Master Plan

Buying a plane ticket to New York was easy – finding a place to go when I land less so. I always told friends I would sleep under a bridge and sell my body for food money at first (one must establish one’s rep before climbing up the ladders), but someone reminded me there’s usually water under bridges, and I figured I would drown. With 3 weeks left to take-off, I turn to my good friend Internet.

I decided I would sublease a place for a few weeks while I went and saw potential apartments in person, but dealing non-locally on Craigslist is a bad idea, as Jeff reminded me. If I was going to give someone money for nothing tangible back, I’d rather do it in a fun way, like at a strip club, or gambling. Instead, I used AirBnB.com, a website that lets people rent out temporary spare rooms, hostels, whole apartments, vans by the river, etc for travelers, but the company keeps the money until you’ve checked in, which prevents scamming. It seemed touchy-feely from the advertisement, but hey, New York is all about being aggressively friendly and public with yourself, right?

The issue with temporary places is there seem to be A) really cheap places where you stay with a whole bunch of other people in cramped hostel-like quarters, many of whom I suspect fart, and B) expensive places to yourself that charge like double what normal rent would be for that time. I figured “fuck it,” because that’s how you get things done damn it, and sublet a nice-looking apartment for 2 weeks that is the 3rd floor of a townhome in Hamilton Heights.

For those of you who don’t know the areas (like me before Wikipedia told me 5 minutes ago), it’s an area of Manhattan in West Harlem that is traditionally Dominicanos (like Jay-Z says in his song), but currently gentrifying, especially with teachers and students since Columbia is opening a campus there. I don’t know if this makes me part of the problem but when I hear the word “gentrification” I always think of old people, like “geriatric,” and I’m pretty young, so I figure it’s okay.

As for the actual permanent apartment in NYC, Jeff and I are looking at Brooklyn, because that’s where all the cool writers brag they are from and also Captain America is from there, and Astoria in Queens, mostly because the Ataris have a song about it. People look at me weird when I tell them this, and I think people don’t get me. Jeff is just a roommate, by the way, in case you’re considering offering me a transaction that would provide me with more money to use for nothing tangible back, wink wink, nudge nudge. I’m speaking of course of scamming people on Craigslist.