#1:
My long-time Internet friend Tessa of LiveJournal fame is in NYC for a couple of days and is giving me the immense pleasure of hosting her in my Brooklyn apartment. Which means I had to, you know, actually go home to my Brooklyn apartment for the first time since it got hot. I asked my roommate earlier in the summer if he’d help me install our ginormous window unit, and he informed me that air conditioning is not necessary and that all struggling artists go without it.
So I told him I’d see him in the fall.
But I went home yesterday afternoon to prepare for Tessa’s arrival, dragged the air conditioner out of one of our many closets (because you have many closets in Brooklyn, which is perhaps the only reason to live there next to cheap beer), politely coerced my roommate into helping me lift it into place, and learned that if I kept perfectly still and sat directly in front of it, I wouldn’t sweat.
I also learned that an air conditioner meant to cool a 350 square foot apartment doesn’t cool a 900 square foot apartment. And if I just lived in Manhattan, there’s no way I’d be able to afford a 900 square foot apartment.
Hence.
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Hence your number one reason to never leave Manhattan is because you can only afford a 350 square foot apartment and, therefore, not have to worry about getting a more powerful air conditioner? I hope these reasons aren’t listed according to importance.
Think about it. Sure, you’re paying more for rent in Manhattan, but you make up for it in electricity bills, how many used futons you need to fill the living room, ice cream (since your teeny-tiny refrigerator can’t freeze anything), and how many balls you have to buy to turn your bedroom into a ballpit.
Also, because you have so many fewer square feet, you can fill them with crap much more easily and get on one of those hoarders shows sooner.
WIN.
Also, your wardrobe is never in danger of looking dated, because in order to buy anything new you have to get rid of everything you already have (you can only fit so many cardigans and shoes into the additional storage units some people insist upon using to store things like food in, you know) so you don’t slip up and end up in ill-advised ’05 Tory Burch flats and a faded J.Crew sundress the day you wind up at an event at DVF.
Also, when I moved from Manhattan (I actually had like 650 sq feet, our bedrooms were *huge) to a gigantic, three-floor, 100+-year-old house in Boston and saw the electric bill the first month? Almost punched everyone of my FOUR ROOMMATES.
Starving artists are confused. If they didn’t care about SPACE so much, they could all enjoy air conditioning.
*No one visiting from out of town ever, ever considered them huge, of course. But they WERE.
Kamran loves that I store four of my winter coats at his apartment year-round. One of which, I should mention, I’ve owned for two years and have never worn.
Oh, speaking of Tory Burch, when we were in the Hamptons, I realized five minutes into the trip that I’d forgotten my flip-flops and freaked out. A few hours later, as we were walking back from the beach, we saw a car parked in the parking lot with three pairs of flip-flops abandoned behind it. One of which was Tory Burch. (It was of course not I who first recognized them as hers, obviously.) I considered stealing them for approximately .02 seconds, but I loved the idea that people out there were so trusting too much to mess that up.
My roommate hates that I’m never home, but I love to cite examples like yours in Boston for why I should use Kamran’s free air conditioning all summer long instead of jacking up our electricity bills. So thanks.
What would a starving artist be without his lack-of-AC-induced stench?
We have a window unit in the living room of our 50-year-old house, and you can feel its effects in exactly 4×4 square feet in front of the thing and NOWHERE else! You can’t even feel it in the kitchen, which it is FACING. Hello? *sigh*
I have to do a tunnel sort of thing with fans to get any air into my office at the opposite end of the building. I’m glad you don’t stay there all the time. You’d die.
When my friends and I rented our Hamptons house last weekend, we found that we didn’t need the air conditioning if we just opened up some windows at opposite ends of the house. So I was somehow under the impression that wind miraculously works now. But that’s evidently only true on the beach. There is no wind in Brooklyn. Except on the days my hair actually looks good.
Fans are genius, though. So are tiny air conditioners that you secretly install in your office and don’t tell Tom about until he sees the electricity bill.
There is an ad for central air cooling systems next to this comment box right now. Nice targeting, google.
I’m just here to say that my old deadbeat roommate who got me evicted after not paying her half of the rent left me her window unit which has literally saved my life this summer and cools my entire second floor. BAM!
This makes me think that maybe I need to start giving y’all reasons to click on my ads. This post should’ve been so full of heat and sweat imagery that you’d suddenly feel hot enough that nothing could quench you except irrationally buying a second air conditioner.
Thanks, deadbeat roommate! A free air conditioner totally makes up for all of the headlice she gave you.
At least you live in a place where you will not DIE without air
conditioning.
Love,
Kel of the Subtropical Climate
P.S. Seriously, how did people survive in Louisiana pre-AC? I will never, ever understand this. Maybe malaria killed you before you got a chance to overheat.
I’m going to quote you on this in today’s post, because THE WORST THING EVER happened last night. I blame you, actually.
when are you hosting ME in your Brooklyn apartment? Holy hell I need to go to NYC.
4 realz. Mi casa es su casa. And then I could talk about Ohio all day, and you’d understand. No one here gets it.
You need free air conditioning after walking all the way up to Tudor City from the subway — those avenue blocks in the summer are murder- it’s the least they can do because otherwise you’d have to take the bus, and stand way too close to a bunch of sweaty people– bad enough to do that once on the subway.
Ha, I’m so torn about that walk up to Tudor City. On one hand, it’s the only exercise I get all day if I don’t get to the gym in the morning. On the other hand, I don’t know if you’ve ever actually been on an NYC bus, but they are heavenly–totally cold in the summer, totally warm in the winter, and surprisingly uncrowded. I’m actually 100 times more likely to be sweated on by someone in the streets than on the bus. Weird, right?
The only time I was on a bus there was gross traffic, standing room only and it was hot as hell. I avoided the bus after that. At least when the subway’s crowded I can think that it’s saving me time by actually getting me to my destination more quickly than other methods of transportation. Pretty soon I will be cable car’ing my way around though.