Wasn't Rome a few adventures back now?
Yeah, yeah it was... Then what the hell is this?
Could it be that we've embarked on another epic journey of self discovery, fraught with new experiences, cultures and the faint smell of financial destitution looming on the horizon?
As a matter of fact, we have. This spring I was accepted into Columbia University's Master's of Architecture program. Turns out Columbia is on the frenetic isle of Manhattan, the heart of the city Rem Koolhaas is so damned obsessed with. And So, Tiffany and I have boxed up our clothes, books, and even my Cervelo, and crash landed on the upper west side at 81st St and Amsterdam Ave. This blog is (optimistically) a way to document our misadventures in Gotham City, organize my thoughts and schoolwork, and, most importantly, to complain about stuff. But seriously, I'm probably going to have posts dedicated to the hard working individuals at Alaska Airlines and Verizon in the coming weeks.
Our New Home (and familiar roommate!)
Somehow back in spring I managed to convince my good friend Danny to casually tilt his [substantial] resume toward New York City in the hopes of coercing another cohort into crashing this town. I don't think he made it a week before Factset, some big wig financial analysis company on Park Ave, managed to seek him out and arrange an interview for a position that was, well, $ati$fying to $ay the lea$t.
And so it was time for the apartment hunt, or as I like to call it: "You have got to be F*cking Kidding me." If you're not familar with the YHGTBFKM process, I'll let you in on a little secret: Apartment brokerage services that have the [non]sensibility to name themselves "Best Apartments," will show you, as a matter of fact, Manhattan's worst apartments. And they'll attempt to charge you several extra months of rent as service fees. And they smell bad. (Well that's not entirely true, but they are smarmy folks) So after we let four brokers waste our time and money galavanting up and down the UWS looking at the same two dungeons that not even this guy would approve of, we figured all hope was lost. And then, miraculously, Tiffany convinced us to "Don't Stop Believin'" and invoked the power of Craigslist on her iPhone, scrolling fortuitously to a "True 2 bedroom, UWS, with XXXposed brick" posted only minutes earlier. We "called Howie," and after a grueling 1.5 hour wait, we had a Manhattan apartment that would foster comments like "Oh, what a perfect little apartment!" instead of "Oh, your only window is in the bathroom?" and "What's with that garbage smell?"
Here are some (now outdated) snaps of the new digs and our sparse Ikea furnishings:
I think I've done enough rambling for now. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes like "Tiffany goes to work for a Starchitect" and "Someday we won't have to steal the internet from our neighbors."
-Kyle
