Now that things are more or less settled with Milk, my focus now is on finding an apartment to move to so that I don't have to commute from West Orange anymore. I realized I can't do night shifts while I'm still living here because they go until midnight (sometimes later), and the bus doesn't run that late. I can't really do weekends either, for that matter, because the bus schedule on the weekends is kind of funky and it doesn't come around to my stop at all, so if I don't have someone who can drive me to the next stop (which is a couple of miles away), then it complicates things, especially when I'm coming back home. I did have my first night shift last Saturday, but I was only able to do it because my cousin, who lives in the city, let me stay the night at her apartment.
On Sunday, my cousin insisted on helping me hunt for apartments, so we spent some time browsing on Craigslist. I had sort of ruled out Craigslist as a resource because there are a lot of shady postings, especially for apartments, but she convinced me that it was worth looking into anyway. Just given the sheer volume of listings being posted every day, I was sure to find something legitimate. So I responded to some of the more attractive looking options, mostly in the Brooklyn area, and then my cousin and I went out to enjoy some time together before she had to meet up with a friend.
While I was browsing Craigslist, my cousin also called a few of her friends to see if they knew of any people who needed roommates or landlords looking to rent. At some point, she got the idea to call a friend of hers who lives in the city and was going to be away for a week in Florida. As it turned out, she was leaving the next day and needed someone to look after her cats, so she agreed to let me stay at her apartment for free as long as I was willing to take care of her cats. The arrangement would only be for a week, but I figured it would be easier to apartment hunt from the city so that I wouldn't have to spend $15 round trip and an hour and a half in transit in order to see a place, so my cousin and I headed over to her apartment so we could discuss what needed to be done.
Now, before I go any further, I want to be fair and point out that the woman only had about a half-hour's notice before we arrived. Also, I'm no stranger to cluttered spaces; I'm good about picking up after myself in public areas, but my room's usually a mess. So I sort of feel like I can't really judge... but even so, there's a difference between clutter and months-old hoarders status chaos. And this place was definitely on the latter end of the spectrum. You could hardly see the floor or any of the table surfaces because they were drowning in papers, and although she may be the one paying the rent, it's her cats who really own the apartment. Their stuff was everywhere, and they truly had free range of the apartment--they were climbing all over the tables, couches, even the kitchen tile. What's worse, since it's been cold out, she hadn't been opening her window at all so the place was very stuffy, and after about an hour of being in there, I discovered that I do, in fact, have a cat allergy... I just have to be in an extreme cat environment to feel it. Anyway, after an awkward experience of trying to get the internet to work (I guess she didn't know what wifi was, and she didn't know her password so she called her internet provider, which only doubled the confusion), and after getting to the point where I literally couldn't breathe, I told the woman as politely that I could that I didn't think it was going to work out, and left.
My poor cousin was so apologetic when I met back up with her... she explained that people who live in the city don't really go to each other's places when they want to hang out, instead they usually find a place to meet at. So you could know a person for years without knowing what their living space looked like, and she'd had no idea what she was bringing me into. I didn't mind it though; it may not have been the greatest living situation, but it definitely gave me a story! Besides, if it wasn't for her, I may have never looked into Craigslist, which has actually given me some viable options.
The next place I looked at was actually an apartment I'd found on Craigslist. It was in Park Slope, and it was only $800 including utilities. The guy who lived there seemed nice, and he had a lot of books and artsy decor (which is always a good sign to me), but the place was very old and creaky and kind of grimy. It actually wasn't unlike a lot of older houses I've seen in SLO that friends have lived at, and I suppose the griminess is just something you get used to, but the bathroom was pretty awful, and the mattress in the bedroom that was being rented out would definitely have had to be replaced because it was pretty nasty. It did have roof access though, which I'm a huge sucker for, and at first I was tempted to just take it, but then the guy told me he could only accept cash because he had filed the extra rooms as tax write-offs as so he technically wasn't supposed to have roommates, and therefore couldn't have a paper trail of renting out the rooms. So, I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean that I would have been taken advantage of in any way, but I felt a little weird about being forced into a payment method that would leave me with no record. The more I thought about it, the more I realized really the only reason I'd been inclined to take it in the first place was because I felt a sense of pressure to say yes to the first acceptable option because finding a room here is so hard, and that just didn't seem like a good enough reason after weighing the other factors.
After that, I went to see a residence hall that was listed on a sheet that one of the staff at the Webster Apartments gave me. Have I mentioned Webster? I know I've told people about it, but I'm not sure I wrote about it on here. Webster is an old establishment in Chelsea from the early 1900s that houses young women (only women) who are here to start their lives in New York. They require proof of a job or internship, and they take pride in being old fashioned. And I mean seriously old fashioned. They don't correspond through email because they don't use computers (no joke, they use typewriters). And the staff there is very rude; this was mentioned in the Yelp reviews that my mom found about the place online... apparently you're not allowed to have male visitors in the building at all, and they're very strict about noise and cleanliness. So anyway, I checked the place out and I'm still kind of undecided about it. If it wasn't in such a superb location, I'd probably rule it out entirely because the rooms are pretty crappy, the staff is super grumpy, and it's expensive. But anyway, you have to apply to get in, and I haven't done that yet, and the last time I went in to check out the rooms, the lady gave me a list of similar places that I could look into.
SO. There was one place that was listed that had private rooms and was $900 a month or something like that (about $300 cheaper than Webster) so I decided to check it out. It's called 3E 3 Dorm (because it's on east 3rd st. and 3rd avenue), and I called about a week ago to get some information. The woman I talked to on the phone there was also very rude and told me she wouldn't give me any information unless I came by in person (she wouldn't even tell me if there were any rooms available or not). So after seeing the apartment in Park Slope, I took a trip down to lower Manhattan to check it out. I sort of knew as soon as I got out of the subway that this was not a neighborhood I wanted to live in. There was one really nice coffee shop in the couple of blocks that I walked, but other than that, everything looked sort of industrial and decrepit, and there were a lot of shady looking buildings. Even so, I decided I still wanted to see the place, just in case, so I found 3rd st. and walked down until 4th avenue, and then back up. Actually I had to go back and forth between 2nd and 4th avenue a couple of times because the place was not clearly marked at all, and none of the people I asked on the street had ever even heard of the place. Finally I found the building that was at the address that the website listed... and it was a residence hall, but it was under a different name, it was locked, and it definitely looked abandoned. So I'm still not sure what to make of that. The weirdest part is that I did talk to someone on the phone, so it does exist... and I got the address from the same website as the phone number. So yeah. Strange.
This last Wednesday, I went to see a different apartment in Park Slope (also from Craigslist). One of the girls living there is going to be away for an internship until August, so she needs to sublet from someone, and that timeline works perfectly for me (I figure it's better to have something temporary until I get a better idea of my situation here). The neighborhood again wasn't great; it's about a block or so from a freeway overpass, and all of the surrounding buildings are garages or hardware/car parts shops. There aren't really any restaurants or cafes around, and while it doesn't have a dangerous vibe or anything, it's not exactly the kind of place you'd care to walk around in. But the apartment itself was absolutely lovely. The walls were all painted beautiful saturated colors, there's a fireplace, the living room and kitchen are modest but roomy, the bathroom is surprisingly nice, the bedroom is cute and very large compared to the other places I've seen, and it's $850 a month including utilities. Also the girl who showed me the place was really sweet. You know when you meet someone and they just sort of seem familiar somehow? Not like you've met them before, but you're just comfortable around them immediately and you feel like you could easily be friends? I felt that way with her. Unfortunately she's the one who I'd be subletting from, so she wouldn't be there, but I figure if her roommate is anything like her, then maybe we could get along too. Anyway, the worry was that the roommate had a friend who was going to come by to see the place, and obviously if she was interested, then priority would go to her, but I got a text from the girl who showed me the place today saying that it didn't look like she was, and I'm supposed to get an email soon from the roommate so we can arrange to meet. So hopefully that works out.
So that's it on the apartment hunting front. Meanwhile, I'm having sort of a love/hate relationship with my experience at Milk. On the one hand, I know it's a fantastic first step, and I'm excited to be working at such a well regarded studio, but I'd be lying if I said the work was much fun. I mean, it's not terrible, but it's like an equal mix of janitorial work and moving heavy stuff. My night shift last Saturday consisted, among other things, of taking everything off a giant 12 foot shelf rack in the basement, taking the shelves apart, reconstructing the shelves upstairs, building a new set of shelves in the basement, and putting everything back on the new shelves in the basement. And I have to be on my feet constantly. In fact, I'm in desperate need of new shoes because I've been wearing my boots, which are comfortable for a normal day, but they have no arch support and I've been on my feet so much that they've actually gotten bruised and swollen. Sometimes it gets so bad that I feel like I'm going to faint, but I feel like I can't be seen sitting or taking a break, so I sneak off to the bathroom and sit on the toilet with my feet elevated until I feel like I can stand again. To be honest, I'm sort of impressed with myself that I'm surviving this actually... and I know that sounds pathetic, but honestly, I'm perfectly content with getting up at 2 in the afternoon and sitting on my ass all day. The fact that I'm willingly dragging myself out of bed at 4 in the morning to go do physically demanding stuff all day is a testament to my willpower. And the weirdest part is that I don't hate it. Not really. I'm too excited, or too hopeful at least to let this get to me yet. Also I know enough to know that I can't afford to give up on this when it gets tough--you have to put in your time doing menial labor before you can get to the position where you can tell other people to do it for you, that's just how it works.
On a different subject, a lot of people have been coming out lately to tell me that they admire/appreciate me. Four people have messaged me in the last month just to tell me that they think I'm great, and to give me encouragement, and I'm not gonna lie, it makes me feel really good about myself. I've always been sort of insecure about how people really feel about me... not as in I think that people dislike me, I'm just always afraid that I don't leave an impression or something. Apparently that's not the case. Also, the more people I talk to about Milk, the more I realize how big this actually is. I mean, I'm only an intern, and it's not like I have a steady position or anything, but several people have told me that Milk is one of the most prestigious studios in the country, and that it's where photographers take clients if they want to impress them, so it's kind of amazing that I'm working with them at all. Even if this internship doesn't open any doors directly, it'll still be a stellar line on a résumé. To be honest, even though my job is hard and I'm lonely and I miss Barry and it's cold and all of that... I still have a pretty optimistic outlook on my future right now. I feel like I'm going places.
Well, I suppose that's it for now. Sorry for the insanely long post. Until next time.
