In the year 2010, New York City is currently estimated to house 8.3 million people. The entire population of the United States is currently estimated at 307 million. That means roughly 2.7% of the United States' population is in New York City alone. Did you know that Manhattan in its entirety is 23 square miles? And that it holds 1.6+ million people? That's 66,490 people per square mile. The population density of the entire United States is approximately 76 people per square mile.
So what do all these numbers translate to in real life? Basically it means that New York City is an overcrowded, loud, filthy cesspool where dreams go to die. Sure, some of you starving artists might make a name for yourselves in the Big Apple, but most of you will be on the next Fung Wah bus home. Even if only 1% of the population in NYC is aspiring to realize the same dream as you, that means you have 83,000 competitors. Are you really a better actor, writer, singer, dancer, artist, or stock broker than 83,000 neighbors? I thought not. I tell you these things not to crush your spirit, I simply want to save you from a non-refundable security deposit, first, and last month's rent, and probably a realtor/finder's fee—a combined price tag averaging $4,950 for a one-bedroom in the city limits.
If I haven't successfully scared you off this notion of moving to New York City to follow your dreams, let me tell you one of my many personal tales of woe when moving there.
Doe-eyed and innocent, my friend Leanne and I hopped into my car the weekend before we were supposed to move to NYC. Our mission was to drive into Manhattan, secure a cheap apartment, and move in the following week. A week's time might not seem like enough to get an apartment and move, but we were assured by many people, realtors included, to wait until the last minute to find a place. The turnover rate for rentals in the city is so high that nobody lists apartments more than a month ahead of time—and if they do, there is something horribly wrong with it.
We scraped together our pennies, printed out some craigslist ads, and went in search of the perfect 2-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Our first stop: the East Village. We arrived an hour late because of traffic and taking the wrong bridge that instead led us directly into a Chinatown fish market. The smell was unbearable and it was impossible to get around when all the roads were either blocked off by police or by giant dragon floats. We instead parked the car as soon as we could and walked to our first appointment.
We knocked on the door of the seemingly nice building but got no response. We rang the bell. Nothing. We knocked a little louder. Nothing. We called the contact number listed. Nothing. Frustrated, we turned to walk away when the door banged open. A middle-aged woman in an over-sized t-shirt with no bra was standing there squinting at us.
"Yeahhh?" She asked with a New Jersey accent.
"Hi, we're here to see the apartment...sorry we're late. Are you the person we spoke to over email?"
"Naw. I'm here with my boyfriend from Jersey. We just stayed the night...partied a little too hard and just woke up. My cousin couldn't be here. You wanna come in and see the place?"
"Sure."
We went inside and had to shuffle sideways down the extremely narrow (and obviously illegal) hallway to the first bedroom. Asleep in a sleeping bag surrounded by cigarette butts and empty cans of Miller Light was the boyfriend. The room couldn't have been bigger than 10' x 10' and being on the first floor with a window right onto 1st avenue, it was extremely loud. We were then ushered into the "second bedroom" which actually had us giggling. We had to take turns going in and out of the room because it wouldn't fit more than 2 people at a time. It housed no bed, only a small secretary desk against one wall, and that's all it would allow. With one doorway into the other bedroom and another doorway into the kitchen, it was more like a nexus than a room—it had no windows, no closet, and no floor—just subflooring.
Continuing into the kitchen we encountered an ungodly smell accompanied with a sink full of month-old dishes and grime. There was a fully-formed spiderweb complete with eggsacs on one of the faux-wood cabinets, and in place of a pull-out drawer underneath the countertop was a layer of duct tape.
Sitting in a park right outside the building after having seen the horrors within, we collected ourselves and began to scour over the city's newspaper for apartment listings—the Village Voice. Finding nothing else in Manhattan within even $500 of our price range, we decided it might be best to try extending our search into the burroughs. We'd both heard good things about Queens so we called a few places in an up and coming neighborhood called Astoria. All but one were already rented so we agreed to go see it.
As I was hanging up the phone with Lucas—our future landlord, a fight was breaking out between two homeless men on a bench across from us. It went a little something like this:
"Hey fuck-face, where's my fucking Metrocards?" (Metrocards are what you use to access NYC's subway system.)
"I dunno. I ain't seen 'em"
"Don't fuckin' lie to me Roger, I know you been looking at 'em."
"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Go home." (To the shelter, I assume).
"I ain't goin' home without my fuckin' metrocards. They were hidden in my shoe, what did you do with 'em?"
"Your shoes? I threw them away."
"What the FUCK is wrong with you man? You threw my shoes away?"
"Yep."
"Where the fuck are they?"
"Gone."
Throwing up his hands and walking away, the angry man said matter of factly "You're gonna get shot." And left to retrieve his gun.
It was at this point that we covered our faces with the newspaper and started running down Avenue A towards Chinatown and the parked car.
When we got to the car it had been keyed and there was a $75 parking ticket on the windshield. Furious and terrified we set out to see the apartment in Astoria, Queens. 45 Minutes later when we still hadn't arrived in Astoria, we called the landlord to ask for directions.
"What do you see around you? Any landmark buildings?" He asked us.
"Nothing," I replied, "Just highway and hills."
"You must be in New Jersey. You went the wrong way on the tunnel, you gotta turn around, go back through Manhattan, and out the other side to Queens."
On the verge of tears, we turned around. 2 Hours after our expected arrival, we pulled up in front of the apartment building. It was nondescript and the apartment was on the first floor, which made me nervous in the city. We were let inside and were happy to find that both bedrooms were a decent size, along with a small but reasonable living room, kitchen, and bathroom. It all had nice woodwork, hardwood floors. and was freshly painted white. Wanting to be done with the search already after having only seen 2 apartments, we took it.
At $1,600 a month, we shelled out $4,800 for first, last, and security deposit. I'd never written a check for that much before. The instant his sausage fingers closed around it, I regretted the entire operation. We drove home, trying to be excited that we found an apartment and convince ourselves that we hadn't made a huge mistake.
The following week we packed up our meager belongings and drove our U-Haul to New York City during a snowstorm. With help from friends and family, it didn't take too long to get everything inside. They left right after the last box was in, trying to get home before the snow got worse and roads started to close. Leanne and I wandered around the apartment in a daze, stumbling around boxes and half-assembled furniture. It felt entirely like a dream. We'd try and look out the windows to confirm that we were in fact in our new home in the middle of New York City, but all we could see was white.
That evening, trying to focus on unpacking and getting settled, we started to see all the flaws in the apartment. My room faced a busy street and people could peer inside easily. Paranoid, I threw a blanket across the windows and unpacked in the dark because there was no overhead light or lightswitch. I rummaged through my boxes and pulled out a desk lamp for some light. I hunted around, tripping over boxes, searching the walls for an outlet—there was only one. One solitary outlet in my entire room. Walking out into the living room, I searched the walls—one outlet. The kitchen—one outlet. I walked into Leanne's room where she sat on the floor, crying quietly into a balled-up sweater.
"Whats wrong?" I asked, leaning down to hug her.
"There's no outlets. There's no closet. There's no stairs on the fire escape outside my window. This place is ridiculous. There's a window in the living room that faces a brick wall, and below there is just a pit. A dark, scary bottomless pit."
Things never really improved in the apartment. We had a fly infestation, a moth infestation, a roach infestation, an Asian Long-Horned beetle infestation, mice in our walls, and a sketchy-as-hell landlord who lived upstairs and would disappear for months at a time—sending thugs to bang on our door and collect our rent checks. We also figured out that there was a gaggle of 20-somethings living in the unfinished basement. It was unclear if they were squatting or if they were illegally renting the space, but they would come and go without speaking to either of us. The only way we'd even know if they were home is when we'd smell pot smoke wafting through our floor vents.
Through the Summer months, our apartment was so hot that we would stay locked in our bedrooms with our window air conditioners on—plugged into our solitary outlet—and sit in the dark. It was near impossible to sleep with the deafening city sounds after growing up in the country. Outside of Leanne's window facing away from the street, she had to put up with the constant barking of a pit bull, the shrill fighting of an unhappy couple, and the blasting latin music from a neighbor's boombox. At the front of the house, I got to hear the drunk people walking by my window and shouting, car horns, car alarms, ambulances, and sirens. Most of these nights we would stumble out of our rooms and into the living room, looking exhausted, sweaty, naked, and generally defeated. There we would sit on the couch together, watching reruns and late-night infomercials on basic cable from the television plugged into our single living room outlet.
When our lease was up, we moved into a different apartment in Long Island City, Queens. Our address was easy to remember—2548 44th st, 3R. Simple, right? This time not only did we get suckered into first and last month's rent plus security deposit, but we also had to pay a realtor's fee, making it a more expensive apartment than our last one even though the rent was a mere $1450/month. Again, the place seemed great at the time. 2 nice bedrooms, huge living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Because it was so full of the current tenant's junk when we looked at it, we didnt get to do a thorough inspection. It wasn't until we moved in that we went around counting electrical outlets—one in each bedroom again. None in the kitchen except what the fridge and stove were already plugged into. None in the bathroom.
Some other highlights from this apartment include it being a 20-minute, agonizing walk to the nearest train or bus station, the landlord spoke no English, it was near a police station so we could hear every siren wailing as a police car raced by, and also near the La Guardia airport so we could hear every low-flying plane break the sound barrier. We broke our lease and moved back home after six months at the second apartment. We had both gone through about 10-15 jobs each, all of our cash, and all of our patience.
If you value any shred of solitude, quiet, savings, cleanliness, or courtesy from your fellow man, then this is not the city for you to live in. By all means, visit, but for the love of Pete, don't stay! And to those of you 8.3 million people from New York City, I'd tell you to go to hell, but you're already there.
