Last night Jenn was annoyed that I pulled out my camera at dinner. Later we discussed banchan. Jenn finds it offensive that banchan is often compared to tapas, or worse, labeled an appetizer. "Banchan is a philosophy," she announced. End of discussion.

These protesters were all over midtown today. Better than the Save the Children guy who, when I passed him by, yelled at me "What you don't care about saving children?"

. . .

I've been doing painter interviews over at the apartment. All the people listed in the Franklin report are crazy expensive. Does anyone have a reliable painter, available on short notice, who can handle 3 stories and around 2500 square feet? We need to move fast. Jenn is dying to set up a baby room. I am dying to be settled. We're not looking for super cheap, but we don't want to pay top dollar either. It's a rental.

Sometimes in big cities you will catch a little snippet of conversation that tells a larger story, only you never know how the story ends.

Here are today's bits of urban drama:

--
Man to sobbing woman: That's just the way it is baby. You gotta understand.

--
Street artist: This one is a schematic of a UFO and that one is the view from the Tapanzee bridge.

--
Woman on cellphone (distressed): I'll send you the CAT scans.

--
Man to woman: I swear to god I was there. I swear to god I was there. I swear to god.

Woman: That's what you say but that's not the way it was.

Man: I swear to god I was there.

--
Man with big hat to cell phone: Say that again. I dare you to say that again. You sorry piece of crap. I can't believe you just said that.

On the subway this morning I was in a car of Nader/Camejo supporters. One of them was wearing a t-shirt that said (in big letters), "I AM NOT IRRELEVANT!" Another had a shirt that said, "MY VOTE COUNTS!" They were handing out buttons and half heartedly chanting "Nader, Nader, Nader, no more Bush or Al-Sadr." One guy managed to spill his coffee on a commuter who was not amused.

I've been spending way too much time on the subway. Almost 2 hours a day. Things will get better once we're moved in. But being subterranean for so many hours a day makes you think about things... like why is it so darned hot down there? Heat rises and yet 50 feet underground it is often 10 or even 15 degrees hotter than outside. The culprit, I'll bet, are all those air conditioners on subway cars spewing hot air. Why not just AC the stations and forget out cooling individual cars? Or maybe just turn off the AC in the cars and see if the whole place cools down. Also, who is busy scratching all the windows? Every single car I've been in has windows scratched so badly you can barely see out of them. The scratches aren't even tags, just random angry hatchmarks. What's the point? I understand tagging. But this is just stupid. And what's the deal with the variety of color/tiling schemes going on? Why for example is 49th street bright orange? Why not paint the columns at each stop based on the color of the line they are on? Stations with multiple lines would have stripes on the columns. Easy & logical. Also why has New York never instituted route maps like the London Tube System which is regularly hailed for being well signed. Every day I see hapless tourists scrutinizing maps and getting on the wrong train. Sigh. I could go on.

Happily it was another day of perfect weather. I dealt with painters and spent some time exploring my new neighborhood.

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