Apartment Hunting

Apartments along Central Park.

I received a letter from Columbia University's housing office saying, "Congratulations on your graduation! You must vacate your room by June 30." Now I am on the hunt for a new place to live. It was a sad day, however, when I discovered that The Law of New York Prices was not only true, but also applies to everything, not just restaurants and foodstuffs. "Oh, you found a decent studio apartment in the Meatpacking District, but it's $4,295 a month? What did you expect? It's the New York price." "You have to pay an extra 3.5% in income tax on top of federal and state taxes? Well, this is New York City."

My first cousin, once removed, here in New York City.
Note the fine base moulding that lines an also fine and even wood floor – things you will not find in any affordable Manhattan apartment.

I'm not asking for much in an apartment. My room now is a 130 square foot cell on 169th Street (literally off the map on many maps of Manhattan), with linoleum tiled flooring for that quaint, 1960s bathroom-style look and feel. For my new place, I'd prefer something larger than 200 square feet, but I don't necessarily need the size and space. I don't need a concierge or stainless steel appliances. Large windows would be nice, but not required. What I do ask for, however, is even flooring and baseboards that don't look like rubber that was pulled off a tire and glued on the wall by a 5-year-old, and I would prefer to live below 110th Street. I don't even need a full kitchen or closet space. In Los Angeles, I allowed myself $900 a month for rent but never paid more than $600. In New York, with a budget of $1,750 a month, you'd think I'd be set. You'd think.

Ugly Betty, season 3, episode 1 – "The Manhattan Project"

Many people might imagine the apartment hunt in New York City as something akin to what is shown in ABC's cancelled television series, Ugly Betty. In the beginning of the show's third season, Betty decides to move from Queens to Manhattan, and she and her family find themselves traumatized by how supposedly ghetto her Manhattan apartment is (please refer to the above picture). But in reality, Betty's apartment is possibly one of the best catches and one of the more expensive options anyone can run across in Manhattan. Here's the breakdown:

Size: Betty's apartment is at least 450 square feet in size on the top floor of a pre-war walk-up. That alone should cost her a baseline of $800 a month.

Location: Rooftop views from her apartment reveal that she is no further than 8 blocks from the Empire State Building in midtown. Assuming she lives on the West side, that would add another $1,000 a month to her rent.

Windows: With oversized windows on both ends of her apartment, plus windows on the third wall, Betty's apartment can boast of an abundance of natural light. Add $200 a month.

Quality and Details: Her wooden floor panels look surprisingly high in quality and lie flush against each other. Include exposed brick, colorful walls, and decent baseboard moulding, and you have another $100 a month.

Kitchen: With all necessary appliances (including a stove-top oven) and a pass-through counter, add another $200 a month.

Amenities: This apartment might be dubbed a luxury apartment ("luxury apartment," in Manhattan, meaning "adequately livable space"). Building amenities include roof access, a functioning stairwell, public transportation within 10 blocks, a fire escape, and a front door with a lock. If that's not luxury, I don't know what is. Add $100 a month.

Bathroom: The only downside is the strange placement of the bathtub, which may or may not warrant the apartment a "studio + full bath" label; subtract $200 a month.

Broker's Fee: It is a custom of New Yorkers and people moving to the city to request the services of a certain type of human called an "apartment broker" when securing real estate. The cost of such a service generally runs at 10-15% of first year's rent. Add $220.

The effective grand total for Betty's Manhattan luxury apartment with broker's fee comes to about $2,420 a month. Working as an assistant for a magazine editor, Betty no doubt earns much less than $50,000 a year in salary, which, after federal, New York State, and New York City Resident income taxes, comes out to a net total of roughly $38,000 a year. That means Betty can afford her apartment if she spends over 75% of her net income on rent, assuming, again conservatively, that she does earn as much as $50K a year. After paying for utilities and MTA cards, and assuming she eats food to survive, Betty should be well in debt by every year's end. But television doesn't teach this to kids, does it? Television lies and tells us that people like Betty can feasibly scrape by and do well in New York City living in a 450 square foot studio in midtown Manhattan.

Home is where the cheap rent is. Most people, after realizing that Manhattan is an unreasonably expensive place to live, concoct different schemes to cope with their rent. Some build T-walls, turning their one bedroom apartment into a three bedroom apartment. Some rent their couches to backpacking sojourners and vagabonds for $50 a night. Some decide to live in the subway. Others move to Queens. Others move back to California.

One more picture of my first cousin, once removed, only because she is adorable.

New York Prices

Paella Valenciana from TORO, a Spanish tapas restaurant in Boston's South End.

One of Spain's greatest legacies to the world in all of history is the tapas restaurant. Called by some as "small plates," tapas dishes most closely resemble appetizers, h'orderves, or gourmet bar food – petite and shareable portions of what are usually finely executed culinary creations. In recent years, several modern cuisine and fusion restaurants have followed suit in serving menus in the tapas tradition. Traif, the restaurant I mentioned late last month, can be considered one of these avant-garde, new American, tapas-styled restaurants.

I like Korean food. I like small plates. Together, they make the best dinner you will ever have in your life. Thanks to modern Korean fusion, we now have some of the most innovative foods invented thus far in the 21st century, including the bulgogi Korean beef slider and the kalbi short rib taco. In the West Los Angeles area, locked in the heart of downtown Culver City, was my all-time favorite restaurant, Gyenari. The best things in life may not be free, but they will surely have coupons or happy hour prices, and Gyenari's happy hour dishes were arguably the best spent $13 I ever paid for a meal.

We as humans have lost many a great thing to well-intended but unwarranted and imprudent reinvention. Take the new Penn Station, for example, on West 34th Street. What was once a grand architectural marvel is now an unsightly, haphazard mesh of walls, train tracks, and escalators, all thanks to the reinvention of the 1960s – a decade of freedom and love that also happened to be the decade that made everything look ugly. A tragedy to the world, Gyenari earlier this year also decided to reinvent itself into a more expensive version of the original, now called Moko, without its beloved bulgogi sliders or kimchi fried rice.

Los Angeles is the Korean food capital of the nation, and it has been difficult, to say the least, finding anthing comparable in New York City. Imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered Danji – a small restaurant on West 52nd Street, serving the same tapas-style Korean fusion food that Gyenari once did.

Whelk salad and soba, kimchi bacon fried "paella," and pork belly sliders. I don't know what possessed me to take pictures of my food.

Danji's food was lacking in substance, but adequately delicious and of excellent quality. I am not much a food critic; I am, though, a price critic. I couldn't find it in my heart to mention to the white couple sitting next to me that the kimchi and the scallion pancakes they ordered for something like $16 are usually free (though maybe not as fancy) at other Korean restaurants. In comparison? Take a look at a couple select dishes:

GYENARI, Culver City:
Bulgogi Sliders with grilled onions and gouda ... $5
Kimchi Fried Rice with double-fried pork belly and fried egg ... $4

DANJI, New York City:
Bulgogi Filet Mignon Sliders ... $14
Kimchi Bacon Fried "Paella" ... $14 (+$2 with fried egg)

Perhaps I am only mourning the death of Gyenari, but I personally consider these New York prices to be inexcusable, especially for Kimchi fried rice. However, because Danji's meat is all organic, and because not everyone comes from Los Angeles, and considering the cost of atmosphere and presentation, I suppose the prices are acceptable to the average New Yorker and the New York City tourist who know no better. And, I suppose, there is a reason why Gyenari no longer exists.

Danji's business card details, included only because I like its clean look.

"What do you expect? It's New York prices" seems to be the ubiquitous excuse. A tofu soup from BCD Tofu House in Los Angeles costs $8.99; from BCD Tofu House in New York City, $11.99. The one-dollar menu at McDonald's in midtown? $1.69. So here is the lesson of the day, known as The Law of New York City Prices: Everything in New York is 15 to 500% more expensive than it is in Los Angeles. If the summer humidity, trash on the streets, crowds, and city pigeons haven't already ruined your day, then rest assured that New York City prices will. Bring cash accordingly.

The Zero-Calorie Beach

Santa Monica Beach and Peir.

The 1800s marked indeed a major milestone in human history with the advent of margarine – the butter substitute. One hundred years later came a newer butter substitute with a name that both resonated with every happy American household and concealed the fact that no one had any idea what it actually was – I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! In 1999, another concoction, Splenda, took over the United States as the then most revolutionary and most exciting almost-zero-calorie substitute for sugar. These are all artificial imitations the real deal, and, as such, these things I've sworn to never use.

The same rule applies to beaches. New York City suffers from a dearth of sandy ocean shores - a fact which, to any Angeleno, begs perhaps the greatest question regarding the transition to Manhattan – "How am I to maintain a golden tan without the year-round availability of a decent beach within a 20 minute drive?"

New Yorkers, cognisant of their skin-color defecit, have developed over the years three, desperate alternatives to a real, proper beach, known to locals as "Water Taxi Beaches," "Central Park," and "Coney Island." There was a time when these places, like Splenda or margarine, I deemed decidedly unfit to use for any beach-related, substitutionary purpose. But I am only a man, and as a native Angeleno, having withdrawn from the sun for the past 8 months, with progressively brittling bones and paling skin, I needed a fix. So, I did those things which I once thought odd and unacceptable – things which the average city person might do – I lied out under the sun at Central Park and dug my feet into the sand at a Water Taxi Beach.

City people pretending to go to the beach, except really at Central Park on a gloomy day and a water taxi beach on Governors Island.

Sheep Meadow, Central Park: In the city, grass is the new sand. Popular among unfortunate New Yorkers who need a sunny space to tan and play frisbee, Sheep Meadow is a gigantic, public front lawn that is large enough to accommodate hundreds of city people and their friends and family. If you close your eyes, ignore the prickling of the grass beneath you, imagine the sound of an ocean, and pretend that everyone around is sporting swimwear and playing in the water or sand, then Sheep Meadow is really no different from any California beach.

Water Taxi Beaches: Water Taxi Beaches are gigantic, strategically placed sandboxes in New York City. The name itself should be enough to deter any traveler in search of sun and sand. In the city, however, because of the Hipster Paradox, the unappealing suddenly becomes popular, and the three Water Taxi Beaches which surround Manhattan are no exception. With imported sand and plastic palm trees, to the severely visually impaired, these parks might actually pass as real beaches. The only things missing are crashing waves and physical access to ocean water.

Coney Island: Coney Island is a beach-like area along the ocean in the outer edge of Brooklyn. People say that Coney Island in the 1970s was a dangerous place to be, but that the venue had begun major plans for renewal – planning that has lasted for the past 40 years and counting. Its most well-known hidden gems include shards of glass, hypodermic needles, and overweight old men. But don't take my word for it; I've never been and don't intend on visiting any time soon.

In the end, you may end up with a nice tan, but remember that no matter what, none of these activities will ever replace having a real California beach day.