Tag: #Apartments

  • The Act of Painting

    If you want to experience a hidden New York treasure, then you should go to the basement paint department at the Manhattan Home Depot on 23rd Street. At that location, you can watch New York couples implode as they try and pick out paint colors. It is a graveyard of relationships.

    The wife and I prefer the Home Depot in Yonkers. Less couple strife, and more space. We were there over the long weekend to pick the colors for our living room. We generally know the colors we want to use, now it’s just a matter of getting the correct complementary hues. And we did it all without an argument.

    Points for us.

    Which means that when school is out, I’m going to start painting the living room. But before the painting, there will be patching holes in the walls. And then cleaning. It’s a small apartment, so half the living room is going to have to temporarily hold all the stuff while I paint the open half, then a swap, and I paint the other half. Oh, and I have to paint the ceiling as well. I think I can get the kid to help… I think…

    I’m saying all of this because I have to psych myself up to it. It feels like a shit ton of work, because it is a shit ton of work. Will I feel better when the job is done? Most likely. Pretty much. Yes, yes, I will feel immensely better when the job is completed.

    Not that the whole job is a chore. The actual painting is enjoyable. The repetitive motion, the up and down, back and forth. Music helps, but the sound of the paint rolling on the wall has a satisfying quality to it. And in the end, painting is making a change, and change can be fun.

  • My Little Apartment

    I just might spend my whole life in this little Harlem apartment. As funny as that sounds, this is a new thought for me. I have lived in this apartment for fourteen years, and I have always thought that one day, we would leave this place for another apartment, or miracle of miracles, a house. This apartment was always seen as a stepping stone to something else.

    But you know what… after fourteen years, I think I am coming around to see that this apartment is my home, and I will always have this place as my home.

    Sure, it’s tiny. In fact, it is very tiny. Two little bedrooms, a small kitchen, an even smaller bathroom. Two adults, a kid and a dog live in its confines, and if you add one more adult in the space, the apartment feels over-crowed, like it will explode, but what you are actually feeling is the anxiety of people being on top of each other.

    Yet, we are next to two subway lines. And a park. And a library. The kid’s school is walking distance and it’s a pretty good school. We like our neighbors in the building, and a police and fire station aren’t too far away either. We have made the apartment cozy, and each person has their own space to relax.

    Just wish we got more sunlight in the place.

    Maybe we might get a place upstate. Maybe a small farm house with a root cellar, and a place we can put all of our books. Maybe have enough land for the dog to run, and an old fieldstone wall cutting through the property. Maybe, one day.

    But in my little apartment, we have marked the kid’s height on the wall. The apartment is near a grocery store, and a place where me and the wife can get a dozen oysters on the half shell, and a pretty decent dirty martini.

    Maybe I will stay her forever after all.

  • Cleaning Lesson

    We did a big clean this weekend. We cleaned the apartment; every room except the study. My task was to clean the bathroom and the kitchen. My wife took on the role of cleaning our daughter’s room.

    We always debate cleaning the kid’s room. Such as, should we do it and get it in a proper order, or should we take the time to show the kid how to clean her room, then have her do it. Now, she is six, so there is a limit of organizational skill that she has, so we can only expect so much. What we have continued to choose to do is give her room a big clean every month, and then the rest of the time, ask the kid to clean it knowing that she is just shoving things under her bed.

    Now, we have a small apartment, and I think most of you know that, so there is only so much room for so much stuff. If something comes into the apartment, then something has to move out. This is especially true for the kid. We know that starting with October, she will start acquiring things; Halloween things, Thanksgiving things, Christmas things, and then birthday things. And all of these things need to have a place in her room. It’s purge and replace.

    The lesson here is that we need to live with less things. That is what we need to teach the kid, right? Or is the lesson that everything should have a place to live? Or is the lesson we need a bigger place to live?

    Either way, apartment is clean. Well, except for the study.

  • Pondering the Change Out My Window

    The lot behind our apartment is in full blow construction now. There are workers swarming all over the lot, laying rebar, pouring cement, sawing things, and having equipment dropped off. It starts right at 7am, and goes until 6pm some days. We used to have our windows, but now it is difficult to do because of the noise, and the dust being kicked up. Sadly, we know that as we live in the third floor, that this 10-story condo tower will block out the sun and even the sky from our windows. We fear that we will be looking at brick walls out of all of our widows in a year.

    Yesterday, I found myself watching all the construction from my window. There was a sort of rhythm, steady movement of people go to and coming from different areas of the worked site. Guys spray painting lines and numbers on the recently poured cement floors, people cutting 2×4’s, people removing bags of trash, and one guy with plans walking around the site.

    I am witnessing the slow destruction of my window to the world. Sometimes I feeling like I should be more upset about this, my wife certainly is, but it just feels like this is the awfulness that is progress, or capitalism. I still haven’t decided. Maybe it is a metaphor for all the change that is happening in the world. Maybe it has no meaning. Either way, it is happening.

  • Coronavirus: Moving Out of NYC

    Coronavirus: Moving Out of NYC

    I know that I am not the first person to talk about this, but it does need to be repeated; the amount of people moving out of New York City is enormous, and just might have a terrible effect on the City.

    Today, another neighbor moved out of our building. Yesterday, a neighbor also moved out. Last month, the first tenant in left on the top floor. There are only twelve apartments in our building, so we are 25% vacant. In better times, an empty apartment here would be taken in a matter of days. As soon as one person moved out, the place would be cleaned and painted, and another person would be moving in.

    Our building isn’t alone. In our neighborhood, I counted two moving trucks Sunday, three on Saturday, and another three on Friday. On July 3rd, the first weekend of the month, I counted six moving trucks. Now, I do this count when I walk the dog in the morning, so I have no idea how many other people are moving themselves over the course of the day. And that’s only in a five-block radius around our place.

    When it comes to this, what has been making the news around here is the amount of rich and middles class families that are leaving New York for the suburbs and upstate. What has not been making the news is all the young people, who moved here to start their careers and live their dreams ,are moving back home. I know its kids moving out because the moving vans aren’t big, and the furniture they are throwing out is crappy.

    If all of these young people leave, and most of them are in the theatre arts, it will have, I fear, a dreadful impact. Yes, most actors wait tables, but I was a temp when I started here. I did dull filing and office work. Where are the temps going to come from to do that when the City does open up? They are also the diehard audience members, and they also are the new ideas. This virus might cause a huge creativity hole for a generation of theatre.