Hated Despite of Great Qualities, Part 2

This is a continuation of something I started ages ago, back when Meg and I were thinking of moving to a new apartment. We decided not to, but our decision has now been rendered moot because our landlords, who live below us, have decided to commence the renovation they've been threatening for a while.

They dropped the r-bomb on Thursday. We have to find a new place by November 1, or maybe December 1, they're equivocating. The point is: we have to find a new place. But back to the story from before:

...So imagine, if you will, Meg and me ensconced on two barstools at this bait-and-tackle-y place in Red Hook. We ordered hefeweizens with a twist of lemon; they were delicious. The bar had invested heavily in the thrift-store-furniture and taxidermied-animal-heads lines of kitsch, but with likeable results. The bartender, as he washed and dried glasses and moved up and down his aisle of motion, possessed a certain quiet gravitas. The woman seated at one end of the bar seemed to know the man at the other; a guy two stools down from Meg, or so, scribbled in a notebook. Being in there was like heaving a sigh of relief, only it was sad relief, because the bar reminded us of Portland, and because the house-hunting had made us both a little sour on New York.

So, Red Hook: Van Brunt is a thoruoghly likeable street. More than just likeable. It has the right inftastructure to support main-street perfection. It is a street of which Jane Jacobs would approve, and I've no doubt that it will keep getting busier and more popular as the years go by. Still, one walks for twenty long-feeling minutes from the nearest subway, crosses a very large highway in the process, and arrives, in our case, at a building without qualities where the apartment in question is only fifty dollars a month cheaper than the place we're in now.

In the bar, our talk turns to New York City and all the things that it is and isn't.

In my experience, New York isn't an easy place to take for granted. I mean that living here is an active pursuit. New York is like a manic lover: it spits in your eye regularly enough that you never stop thinking about leaving it, and it says or does the perfect thing often enough that you are always re-telling yourself that life would be flat and dull without it.

Living here is such an odd mix of easy and not-easy.

Easy: I don't need to own a car. I am at the center of a web of the best transportation system I have ever known. I can get everything I need by just making a short walk from my house. I can get anything I want by making just a short walk from the place where I work. Work is a simple half-hour train ride from here; I can drink my morning coffee and read a novel the whole way there. Repeat in the evenings for home. I regularly run into people I know on the street. Everywhere I go, there are pedestrians. I seldom feel unsafe. Street life entertains me to no end.

Not easy: I spend about 40% of my take-home income in rent. This entitles me to live in a pleasant but tiny apartment where I enjoy an uncomforatble relationship with the landlords who live below. Luckily I really like my roommate situation, because living alone is not a financial option for me. That seems pretty un-American, given that I work a full-time job with a decent salary. New York City levies special taxes for the privilege of living here. And is *is* a privilege, I think, at least I truly enjoy it most of the time, but sometimes that enjoyment runs sour as fast and as nastily as an afternoon blood-sugar crash. New York City never lets you forget that some people have more money than you ever will. And that a lot of people have less money than you expect to ever have to make do without. And it never lets you forget that you give up some things that a lot of people take for granted, in exchange for what you do get. Like yards. Like front porches. Like enough space to entertain your friends. Like the kind of "hey hey, the gang's all here" mentality that can only prevail in places where the social and recreational options aren't unlimited. New York energizes you when you're in a good mood, but it can frazzle your nerves when you're in a bad one: there's always something you're not doing, not taking advantage of. Some friend who lives just a few miles away that you're not seeing because you can't cope with the subway again right now, because you're in a deadlock about who will go to whose neighborhood. New York is the ultimate humbling experience, as you're never far from someone smarter, younger, more successful or more influential than you. Also, while we're ranting, it can be weirdly hard to meet people here. It's one of those odd "water, water everywhere..." feelings -- eight million people, but you wish you had more friends or knew more eligible bachelors or -- why is this? Everyone's so damn busy all the time, or something. You meet someone once, there's no guarantee you'll "see them around," and that reminds me there are about five people I'm trying to re-connect with, whom I daily tell myself to call, and then am too tired or tapped-out to. People are dispersed enough that you really have to fight to see everyone.

That's a partial list. I love it here, but it's not the kind of love that can proceed on auto-pilot. There are too many bumps in the road.

So every morning since Friday, I wake up. I look at the nice brown color that I painted the walls in my room (it's called "Wilmington Tan," but my original idea was "Cocoa" and I now like to call it "Nutter Butter"), and think: fuck. I painted these walls. You know what painting walls is a symbol of? Wanting to feel settled down. And then I think: I don't want to move. I don't want to paint other walls. I don't want to have to move to a different neighborhood because I can't afford anything else in this one. I shake my mental fist in the air and say Damn you, New York! And later I go out on the street, and fall in love all over again.