Two Californians making a leap of faith and moving to the Big Apple.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

First Days

We just got back from our first few days in NYC. I'm happy to report, the odds of this whole crazy plan being a Very Bad Idea are lower and lower all the time. Or rather, I'm loving this idea more and more as we go.

A few random observations about the city:

* Rent - Yep, rent is gonna be higher. As with most things in life, doing your homework helps. Most people I talked to initially said, "Oh, check Craigslist for apartments!" This I immediately translated to "Check Housingmaps for apartments!" (housingmaps being a mashup of craigslist and google maps). But one very noticeable fact, even noticeable from the opposite coast, is that CL is really full of bogus offers and sketchy advertisements. I hesitate to use the term "fraud," but a lot of the ads seem like that is what they must be. And in a couple cases, things that I saw online listed on CL were off by 20% from the price if you showed up in person. The brokers and listing agents really seem to be more interested in getting you to call them or set foot in their buildings, karma be damned.

As far as housing sites that are more usable (and maybe haven't gotten the swarms of sketchy listings yet), I've been enjoying StreetEasy, which has great search tools and RentHop which has stricter requirements to get things listed and provides an estimate of the quality of the listing.

All told though, rent is not so insane. I'm pretty sure that wherever we wind up in the next couple months will be less than our current rent + savings on not keeping two cars to get two people around SoCal. It's estimated that the average car in the US is costing its owners ~$600 per year. I don't think we're at quite that level, but that's only because one of them is paid off.

* Food - Yep, food is good. Everywhere that we checked about ahead of time online (reading reviews on Yelp and Urbanspoon and the like) was quite good. I'd say on average that the food that we've had over the past few days was at least as good as most of our favorite haunts, the sorts of places that we've dug up in San Diego over the past four years. I don't quite believe the people who have told us that "All food in New York is better than any food anywhere else," but it is not the biggest exaggeration ever. So far I'm particularly impressed with pasta dishes. I'm quite sure that 2 of the 5 best pasta dinners I've ever had have been in the last couple days. I was particularly fond of dinner at Mercato in Hell's Kitchen, but Aroma was magnificent as well.

* Transportation- Yep, the subways are great, and cabbies are a little disturbing. I really wouldn't want to drive in the city regularly. Much as we'll miss our cars, it just isn't nearly worth it. We walked quite a bit (in a good way), and used the subway for everything except our trips to / from the airport. Totally doable within Manhattan, and our brief excursion out to Brooklyn worked great via subway too. The heat did point out one thing: under ground temperatures vary dramatically. The subway stations are not climate controlled, although the train cars themselves have AC. Wait times for the trains are pretty small in general. I remember seeing that a train was going to be 6 minutes and thinking that it was a horrible failure of the system, and then laughing to myself: the train in SD that I would most love to take, from near my apartment to downtown, runs every 90 minutes or so, until 9pm. The difference in usability is stunning, to say the least.

* The sights - Yep, Times Square, Central Park, and the Statue of Liberty are pretty amazing, in their own different ways. There's a LOT that I want to do, and I'm sure far more that I haven't realized I want to do yet.

* Parks- Public spaces are so much more interesting when they are populated. I'm deeply impressed.

* Music - When last I was in Europe, the music that I noticed most often when I was out in public was old 70s/80s/disco/dance, some ABBA remixes, that sort of thing. On the West Coast I notice a lot of poppy stuff, hip-hop, and cheesy early 90s alternative. In NYC, I noticed a LOT of stuff that I regard as modern, interesting, and good: in just the time that I was in the city and sitting still long enough to notice, I heard music from The National, Passion Pit, Girls, Dodos, Surfer Blood, The Flaming Lips, and a handful of others I can't remember at the moment. I don't know who's doing the playlist programming for the city, but I like their style.

And then the one that was most surprising for me:

* NYPD - I've always been mindful of authority, but I've never really "liked" cops. I think this is because most of my interactions with them are the occasional speeding ticket, I rarely really see them out and about in ways that I don't feel are predatory. But that really wasn't the case with New York's Finest. There were NYPD officers stationed around a lot of heavily populated areas. It's probably because of their role in popular culture, but for some reason it felt deeply reassuring, and triggered a reaction in me very similar to my reaction seeing the US armed forces troops in uniform: pride, gratitude, respect. So far when I stumble across an officer of the NYPD, my gut reaction is to smile, grin, and barely hold back from going in for a handshake and a "Thanks!" Not something I predicted.

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