I know it’s reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal cool and all for Manhattanites to never leave the island, but on the “Millionaire Matchmaker” where the Cute Indie Gay Dude says to the Old Boring Gay Dude in Shorts (OBGDIS), “I live in Greenpoint; do you know where that is?” and it turns out the OBGDIS has never left Chelsea, I want to punch him in his old Botoxed face.
It’s like saying you don’t know where Montana is. It’s like, as Kamran always says, the way people talk about being bad at math like it’s cute or something. But OBGDIS had also never seen “Antiques Roadshow”, so screw ‘im.
God bless you for all you do, political watchdog groups, but perhaps hiring someone with a certain degree of innate spellchecking ability would be beneficial to your cause:
This was scribbled aaaaaaaaaaaall over the sidewalks outside of the polling place on Kamran’s street this morning. I just want to pat who ever did it on top of their cute, little heads.
A friend recently asked me how I managed the adjustment from smalltown Ohio to big city culture, and I told her I was prepared for everything but how truly out-for-themselves people are in NYC. I told her that in Ohio, there seems to be more of a collective conscious, a bit of an “if I do this horrible thing to this person, everyone’s going to find out” mindset, and a bit of an “if I do this nice thing for this person, both of us will benefit from my niceness, and the world will be a better place” mindset. She asked if I think NYC has changed me, and it just so happened that I had the perfect story to illustrate my very definite yes.
Last Saturday afternoon, my boyfriend and I took advantage of the end of Summer/start of Fall weather with brunch at Bar Boulud, a stroll through Central Park, wrestling with giant stuffed dogs at FAO Schwarz, and buying a pound of chocolate-covered everything at Dylan’s Candy Bar to start getting our blood sugar prepared for Halloween.
We hopped on the downtown M15 bus around 4:30 p.m., and it was packed, as usual, with elderly people, because only elderly people leave the house before 8 p.m. on weekends. We stood for a couple of stops, sat down for a couple of stops when two seats were freed up, and then stood back up when we saw a feeble-looking couple board the bus.
Kamran shared this article with me recently from one of his fancy lawyer blogs called “Earning $250,000 Does Not Make You Rich, Not in My Town“, and while I agree that $250k doesn’t make you anywhere close to rich in NYC, it’s ridiculous how out of touch people are with how much money you need to survive:
I own nothing (mmm… judgment proof) — not a stock, a bond — and the only market for my “assets” is the “Cash for Gold” shop in Atlantic City. I pay a ridiculous premium to live in my 2-1-2 area code, and I live in a hovel so embarrassing that when non-New Yorkers come to visit, they assume I’ve just been robbed. As we shuffle by Park Avenue apartments that I can’t afford to even look at, my dog tries to break her leash and get herself adopted by someone who can afford her upkeep. I’m a professional blogger, yet my computer is so old I can’t even download decent porn off the internet anymore. Last night I got a text from my Manhattan bedbugs which read, “Dude, we can’t live like this no more, peace out loser.”
In Ohio, my salary could give a family of eight a super-extravagant lifestyle, but here, it can get me half of an apartment in Brooklyn, eight plane tickets, a closetful of non-designer clothes, a couple of major electronics purchases, and all the homemade meals I can handle every year. (Luckily, Kamran helps me out in the dinner department.)
Basically, no matter how much I save up, I will never, ever own a home in NYC. Even if I wanted the very cheapest and tiniest studio apartment–250 square feet for $250k, let’s say–I can’t imagine a time in my life when I’d have the $50k down payment. I accept that while the middle of the country bases their success on owning homes, I have to base mine on . . . having lots of free time to blog?
Recently, I decided to make a deposit on a minorly life-changing thing (it’s a yacht, people! it’s a yacht!) (just kidding), and I had to figure out if I’d actually have the money for it. So I made something for the first time in my life that I realize probably every one of you have had forever: a budget.
And I feel SO. MUCH. BETTER. I’m actually spending waaaaaaay less money than I used to, but I somehow feel so much richer just because I know I can keep myself debt-free and saving if I stay within my weekly allotment. It’s so great to be able to stare a $32 pressed powder compact from Sephora in its sweet, foundationy eyes and say, “Are you worth not being to go out for dinner before our bowling match Sunday night?” And it isn’t.
I even set up a (so far, really pathetic) SmartyPig goal that will someday allow me to live luxuriously without guilt for three entire months when I get fired. Click on the “Feed Me” button to see how cute the site is and to TRANSFER YOUR BANK ACCOUNT OVER TO ME:
So, I’m not rich, and I’m not even $250,000 rich, but I’m working on it.
Do you budget? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks!
I step onto one of the elevators in Kamran’s building on Friday after work, and a guy in blue scrubs comes in after me. To me, his matching cotton uniform means the guy is too lazy to own real clothes, but I understand that the rest of the world assumes he’s some sort of “medical professional”. This woman slips in just as the doors are closing, so they open back up, and the three of us stand there awkward and silent while we wait for them to close again, because it’s super-rare for someone to talk to you in an elevator in NYC, no matter how cheerfully you smile at them as they enter.
She’s about my age. (Maybe a little older, because people my age can’t afford to live in Kamran’s building unless they have really morally-inexcusable jobs on Wall Street, or at least that’s what I tell myself as I return to my Brooklyn hovel.) She’s wearing a navy blue shift dress that looks expensive, she’s covered in chunky jewelry that looks expensive, and all of the bags on her arm are from expensive stores. I see her slyly eying the guy in the scrubs, and I think about how she probably thinks she’s really hot and deserves to date this spiky-haired dental hygienist posing as a doctor.
So we get to her floor first, and she makes this production of tossing her long blonde hair and holding her bags in her krelbows in that way women always do in movies when they’ve just finished a shopping spree with their friends and are now going to brunch at an outdoor cafe to drink mimosas and laugh at things not even they actually think are funny. She bounces off the elevator, the whatever-he-is looks after her, and for a moment, you know the two of them are totally mind-jerking-off about one another. But just before she’s out of sight, she loses her grip on her very long umbrella, and it gets caught on her I-swear-they-were-patchwork heels. She trips and almost falls down but catches herself, and I almost laugh out loud but catch myself.
And usually, this is where I would accidentally do the same thing six floors later, but I didn’t need to be all bumbling in front of this guy, because I had my own doctor waiting for me at home.
Or, well, he came home from work, like, 4 hours later. But I still felt awfully superior sitting alone in his apartment eating homemade frosting.
I'm Katie, a farmgirl originally from Ohio who moved to NYC in 2005 for no apparent reason. I like vintage-looking things that are actually new, filagree everything, people who don't make me feel awkward, meaning it when I say "no sleep till Brooklyn", and not trying too hard.
