NoWa 4 Life Wednesday, December 14, 2005 [ banter 13 ]

What you need to know is I that love Manhattan's Upper West Side like a crackwhore loves the free clinic. Greenwich Village is lovely for an early dinner date, Soho is great for 2hrs on a sunny afternoon, the East Village is perfect late night's out with friends, Midtown is cool when you need a meeting point for destinations to be determined, and the Upper East Side... well, despite the myth of Carrie Bradshaw's life, the Upper East Side isn't good for anything ---- it's all corporate highrises and doctor's offices and stuffy department stores, and there's only one lousy subway line all the way over on Lexington. But for me, the Upper West Side has it all. Everything. Columbus Circle, Tower Records, w72nd Street, the Museum of Natural History, the Riverside Park gardens, all the diners on upper Broadway, Morningside Heights, Columbia University, and 7 major subway lines running --- SEVEN! Local AND Express, bitch! It's home to some of the best Sunday brunches in New York. I swear I can spend hours just wandering up Broadway, enchanted like a damn fool. Yes, the UWS is the shit.

My friend Meg just got a really cute one bedroom apartment on w84th. Fucking w84th street, bitch. She's a total UWS yuppie and she loves it, just up the street from Ray's and a block away from Cafe Lalo. Her life is You've Got Mail. I hate her ass. The worst/best part that is we make pretty much the same money and I could totally swing her rent.

So, my apartment lease is up for renewal in April 2006 and I've gotta start thinking about what I want to do. I've been ignoring the form my landlord slipped under my door for a few days now... I'm just not sure what my plans are. Do I renew? For one year, two years? I mean, I love my apartment and all the space I have, and I love that I have a pretty good deal on it. I love living alone and not needing a roommate. But I know I want to live on the Upper West Side, my dreamhood, and if that's going to happen I should start by setting a date on it. Like April 2007. Or 2008. If it's going to happen, I have to pull myself together and figure some things out. Pro's and con's. Over the last 5 years, I've had to endure a myriad of shitty living conditions/weird roomate rotations and upgrade my income job by job before I could get to a point where I could finally get and afford this apartment all to myself. Roomates are out of the question. But as much as I love my apartment, do I really want to endure a 40 minute subway ride downtown for the rest of my NYC life everytime I go out? Not really. As badass as I'd feel living on the UWS, do I really want to up my rent AND give up all my space for some tiny cramped room in the west 80's? Not really. Do I wanna live a great place that's a little outta the way (that's NoWa --- North of Washington Heights; use it, I'm still trying to spawn the catchphrase), or live by the skin of my teeth in my favorite mostly unaffordable neighborhood? Am I lucky to have what I do --- should I quit searching and feel glad I secured something good? I just don't know. I'm even torn on whether or not to post this entry b/c it puts it out there in the universe: the fact that I'm a little unsatisfied with that I've got. Plus I like it more when ppl read this blog and think my life rocks and that I'm light years cooler than they can ever be... b/c you guys think that, right? Right? Shit. Sorry, I got a spriteboy email the other day from one of the jocks I went to highschool with, I'm tripping a little.

I'm fascinated lately by young people I know who have their shit together. I'm not talking about people with interesting lives and jobs (in New York everyone leads a fabulous life in their own way), I am talking about slick youngish mofos not that much older than me who have their professional lives either on the rise or totally in order AND have the bank account that goes with it. My exboyfriend Jeff was so on top of everything in his gorgeous life that it was damn intimidating sometimes (construction on his new loft is almost done --- that's a brand new building, too. No really, it's just sick.), but I was able to keep it check b/c he'd had a damn good start what with his 16yrs on me. Yeah, 16 years --- I was blinded by the smile and charmed by the rest, man; like the Katie to his Tom but without the pregancy and all the freaky religion. Anyway, his success kind of got me thinking about this stuff and lately I'm meeting more and more people in their late 20's who seem to making that crucial transition into Finanicially Solid Adulthood. I know that they're out there, I'm meeting them all the time. I went on a date with this yummy Aussie the other night and nearly slit my wrists when I saw the view from his midtown high-rise. After he dried my tears and took my mind off things for a few hours (he's a keeper), he drove me home. In a BMW. That he owns and pays parking space for. He's 29. It's a damn shame he's doing so well, b/c I kind of liked him (the accent kills me) but now he has to die. When did these people start making money like that? Was it a sudden promotion? Was it part of a gradual business plan, or the result of one of those 4yr personal plans? Should I be looking into investments? I don't want to be 30 and find out I should have started my shit years ago when I was 20.

I like my life. I enjoy my job, I leave with a sense of accomplishment each day and I go home to an apartment I love having. Though my job keeps me securely afloat, I am nowhere NEAR being able to afford buying a place. My mom in her Texas mindset encourages me to start saving, like it's actually possible that I could afford it one day. The only way I could was if I won the lottery or got hit by a bus and sued the city (hmmm). Just a single unit in a brownstones alone can go for like, $3 million --- and that's in Brooklyn. At best, I think if I saved and saved and sold a kidney I'd be able to one day own a closet in Far Rockaway sometime. I don't see any of this with bitter eyes, really. To me, it's just the way things are in New York.

But I could, maybe, afford to swing my ass from distant and roomy NoWa zipcode into a little place on the UWS at some point. If I work it out hard. The question is, as a man of Manhattan, is that an upgrade or a downgrade? And also, can I kill the Aussie and resume his identiy w/o anyone being the wiser?

« All Good Things for Joey | Main | Night Divine »