A Rose In Spanish Harlem
The adventures continue. I finally found a realtor who was willing to sit down and chat and tell me how things are here in NYC. I am seriously not kidding when I tell you that apartment hunting here is the most insane thing I've ever experienced. It seems that there are owners, realtors and in the middle, brokers. They are hired by the individuals to find places. Hired by owners to rent places and... well I really am not sure what else they do but there is now a whole 'middle industry' that has been created which exudes a false sense of urgency in the market and an inflated cost of living.
My adviser suggested a friend of his who was a realtor here in NYC and after my mixed experience with the 3 that I met (somewhat positive- but mostly weirded out) I decided to call her and see what she could do for me. We met up in Harlem. It was something to me. When I was doing my History undergrad, I took a course on 'Harlem and The Black World'. It was a great course and introduced me to not only the Harlem Renaissance but also to writers, leaders, poets and artists of that period. They include Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston (who is being re-discovered), Marcus Garvey, Louis Armstrong and just the thousand others who lived and flourished during one of the most intense and creative time in American history. I read those books with intensity and with burning anger at the discrimination they faced and fought. Many of them began in the Caribbean and moved to Harlem.
So we walked down Martin Luther King Jr Blvd and then along Malcolm X Blvd. It seems the area is going through a gentrification and things are being fixed and everything looks beautiful. It is like stepping back into time. I am not too sure I could live there just because it is so far from NYU but it sure is a beautiful place.
The realtor I met finally put me at ease and I was able to feel a lot better about finding a place. As none of you know. I originally had hoped to find something in and around Chinatown. Then I thought about Brooklyn and saw a really interesting place in Hell's Kitchen (made famous by the comic hero Daredevil). Ok Hell's Kitchen was famous before that! But I only knew about it from DD. Err, back to what I was saying. I thought about all the places around NYU because as you know most places around a university are usually student ghettos...Everywhere except NYC. It turns out people would pay more to live around there due to the bars and restaurants (and squalor) than live in the more affluent areas of Upper East and West side. As strange luck would have it, it is less expensive to find a place in the Upper East Side than around NYU. Plus the places there are more modern and tend to be bigger.
I am looking for a Studio but if a one bedroom comes along in my price range then, hell yes! Tama said that I could probably get a studio in the 700 Sq ft. range. Which is better than by NYU where you run the risk of something around 300 sq. ft. or the size of a dorm room. I did have a few special requests. Mostly to have a decent size kitchen and to be facing West so I can watch the sun set over the huge skyscraper next to me...
Yesterday I went to see a place in Brooklyn. It is about 4 stops from NYU and would take me about 15 minutes to get from the station to NYU...But I just did not like it. The place was huge and had a big modern kitchen and everything was renovated but for the price, I figured I may as well be in Manhattan itself.
My adviser suggested a friend of his who was a realtor here in NYC and after my mixed experience with the 3 that I met (somewhat positive- but mostly weirded out) I decided to call her and see what she could do for me. We met up in Harlem. It was something to me. When I was doing my History undergrad, I took a course on 'Harlem and The Black World'. It was a great course and introduced me to not only the Harlem Renaissance but also to writers, leaders, poets and artists of that period. They include Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston (who is being re-discovered), Marcus Garvey, Louis Armstrong and just the thousand others who lived and flourished during one of the most intense and creative time in American history. I read those books with intensity and with burning anger at the discrimination they faced and fought. Many of them began in the Caribbean and moved to Harlem.
So we walked down Martin Luther King Jr Blvd and then along Malcolm X Blvd. It seems the area is going through a gentrification and things are being fixed and everything looks beautiful. It is like stepping back into time. I am not too sure I could live there just because it is so far from NYU but it sure is a beautiful place.
The realtor I met finally put me at ease and I was able to feel a lot better about finding a place. As none of you know. I originally had hoped to find something in and around Chinatown. Then I thought about Brooklyn and saw a really interesting place in Hell's Kitchen (made famous by the comic hero Daredevil). Ok Hell's Kitchen was famous before that! But I only knew about it from DD. Err, back to what I was saying. I thought about all the places around NYU because as you know most places around a university are usually student ghettos...Everywhere except NYC. It turns out people would pay more to live around there due to the bars and restaurants (and squalor) than live in the more affluent areas of Upper East and West side. As strange luck would have it, it is less expensive to find a place in the Upper East Side than around NYU. Plus the places there are more modern and tend to be bigger.
I am looking for a Studio but if a one bedroom comes along in my price range then, hell yes! Tama said that I could probably get a studio in the 700 Sq ft. range. Which is better than by NYU where you run the risk of something around 300 sq. ft. or the size of a dorm room. I did have a few special requests. Mostly to have a decent size kitchen and to be facing West so I can watch the sun set over the huge skyscraper next to me...
Yesterday I went to see a place in Brooklyn. It is about 4 stops from NYU and would take me about 15 minutes to get from the station to NYU...But I just did not like it. The place was huge and had a big modern kitchen and everything was renovated but for the price, I figured I may as well be in Manhattan itself.