.

This gave me a sense of what was to come.

Next up, an appointment to look at an apartment on 145th Street in Harlem. This was way past the no go zone the Upper East Side baker had warned me about and I began to see why.

The streets were like something out of a rap song, complete with hustlers and grifters. The apartment turned out to be a shoebox-sized studio, which was accessed via the owners' living room.

This room was filled with portraits of long-gone family members and creepy animal ornaments, which I worried would come to life as I slept. I decided to pass on living with the Addams Family of Harlem.

By now, nothing could surprise me.

I rang one tenant to discuss a viewing, but was informed that if I were to take the apartment, it had to be vacated every Tuesday so she could teach music lessons there. I didn't bother with that one.

Nor did I bother with the Upper West Side studio painted in a blinding shade of orange, whose owner didn't accept phone calls during certain hours.

If I hadn't been so desperate for a place to live, all this might have seemed amusing. Although some people swear by it, Craigslist just wasn't working for me.

It was time to go through a broker who would find me an apartment for a hefty fee. Mine was a French-American chain smoker who was trying to convince to take a tiny studio in trendy Central Park West.

He was also quick to tell me the city didn't need another graphic designer but then asked if I wouldn't mind designing some humorous shirts for him.

I reluctantly viewed the apartment and listened to his thoughts on why travellers were the leeches of the world. While the location was a short stroll to Strawberry Fields, the rent would mean I could never afford jam for my bread and butter diet. Pass and next.

But nobody told me about Queens - close enough to Manhattan to see its skyline, yet far enough away to have my own space.

Five weeks after my arrival, I moved into a decent, furnished studio apartment there and it was affordable by New York measures.

Amongst New Yorkers, Queens is not a well-explored territory mostly for the reason they have no need to go there.

And I received a few "good luck with that" remarks when I told people I lived there.

But it's only a 15-minute trip on the 7 train way from midtown Manhattan.

And like Staten Island, the borough has a suburban feel. People live in homes, not just apartments, and the crime rate is relatively low. Moreover, the neighbourhoods are more culturally mixed than Manhattan, Brooklyn or the Bronx.

As it became my home for the next five months, I couldn't understand why people weren't rushing to live there.

New York is very much "each to your own" and everyone has their own often hellish stories to tell so it's hard to offer any tips or advice to my friend who's about to move there.

But as she's half Italian I've suggested Nolita (North of Little Italy) might be a good place to start.

FAST FACTS

Useful websites for New York apartment-hunting: http://newyork.craigslist.org; http://www.lodgis.com.

AAP

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