On my way to spend my first night at the new address I walked over, leaving my apartment around 9pm, and passed no less than four pairs of street cops just hanging out in the streets, keeping an eye on things. The walk itself was only about a mile. Turns out that my new abode was located inbetween between project buildings. Y'know, like, the projects.
So things are pretty bad, apparently.
Life in the apartment started off well enough. I got settled in, and the biggest shock was that my bedroom window overlooked an alley full of trash and each morning I'd be the only non-black person waiting on the train platform. And on weekend mornings someone in a neighbouring apartment likes to blare terrible RnB, in the evenings there are constantly cars with loud stereos passing by, and there are usually people in the streets yelling at each other no matter the time of the day. Okay, so, not ideal, but still not terrible. I can live with a little bit of ambient noise, right?
The apartment's owner is a vegetarian health-nut, and therefore there was a distinct lack of microwave in the tiny kitchen. Not that big of a deal.
Then I bought some ice cream sandwiches and threw them in the freezer, only to have them slowly start melting into midly cool, wax-paper wrapped chocolate and vanilla ooze bombs. Freezer didn't work, apparently. Okay, not the end of the world.
Between that and the limited fridge and cupboard space, I didn't have a lot of room to do serious cooking. So I'd been living off a diet of sandwiches and mac n' cheese, keep a few bare essentials in the fridge: cheese, butter, deli meat, a couple vegetables. Until a few weeks passed and those all began to go bad as the fridge, too, decided to quit.
I was now only eating non-perishable foods that could be easily cooked. Ramen, mac n' cheese, beans. I'd buy some apples and carrots, and do my best to burn them within a couple days before they went bad. Scurvy isn't fun, or so I hear. One night after dinner I was still hungry, so I figured I'd go make myself another pot of macaroni, when lo and behold, the kitchen lightswitch crapped out and I was left standing in the dark.
I went to bed a little bit hungry that night. Part of the problem is that I can't afford to eat out regularly, so I need to stick to my guns and stick to a store-bought diet. It's not convenient, sure, but all I could do was chuckle to myself at the misfortune and keep on pluggin' away.
A couple weeks passed, and the fridge and freezer was finally replaced. Huzzah!
No joke, the exact same day, the stove stopped working. I'm currently sitting on about $20 cookable non-perishable foods that I can't eat because I simply don't have a way to heat them.
And that was only the kitchen.
Some days the hot water simply doesn't show up for work, leaving you with a room temperature (or some days downright cold) shower. That's okay for the days when the temperature is filthy warm and humid, but other days it's always a bit of a gamble to know how quickly you'll want to get jump out of the tub.
And then there's the internet. It started off alright, and then it turned into an outdoor cat. Yes, I know that the internet is usually for looking at cats, but mine has become one. It comes and goes as it pleases. Sometimes it doesn't show up for days on end, and then it'll be suddenly there without announcing its arrival or any indication that it had even left. But, like any cat worth its weight, it's impeccably lazy. Web pages take a minute or two to load, if they even load at all.
I was feeling particularly bored the other day, so I decided to download a small indie game on Steam. A top-down racing game with weapons and zombies. It was less than a gig.
It took two days to download. My download topped out at 54.2kb/s. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that makes it slower than 56K dialup. It certainly felt like it, though. And it was definitely less reliable.
I've been doing my best to stay positive about everything, thinking "Nah, lots of people have it worse. Things aren't that bad." Then one day, the buzzer sounded and I headed down to the building entrance to see who it was (because, you guessed it, the intercom is busted). Lo and behold, it was three police officers, badges around their necks and everything, serving a search warrant for a shady-lookin' black man. They asked me if I knew and/or have seen him. I said no. I let them in the building, and they begun their search.
It was somewhere around here that I realized that I am, in fact, living in a dump. This is the kind of thing you'll recall for the rest of your life in the form of any sentence starting with "Man, I used to live in a place where..."
To be honest, the people in the apartment aren't too bad. Lots of cool people have been coming and going (it is an AirBnB place, after all). The apartment's owner is a stage actor and has lots of stage actor friends who come over and listen to musicals and sing along to musicals. Even when they aren't on. That kind of thing, to be honest, just puts a smile on your face. Sure, it's strange and unexpected, but in a "this is kinda awesome" way.
Aside from that, though, I'm kinda miserable right now. I miss my previous apartment, and I miss home, and I'm not too fond of where I am at the moment. That's probably fuelling my decision to return home in a big way.
But you can't argue with the fact that this is one hell of a place. New York, that is. I've lived in some strange places and spoken with strange people and seen strange things (did I tell you about the 2AM street brawl in front of my old address?). I'll definitely miss it.
I'm hoping, though, that I'll still find lots to smile about. And high on that list will be a decent home made meal, made in a kitchen full of functioning appliances and everything.
Until then, I need to figure out how many stars to give this place on AirBnB.
-Cril
You know that I would love to see you next year
I hope that I am still alive next year
You magnify the way I think about myself
before you came I rarely thought about myself
Behind your veil I found a body underneath
Inside your head were things I never thought about
You know that I would love to see you next year
I hope that I am still alive next year
What's my view?
Well how am I supposed to know?
Write a review?
Well how objective can I be?
Mark Ronson (ft. Paul Smith) - Apply Some Pressure
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