Category Archives: living in new york sucks so hard

A Day in the Life

Posted by katie ett on April 15, 2013 – 12:10 pm
Filed under a day in the life, all of my friends are prettier than i am, living in new york is neat, living in new york sucks so hard, restaurant ramblings
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I’ve been expectedly terrible about writing my weekly life recaps, but here are some of the importanter events:

• My bedroom is teeny, so I bought a bed frame without an attached headboard to save room, but after two years, I’ve been craving something to bang my head against while listening to angsty music. Thinking a mirror would help make the room appear bigger (and allow me to judge how pretty I must look while sleeping), I set about finding one that was tall enough to be wider than my frame when set on its side but also wide enough to stick up over my mattress to give me something to lean against. Basically the only one that fit the bill remotely was the IKEA Mongstad, but it happened to be perfect. There’s an IKEA in Brooklyn with a free shuttle that leaves from my neighborhood, but thinking it’d be even easier to just toss it in a cab, I bought one off of craigslist from a guy on Wall Street and convinced Kamran to help me move it.

I knew it was going to be big, but I might have underestimated how unwieldy 66 pounds (and 2 ounces) of 74″ tall, 37″ wide mirror is. Kamran and I had no problem carrying it downstairs, but the wind was blowing so much by the time we got to the street corner that I had a hard time staying upright with it resting against me while we waited for one of the big minivan cabs to drive by. Ten minutes later, we had seen a couple of them up the street, but they were snatched up by other people before they got to us. In the meantime, we had tried to hail some of the SUV cabs, but drivers were literally turning around in the middle of the street and going back uptown when they spotted the mirror. We thought about hiding me around the corner and trying to trick someone into stopping for just Kamran, but eventually a nice driver in an SUV stopped out of the goodness of his heart and helped us load the thing into his cab. Of course it didn’t fit. Once it hit the plexiglass partition that separates the driver from the back seat, a foot of it was still sticking out the back of the car. So we gave up, turned back the way we came, and took the thing on the subway.

We hadn’t brought gloves, and we hadn’t drank our protein shakes, so our hands were aching and our biceps were shaking by the time we loaded it onto the 2 train. I was saying things like, “If I have no problem carrying it this way, why can’t you just stop being a pansy and make it work?” And he was saying things like, “I’m a physicist. I’m pretty sure I know the best way to distribute the weight.” It was only two blocks to my apartment from the subway, but we probably stopped five times to yell at each other, but once we got the thing in place behind my bed frame, we were like, “Yeah! Teamwork!” And then we went out for bubble tea.

• My cousin, Ethan, and his wife, Katherine, stayed with me this week while visiting NYC for the first time. They drove to Pittsburgh from Ohio and then took a bus the rest of the way, arriving in Brooklyn at 3 a.m. Thursday. I had signed our spare key out for them with the doorman earlier in the evening, but the overnight guy somehow didn’t understand which of the exactly one keys he was supposed to give to them, so he ended up calling not me, whose name was on the sign-out sheet, but the owner of the apartment, who is my roommate, Jack. At 3 a.m. Having them here reminded me so much of my early days in NYC, lo those nearly eight years ago, when I would get on the subway going the wrong way and when walking anywhere seemed like such a hassle. I remember my first week here, when my boyfriend at the time, Todd, and I were trying to move out of the student housing at NYU he’d been in for a year and get our own place in Chelsea, and I felt like the walk from the subway to the realtor’s office could have taken two hours in the July heat. I later realized that it had been two avenue blocks. Which are admittedly equal to four or five street blocks, depending on who you ask. But still. Two.

• Kamran and I took our friends Nik and Jack to Momofuku Ko for lunch on Saturday. It’s our favourite restaurant in NYC. Period. We sat in the same place at the counter as the last three times we’ve gone, and the same chef we’ve had the last three times served us, and the soundtrack was The Beatles and LCD Soundsystem and The Beta Band, and I got tuh-RASHED on the wine pairings, and Jack and Nik didn’t complain about having to eat an oyster, and I’ll always remember that lunch.


“Momofuku” means “lucky peach”.

• “Game of Thrones” started up again. Like you haven’t heard. Kim has been coming over every week to watch it, along with an assorted cast of characters who have seen somewhere between all of and two of the past episodes. As I sat watching it last night in my thrifted orange damask armchair, I looked around the room at Kim and Jack and Nik and Chris and thought about how crazy it is that I was just, like, hanging out all normally in my NYC apartment with my NYC friends. I’m 99% sure Joffrey is going to die soon.

• My friend Jessica was in town from Germany a couple of weekends ago. She was an intern at my company for a year, and there’s absolutely no other way we ever could’ve become friends. We ate queso fundido and sang karaoke (Jessica likes to do the Ken part of the 1997 hit “Barbie Girl” while our friend Jeff does the Barbie part) and one friend developed a crush on another friend while that friend was busy developing a crush on a third friend, and it made me sad that our group of friends is probably legitimately too old to be hooking up with each other with abandon and without consequences.

• My friend/former co-worker Chantee was in town yesterday after having left NYC a few years ago, and we met up with Kamran, Jack, and Jeff for the whole duck at Momofuku Ssam Bar. They take a Long Island duck, stuff duck sausage under the skin, confit the legs, and serve it all with hoisin sauce and fried shallots and greasy chive pancakes and rice that soaks up all of the duck juices. There’s a reason the place appears on “best of” lists along restaurants like Per Se.

You wouldn’t know it from Jeff’s face here, but Chantee is one of those people who’s hilarious but never at your expense and only makes you feel good about yourself when she’s around. I wish my sense of humor was more that and less naming-all-of-your-faults-in-front-of-everyone-we-know, but my mother died when I was 18, and I’ve never recovered. Just kidding. Well, sort of.

• My stomach is tired.

Behind the White Line

Posted by katie ett on February 27, 2013 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard
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Last night on the bus, a man and woman stood talking to the driver from the Wall Street stop to the East Village. It was clear that the driver and the man knew each other in the way that the man draped himself across the payment box casually and laughed and laughed at everything the bus driver said, but it seemed the woman in the leopard-print coat had been sitting in the seat behind the driver, gotten jealous of the fun they were having, and jumped up to join in. They weren’t bothering me at all, but then I’m a really forgiving, really self-sacrificing, really charitable person. Also a humble one.

But out of nowhere came a creaky old-lady voice:

“Excuse me! Don’t talk to the driver while the bus is in motion, and get behind the white line. It’s the law! All you’re doing is messing around. ALL OUR LIVES ARE AT STAKE.”

Read the rest here to bring me fame and riches!

The Two Kinds of People Who Visit NYC and My Bitterness Toward Both of Them

Posted by katie ett on February 19, 2013 – 12:00 pm
Filed under living in new york is neat, living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality, why i'm better than everyone else
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When you live in Ohio, people don’t assume they know anything about what it’s like to be you. Maybe they have some vague idea that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland, maybe they’ve read that the Cincinnati Zoo is so good it can breed rocks, maybe they’ve heard of Jeni’s ice cream–or maybe, like the majority of my co-workers, they think Ohio is considered part of the South and is solely responsible for producing all of the existing mullets in the United States.

When you live in NYC, people like to think they know eeeeeverything about your life. They assume you love Broadway shows, eat every meal at either Serendipity or Shake Shack, have Magnolia cupcakes after every weekend brunch with your girlfriends, wear nothing but stilettos, and date men in finance with slicked-back hair who take cabs everywhere. A lot of people have a lot of experience with NYC, either because they visited once for their friend’s bachelorette party, watched Big as a kid, or listen to a lot of Alicia Keys. In my experience, these people fall into two categories:

1) They’re glamoured by the city but don’t think they could live here. They’re pumped to see the Empire State Building and to walk down 5th Avenue, have read up on the tricks to getting cheap show tickets, want to take high tea at the Ritz, and have brought special clothes that they think will help them fit in here. But they’re shocked at how much everything costs, won’t feel like they’ve accomplished anything if they don’t live in a detached house with a yard, and can’t imagine having to sit side-by-side with strangers on a train.

To these people, I want to say: my life is just like your life but better. Sure, it’s expensive here, but I make a zillion more dollars doing what I do here than I would in Ohio. Sure, I don’t have a detached house, but I feel so safe encased in a big apartment building with a doorman to keep out the crazies. Sure, I don’t have a car, but I can take a cab when I need to, and I wouldn’t trade anything for being able to read on my way to work and to never have to park again. Sometimes I go out for fancy dinners, but sometimes I just want some boxed mac & cheese. Sometimes I get dressed up and go to a “club” with my “crew”, but sometimes I just want to sit at home and watch “Shark Tank”. Sometimes I go to the Empire State Building, but I usually just go to Rockefeller Center, because that’s where my boyfriend works. Every day. And it’s totally normal.

2) They feel like they’re supposed to live here. They already did all of the touristy stuff long ago, so now their visits are comprised of sunbathing in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park instead of Central Park, eating at the restaurants of the lesser-known “Top Chef” contestants, and going to SoulCycle classes “like all of the celebrities”. They claim that they just look so naturally New-Yorky that whenever they visit, people stop them on the streets to ask for directions. They spend all day combing job sites to find a reason to move here and don’t know anything about the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville but are excited that apartments look affordable there.

To these people, I want to say: MY LIFE IS NOTHING LIKE YOUR LIFE, AND YOU COULD NEVER CUT IT HERE. Sure, apartments look affordable in some of the outlying neighborhoods, but that is because YOU WILL DIE THERE. Sure, I feel so safe encased in a big apartment building with a doorman to keep out the crazies, but I will never ever ever have a place big enough to suit more than a five-pound dog. Sure, I wouldn’t trade anything for not having to own a car, but it’s rough having to haul everything around on my back all of the time because I can’t just throw it in my car until I need it. I hope you don’t like cooking, because your apartment probably doesn’t have an oven. I hope you don’t like holidays, because there’s not a chance you have a place to store your Christmas tree. I hope you don’t like your friends, because they will all move away to buy detached houses with yards to raise their children in.

Yesterday, Kamran told me, “You know what makes me feel bleh? When Facebook friends of mine from other parts of the country post pics of themselves visiting NYC.” I asked, “Because you want them to try to meet up with you?” He said, “Well no, no, I don’t. But I want them to want to try to meet up with me. It’s especially weird when those friends post pics of themselves in front of landmarks. It’s like, yea, good for you. I pass that every day and don’t even bother to notice. And then I feel petty and bitter.”

And that’s exactly my experience living in NYC, too. People are coming here all of the time to visit, and only half of them are asking to see me, and I’m only actually seeing half of the ones who ask because I’m apparently SO BUSY with my BIG AND IMPORTANT LIFE. (And by that, I mean lazy and not at all interested in meeting you in some Times Square bar where we won’t even be able to hear each other talk.) But then I’ll see those people I didn’t bother to see or who didn’t want to see me post a picture of the Chrysler Building on Facebook, and I’ll be like, “Uh, YEAH, I pass that thing every single day. It’s not really a big deal. You should sort of be embarrassed about how you’re fangirling over that thing. Oh, you saw the Rockefeller Christmas tree? GREAT JOB. So did the half of Ohio who visited NYC for Christmas. Hope you enjoyed that visit to Serendipity and the frozen hot chocolate. I’ve been there, like, ten times and know the frozen hot chocolate is about the worst thing on the menu. WAY TO GO.”

Give me credit for living here, okay? I’m special and need to be recognized as such. Just ignore those other eight million people around me.

Sick and Lonely in NYC

Posted by katie ett on January 22, 2013 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality, why i'm better than everyone else
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I work for the one company in NYC that didn’t take yesterday off, so I was riding the bus home as usual last night. Across from me was an elderly Asian man who had loped onto the bus with heavy plastic grocery bags covered in Chinese writing hanging off of his arms, racing invisible passengers for the many seats that were available. He coughed continuously and unabashedly onto the back of the neck of the woman in front of him while I did my best to hold my breath for the entire trip.

In the East Village, the doors opened at one of the stops, and he turned, paused to make sure no one was coming in the door, and tossed a used tissue out onto the sidewalk. ANIMAL! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this after almost eight years of seeing people throw their Doritos bags onto the subway floor, tuck their coffee cups into the space between the seat and the side of the bus, and aim their gum generally toward the trash can without any actual worry about whether it makes it in or not, but as a country girl raised to respect the environment, this stuff kills me.

The idea that this guy couldn’t just tuck his tissue into a pocket for the three stops burned me so much that I had to say, “Wooooow. Unbelievable.” He looked over to see who I was talking to, and I met his eyes and said, “You’re awful.”

Read the rest here!

An Otherwise Exceptional Existence

Posted by katie ett on December 17, 2012 – 2:15 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, why i'm better than everyone else
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I’m flying out of JFK for Christmas, which is a convenient $2.25 subway ride away from my apartment, so I needed to transport a duffel bag of clothes (read: beloved underwear) from Kamran’s apartment to mine this morning. In the normal world, this would involve tossing it in the back of my car along amidst the Big Mac wrappers and used Kleenex and forgetting about it until I got there. But in my world, this involves:

1) carrying it to the bus, which is only an avenue block away but is very slow and could force me to stand holding the bag for 45 minutes, because I’m not putting my gorgeous white duffel with the light brown suede bottom on the bus floor, or

2) carrying it to the subway, which is three avenue blocks away and will involve navigating heavy foot traffic but will get me there much faster.

I could also take a cab, but it’s $30 from Kamran’s apartment to mine and sort of defeats the whole purpose of being able to fly out of the airport that’s a convenient $2.25 subway ride away from my apartment.

So I stressed about this all weekend. I thought about bringing the bag to my place tonight after work to avoid the crowds. I thought about leaving home at 7 a.m. to miss rush hour. I thought about how I just need to suck it up and become one of those people who pulls a collapsible grocery cart behind her wherever she goes. But instead, I left at the normal hour and hoped some kindly man would feel unnecessarily guilty about depriving a woman of a seat.

And of course the best happened. A couple of buses passed as I was walking toward the stop, which pretty much guarantees a ten-minute wait until the next one, but a third one miraculously pulled up mere moments after I arrived. It hadn’t been long enough for a new crowd to gather, so the only other passenger waiting to board was a woman I gave bus fare to out of the goodness of my heart when her card was expired last week, and she gave a friendly hello. The bus was almost entirely empty, so I took a seat at the front and gave my bag a seat of its own. Barely anyone got on at the next stop and the next stop and so on for my entire ride to work, so I never had to worry about piling my duffel and my purse and my lunch bag all on my lap. It couldn’t have been a better situation.

When we’d passed all of the stops where a lot of people usually board and rush to steal the empty seats from each other in ways that I think should embarrass them, I looked over lovingly at my duffel, so comfortably nestled next to me, and thought, “Everything always works out in my favor! Boy, the bus sure is great.”

And then I reflected on my own self lovingly and how I manage to have such a sunny outlook. Of course I’ve had many a trip on the bus where I got shuffled to the center where there are no seats and was forced to hold a heavy bag the entire way, but that’s not what leaves an impact on me. I tend to think of the great things in my life as the norm and the worst things as momentary riffles in an otherwise exceptional existence. I don’t think about the time I requested a window seat at Per Se and they didn’t oblige; I think about how comfortable the banquette they did give us was. I can’t recall a single gift I asked for as a kid and didn’t receive–although I’m sure there were hundreds over my eighteen years of childhood greed–but I can remember how special the presents I did get were. I really don’t even dwell on my dead mom but instead think of how great it is that her absence made me closer to my dad.

As Kamran would say, I AM THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO.

You?