Affordable Housing

At the beginning of June, I moved off The Hill in search of a top floor (read: quieter) apartment, and lower rent.  The overhead bumps in the night from my elderly Russian neighbor had ceased, replaced by spike heals, a yippy dog, an overweight boyfriend, and multiple weekend visitors tromping across the floor.  I couldn't hear myself think.  So I found a fifth floor (top!) walkup near Dykman Street where the rent is $500 lower than what I was paying on The Hill.  I'm in good shape, I said, and the five floors will get the Poocherooni back in shape.

But nobody told me that back facing apartments (e.g. my prior one) in New York are a thousand times quieter than street facing apartments.  In my new place, my bedroom faces the street.  My living room faces the street.  My bathroom faces the street.  And my kitchen faces the street.  That might be OK in Minnesota, but in a neighborhood that pulsates with uberlicious mega bass stereos, my writing, not to mention my sleep, have been interrupted. So I broke out  the heavy artillery:  two fans and an air conditioner ratcheted my utility bill above the $200 mark.  So much for being economical.

And did I mention the Fire Hydrant Emergency?  During two consecutive weekends in July, the heat index wavered close to 110 degrees Fahrenheit.  That's when the neighborhood geniuses set off all the hydrants on the block.  All that luscious,cool, refreshing, oh-so-necessary-for-life water poured down the street, none of it reaching the fifth floor.  In a city as developed as New York, it is a travesty to return home and not have running water.  Worse than the third world?  You can make up your own mind.  There are people who have lived all their lives in NYC (my ex-real estate broker, for one), and have never heard of a Fire Hydrant Emergency. Such things don't reach the local news.

Earlier in the summer, there were three sexual  attacks in my neighborhood in the course of a week and a half.  The alleged perpetrator's picture was plastered on kiosks in the park and displayed in local stores.  I searched online for pepper spray and walked quickly along well lit streets when returning home late at night.  Unlike the young Upper East Side woman who was recently groped (a horrible experience, to say the least, but different from an attack by a certain number of degrees), these attacks did not reach the local news either.   

At such times, I turn to Poochini.  He doesn't realize what a dump we're living in.  For him, the neighborhood is replete with exciting new sights and smells.  That garbage strewn across the side walk?  Mahvelous.  Those chicken bones with the meat still hanging off in strips?  Slurpilicious. The shards of broken beer bottles scattered underneath scraggy trees?  Not a problem when there's moldy bread helter kelter amongst bottle tops and single shot vodka bottles.  The cop car that's been camped out in the same spot for the last three days? Better to have a cop than not a cop.

Oh, to live a dog's life.  This human one is sometimes for the birds.  But then again, to have the wings of a bird, and to fly away, even if only within one's mind...