Apartment Woes

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "jenny from ravenclaw" <meboriqua at a...>
> wrote:
> I must vent.  Raul (my sweetie) and I have been living in a studio 
> here in Manhattan for four years now.  We love our neighborhood and
> we like our apartment, but it's just too small for both of us and 
> our cat Lily.  

I'm sure it IS too small for two humans and one cat ... but do you 
know those little apartments on Broadway Terrace near IIRC 193rd 
Street? One bedroom apartments (called 3 rooms by my friends who 
lived there: I HAVE seen smaller kitchens in my life) that are the 
SIZE of bachelors. One time Judy met a woman in the 'super'market who 
had lived in one of them so long that her rent was still $67 a month: 
she and her husband had raised four sons in there 'and one is an 
artist!' quoted Judy, thinking of the space needed for painting. Judy 
said something about there are advantages gained by living so 
tightly, and I thought she meant advantages like learning endurance, 
efficiency, etc, but she MEANT what could be done with the saved 
money, like the big house upstate that this couple had bought for 
holidaymaking and to retire to. 

> We started actively looking for a one bedroom this summer and 
> we cannot find an apartment!  
> Looking for an apartment in NYC is like trying to get into Harvard; 
> the odds are against you.  

I've always thought that finding an apartment in Manhattan is harder 
than getting into Harvard.

Magic helps. Does your sweetie know any santeras who can do an 
apartment-finding spell? 

Despite being a Wiccan, I had a neurotic compulsion not to do any 
apartment-finding magic when I was apartment hunting in Manhattan, 
and also I know from nothing about how to schmier (lit 'smear' fig 
'bribe') supers to tell me when a tenant is about to move out, but 
somehow I found a perfectly good apartment on Park Terrace East 
anyway, just by phoning up all the newspaper ads. I don't and didn't 
know HOW that happened (somehow the super put me second on the list 
of applicants and the guy who was first failed his credit check) but 
that apartment building was co-op'ed around the time I moved to LA.