We spent several hours swatching the walls of the new place and had our first run in with the landlady (the colors are too bright!). I do find it amusing that she is hassling us. We're paying to have the entire place freshly painted top to bottom, are tearing up a nasty green rug on 3 floors of stairs (replacing it with sisal), and a making a host of other improvements. She should be grateful!

The weather has turned perfect... almost felt a hint of fall.

Before the thunderstorm today the air was thick and muggy. You would think rain should cool things off but it only seemed to add to the oppressive humidity. I was headed down to Pearl Paint and had just entered the subway when the storm broke. Crowds of people without umbrellas ran down into the station for shelter, many of them slipping on the feces left on stairs by some severely gastrically challenged individual. Once in the station, water suddenly began pouring down through a ceiling grate onto the tracks and a small swarm of rats jumped onto the platform seeking drier ground. The commuters, many of them still dealing with stinky shoes started freaking out. One woman actually screamed "Oh my God, RATS!!!!"

When the train came everyone stared down at the ground and avoided eye contact.

I think it was just as the woman screamed that I realized LA is all about comfort. Not once in the last six months have I sweat through my shirt just trying to get somewhere (this happens at least 3 times a day here). Not once have I had to avoid human feces. And I've haven't seen a single rat (although skunks are another story). But oddly enough none of the unpleasantness bothered me the way it might have in the past. Perhaps it's because I haven't been back long enough, perhaps I was just in a good mood today, but I think part of it is that I chose to be here and I know the deal.

I've had lots of internal dialog about this sort of thing lately. I've realized my 10 years away have changed the way I see the New York. I keep noticing how dirty the city is and how long it takes to get from point a to point b and how there is real weather. But I also notice how much more rich my life is here, how many new faces I see each day, and how great the water tastes. It will be weird to be back in LA next week. I imagine the experience will be something like going back to school after you have graduated... we'll see.

So if bank people tell you 48 hours is the minimum time for a wire transfer to clear, don't believe them. With a bit of persistence and sweet talking of old ladies, it can be done in 12 hours.

We went down to State street and signed the lease. I couldn't be more pleased. Great house, great street, great neighborhood. We can't wait to get moving on the painting and so on...

We're counting the final hours to the signing. I hate depending on wire transfers and things. Inevitably there will be a fly in the ointment. We're walking out the door in 2 minutes.

After looking at scores of apartments the best ones (by far) were from craigslist apartments by owner or via local brokers. The local brokers are a colorful bunch and the best way to find them is simply to walk the neighborhoods that interest you. Many of these offices are one or two person operations. Frank our broker has a small chaotic office right down the street from the townhouse we are taking. Several of his workers are octogenarians, the office couldn't be more disorganized, but Frank consistently delivered nice apartments. We had similar experiences in Fort Greene, in the East Village, and further up the street in Cobble Hill. Most of the websites of big brokerage companies were near useless and mainly seem designed to draw you in. I probably called on 30 ads from big sites. Maybe 2 or 3 were actually available. I also found MLX and RentDirect to be fairly useless, unless you are into giant high rise buildings. Both had 5-10 new listings a day, almost all for huge developments.

Craigslist isn't as pure in New York as it is elsewhere although Craig is trying diligently to weed out the drek but it's tough. Some shady things we've seen: Brokers list apartments in the 'by owner' section simply ignoring the classification, they take listings by legit owners and re-list them with their own phone numbers or with different wording, they list completely fake apartments and when they have you on the phone try to get you into something else, and they tend to hassle owners renting their own apartments and often bully them into some sort of deal, etc. This is a huge extra tax on New Yorkers who rent both in time and money. This said a good broker will have access to a database with almost all non by-owner apartments. If you see something you like even if it is listed with someone else as an exclusive, call the broker you like. You are going to be forking out a month and a half of rent so it might as well be sombody cool.

Yesterday I found a shop selling digital copies of South African photo studio portraits:

Mai Mai – 251 Smith Street

The images reminded me of my own collection of photos from Tibetan photo studios:

Colors magazine recently had an exellent series on similar photos.

I enjoyed this sleazy broker post on curbed.

You know how sometimes in the city certain images stick in your head? This morning it was this guy, holding his Bible aloft, speaking in tounges, and ranting at nobody in particular (in the middle of Park Avenue). I swear I've seen the same guy next to the Santa Monica ferris wheel:

We were on our way to see more lofts. This one on Lafayette would have been cool if we had a few more months to clean & renovate:

Then we went down to Brooklyn to check out our options. All morning we had been debating the Dean Street loft versus the Brooklyn Heights townhouse. Jenn was leaning towards the loft I was going the other way, but a trip out to the loft and meeting the owner revealed that the back yard would soon be cut in half and the other half would be a smoking area for a bar. So basically there would be people hanging out a few feet from our bedroom late into the night..every night. Not cool. Also there was some issue with radiant heating and Persian carpets. This cemented our decision against the loft. So assuming money gets wired on time tomorrow we sign our lease and will end up in Brooklyn Heights in aa 19th century townhouse. We wanted a funkier neighborhood, but this is actually the only place we've seen with the right space/price. Note we saved a few hundred bucks a month by offering to pay 6 months up front (which shows it never hurts to ask). Frank our geriatric broker is happy. We're happy. We're going to start painting next week and then I'll go back to California to get the car and load the moving van. So that's the plan.

Afterwards we went to the new mall at Columbus circle. Locals don't like it being called a mall, but a mall it is.

Spent the day all around Brooklyn...

We saw one nice townhouse in Brooklyn Heights that I was ready to take:

This place was big enough for us (2200 square feet), the price was right, and I loved the block... but Jenn feels Brooklyn Heights is too genteel and too far away from shops/restaurants, so I think we're going to stick with the place on Dean with the storefront/parking/garden. The owners have been super accomodating, the site is only a few steps from Smith street, and the F is literally one block away. It's a construction site now, but come October, we're moving in...

With a bit of photoshopping I can create the New York I see in my head.

Now that I've left LA, here are some of my favorite craftspeople:

Bookshelves - Scott Ryle 213-90-5885

Decorative Painter - Fernando 626-960-0046

Gardener - Shorty 323-459-2579

Garden Design - Kameon, Judy 323-226-1191 Elysian Landscapes

Floors
    decorative linoleum - Lori Crogin 310-474-1821
    floor finishing - Don Henderson 310-391-7578
    hardwood floors - Shong Hardwood (Scott) 310-787-9819 or 310-753-4842 m

Tile - George Hernandez 310-777-9325 b

Unfortunately Jenn didn't like the loft on 22nd street as much as I did. The major complaint was bad feng shui (fair criticism). Also the entire lower floor was really a finished basement with little light. I was swayed by the no-brokerness of it all. Jenn was not. It would have been cool to have Soderbergh as a neighbor, we might have seen George more that way. Oh well. Next.

So today we saw lofts.

The best of the bunch was probably this one:

The views over Canal and Broadway are out of a movie, and the light is unbeatable. As for negatives this loft had a completely unfinished kitchen (which didn't scare us too much) and an unfixable (without lots of $$$) bathroom. Also the space was significantly smaller than the 2000 square feet advertised. Jenn ixnayed the project on the spot.

Trying to get into this loft was a prime example of how looking for places in Manhattan is a huge hassle. The loft was listed on craigslist as a no fee apartment, but only a few hours after it was posted the owner said she was so harassed by brokers that she didn't want to show it to individuals any more. So she recommended a broker. That broker, James, didn't actually have the keys so he had to find the proper person to co-broke. James tracked down someone at the agency which supposedly had the keys (a guy named Jan), but when we showed up Jan didn't actually have the keys to the front door, so we sat there waiting for 20 minutes for someone to exit. Nobody did so we left. Later James found out that another broker named Karen actually had the key to the front door. Karen had called us the day before about this place but we already had the appointment with James so we passed. Also Karen had been a bit shady about some other places she was pushing often stretching the truth or fudging on details. An hour earlier Karen had tried to show us another apartment which we had already seen (she had claimed it was an exclusive and this was the first time she was showing it). Anyway so when we showed up with Robert, and Karen was there it was all somewhat awkward. There has to be a better way. This is like bad hight school and I hate it.

Jenn liked another loft over on Howard (great windows) but I hated the way it was finished and the entire building was shaking due to an improperly secured AC unit.

Perhaps by the end of the day our standards were impossibly low, but we are excited about this place in Brooklyn:

No we're not joking. The place has a parking spot, a garden, and the owners will let us have a say in how it is finished. Also no brokers fee. We're meeting with the owner tomorrow to see if we can work out something that is cool with both of us.

I had forgotten how much I miss a good rainstorm.

I saw a loft on 22nd street I rather liked today. It's not perfect (what is?), but it did satisfy many of the boxes on our checklist. Also no broker's fee which would save us around 10K. The big issue is that it's on the ground floor and the windows to the outside are frosted. The lower floor is all underground with only a few skylights. So it might feel a bit enclosed or claustrophobic. But it's 2500 square feet. The appliances/kitchen are top notch and the ceilings on both levels are very high (about 20 feet upstairs). I could go for it. Jenn is less sure.

I also saw a house out in Brooklyn that would work. It was bigger 2800 square feet with 3 floors, but it took me almost an hour to get back to the East Side. Also it was still being finished. Although the owner promised it would all be done in 2 weeks, it looked more like 2 months to me... maybe more. The materials and workmanship was 2nd rate. Who uses soft yellow pine as flooring?

--

We had a nice dinner at the Park Avalon with Al and Josie who are both doctors. Josie who is only a week behind Jenn in her pregnancy was telling us some horror stories about C-sections. Apparently Al is regularly called in to fix mistakes made by residents in which bladders get sliced open. Their advice: if you must have a C-section demand that your OB or someone in the practice do the deed. The vast majority of the mistakes are made by residents.