Progress?

The upper West Side, where I hang my hat, is full of neighborhoods with beautiful old brownstones. Many of them have fallen into disrepair, but as the neighborhood gentrifies (and no, I'll not engage in debate with you about this topic, thanks) they are being restored and often carved up into apartments where each family occupies a floor.

While walking home from Heritage, I spotted this monstrosity:

Frankly, I think the owner of this building, both the architect and contractor who managed the remodeling job, and the city official who decided that everything was up to code should be shipped off to a desert island or summarily shot at dawn, whichever appeals more to the jury. The picture doesn't show it, but on both sides of this abomination and all the way down the street to the corner in either direction are lovely, graceful, historic brownstones which have been lovingly and authentically rebuilt. And then there's this....this...thing. I'm not necessarily against modern architecture, and I've always thought that neighborhoods that controlled the aesthetic qualities of the houses built in them were kind of ridiculous. But all of that seems to fall away when I look at this picture and remember how this insult to domestic domiciles gaped from the middle of the otherwise charming street.

Liberal as I may be in many senses, some things should be sacred.

Jersey Boys

Once again, I took advantage of the discounted Broadway tickets I can get through TC and went to see "Jersey Boys" last night. "Jersey Boys" is a documentary-style musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Each of the characters does voice-overs now and then to share his perspective, and the story generally moves in chronological order from when Frankie and Tommy began singing together all the way up through this year, when three of the original four members talk about what they're doing with their lives now; the fourth one died a few years ago.

Thanks to the litigious nature of our society, most shows that involve any manner of mature subject matter now have to post warnings in prominent places. A sign hung in the entryway of the August Wilson theater warns patrons that gunshots, bright lights, fake blood, and "authentic profane Jersey dialect" are all included in the show. All were true, particularly the last one.

I thought I didn't really know much about the Four Seasons, but once the show started I found that virtually every song was one that I had not only heard before but could sing along with just about from start to finish. Talk about prolific. The score was made up entirely of Four Seasons music, so when the occasional character broke into song about how sad he was that his wife had left him or what have you, it seemed more authentic than in lots of musicals. Much as I love musical theater, it's hard to get around the fact that people don't generally burst into song in the middle of conversations in the every day world. It was believable, however, that these guys would express themselves through music. It was surprising to learn about the origins of many of the songs; because they're mostly catchy and poppy, I wouldn't have suspected that there was anything autobiographical about any of them, but turns out there was in most cases. Interestingly, Bob Guadio, who played the piano and wrote nearly all of the Four Seasons' songs, wrote the score for "Jersey Boys." Despite my nosebleed seat (I really should invest in binoculars) I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone.

All about the Benjamins

The security deposit for our apartment had to be in the form of a certified check, not a personal check, and so I virtually emptied my gasping bank account on Saturday and ferried the money to our new landlady. Dave reimbursed me with a stack of bills on Sunday (bartenders always have cash on hand), and on Monday I headed to CitiBank to resuscitate my account. I was relieved to hand the wad of cash to the lady behind the bulletproof glass; walking around New York with over a grand in cash is not the way to spend what should be a carefree, sunny morning, even if one has to travel only about a block and a half through an affluent neighborhood.

I was interrupted from filling out the deposit slip by the testy observation, "This is fake." I blinked and begged the cashier's pardon. "This one, it's fake," she elaborated, waving what looked a lot like a one hundred dollar bill at me. "It's paper." It was obvious that I was already a complete imbecile for not recognizing this fact myself, so I did not point out the local custom of using paper currency in the United States.* "Uh, it is?" I contributed after a lengthy pause.

"Feel the difference." She stuffed the apparent counterfeit and a true blue Benjamin through the slot at the bottom of her window. I extended tentative fingers and thumbs to rub each bill. They felt the same to me. "And look, it tears," she continued, ripping about half an inch into the fake. "And look." She ripped half an inch into the real one before I could even yelp. The fact that both motions produced a tear did not seem to faze her; the identical-looking rips apparently provided a bulletproof argument to anyone with more than ten brain cells.

"Uh… so… what…." I stammered, wondering whether I was about to be clapped in irons. She was already busily stabbing at a keyboard and moments later I heard a printer begin to hum. I learned that she would be sending the bill to the Federal Department of.... Something for examination. If it was real ("obviously not," her gum seemed to snap at me), the amount would be deposited into my account. If it was indeed a fake ("more like 'when'" said her cocked head), I should submit the freshly printed form to my accountant in spring of 2011 and I would get the money back in my tax return. So, she assured me, I had a mere 16-or-so months to wait.

Following the successful deposit of the rest of the actual money I'd brought, I contritely perused the form on my way out of the bank. I noted that she'd typed in the branch and the amount of the money and checked the box that declared that I didn't appear to be suspicious. While ordinarily I dislike being typecast, I decided that this time I could live with it.

*Yeah, yeah, it's printed on a blend of cotton fibers. Whatever. Looks like paper to me.

Karen Arenson

We had a guest speaker in my writing interventions class today. I'm sure I would have met the announcement of any change in the pace of our weekly lectures with pleasure, but I was especially excited about hearing Karen Arenson speak. Karen retired from The New York Times recently, where she covered mostly educational issues. Her career as a journalist was much-lauded, and now that she has retired, she has graced Teachers College with her presence for the last few weeks and my writing class was one of her scheduled stops.

We were all supposed to read four articles (not her own) which she had selected ahead of time and come to class prepared to discuss them. I couldn't wait to hear what she had to say about them, and so instead of my usual slapdash highlighting and distracted skimming, I printed them out and filled the margins with careful notes on the stylistic choices made by the writers. I think I was the only one who printed them and brought them to class, although several of my classmates made comments that convinced me they had at least glanced at the articles.

Although she isn't a terribly flowery writer herself, Karen chose articles filled with vivid description. We talked about hooks that are both elegant and informative and admired one journalist's ability to report on what should have been a straight-forward, lackluster event and turn it into a compelling story. She highlighted weighty words which elegantly conveyed meaning inexperienced writers would have struggled to accomplish with several sentences. Newspapers are all all about efficiency, and so every word is important. This reminded me of poetry, where the same principle applies, except that the two genres are on opposite ends of the literary spectrum in my book. Interesting parallel.

Purloined from a website - we didn't actually get to see Karen in action.

Some of my favorite moments:

-Karen said that the way to get noticed is to write about a mundane topic in an exciting way (which seems obvious, but it's much easier said than done).

-Apparently the editors at the Metro desk used to choose one or two words each month and the journalists would compete to see who could work them into a piece first. Two that she remembered: stygian (related to the river Styx) and tatterdemalion (a ragamuffin). Fun idea!

-One legendary reporter worked his way up to the point to where he didn't have to do much field reporting and spent most of his time at his desk on the phone with newbie reporters who'd go out and do interviews and collect facts for him. Karen remembers hearing him snap things like, "What do you mean you don't know how many steps there are? Go back and count them!" into the phone. Junior reporters, provided they survived the experience, all said that they learned volumes about observation from this guy and became adept at sizing situations quickly and asking the right questions as they prepared to write their own pieces.

Urban Easter

While running through Central Park today, I saw a pack of kids scrambling to cram plastic eggs into plastic bags, shepherded by a few indulgent adults hovering above. I never considered the difficulties of having an egg hunt when one lives in an apartment with no yard. A family could do a lot worse than Central Park, however; it is absolutely stunning at the moment. I can call the profusion of daffodils "riotous" without feeling dramatic.

We had Easter with the Allens one year (can't remember where we were, but it may have been the Grand Canyon) and the four of us kids had to wait in one of the hotel rooms while our parents concealed eggs and gifts in the other room. I remember that it was tough to find everything somehow, which says volumes about our parents' creativity; I mean, how many places can you hide things for four different kids in a hotel room? I could be making this up, but I swear Luke's grand prize turned up in the air conditioning vent. That crafty bunny...

On the hunt

Dave and I have decided to be roommates starting in May, and we spent Wednesday looking at apartments on the upper West Side. The experience, like most of my New York experiences, has been nothing short of enlightening. I've rented apartments before, but this market is like nothing I've ever seen. For one thing, space is at a premium and so people have done some pretty creative (and often unsuccessful, in my opinion) renovations in attempts to improve living space. I've seen closets about 18 inches wide carved out of random wall spaces, entryways between apartments at such an angle that if residents of both places exited their units at the same time they'd have no choice but to do so cheek-to-cheek, and shower-baths with the showerhead on one side of the tub, the drain on the opposite side, and the faucet and control knobs protruding from the wall in the middle. Many landlords don't bother to take unnecessary steps like cleaning sinks or making sure that cabinets have frivolous features like shelves in them; grime, rust, and the structural supports on which residents can rest their own purchased sheets of plywood seem to suffice. It's certainly not a renters' market. I remember going to see Ferran's new place after he'd signed the lease and it was filthy. But unless you're planning to pay top dollar – and in New York top dollar is high enough to give most of my social circle a nosebleed – these are the things you deal with. You spend the money you'd have to pay for a more high-end place on Lysol and paper towels.

The most surprising thing about this whole ordeal has been the speed at which reasonably-priced places move. Realtors will tell you that if you like the place, you need to put in an application within half an hour, and they're not kidding about that. I watched one gorgeous place vanish before my eyes. I made the mistake of looking at apartments one Wednesday, thinking that I could show places I liked to Dave on his day off on Monday. This line of thought is laughable to me now – every apartment I saw and liked was gone within a day or two of my looking at it. In Nashville, I remember considering one unit for about a week before making up my mind, and it waited patiently for me until I did.

The rental system here is coordinated by middlemen. Dave and I submitted an application for a place we liked on Wednesday, and we spent ages sitting in the real estate office while our realtors made call after call to the representative of the landlord of the building, who in turn had to call the landlord once or twice for real answers. I made two separate trips to CitiBank for account information to put on the application, and my father, who is going to be our guarantor (landlords aren't eager to rent to unemployed students and bartenders whose incomes are tip-based and therefore undocumented) had to locate, fill out, scan, and fax an unreasonable number of times. All of this makes things easy for the landlord and horrendously complicated for us. But if we don't take the place, there are other people in line behind us who will, and the landlord knows that we all have to live somewhere.

Despite the cumbersome process, I liked our realtor. He was excited to show us the place we ended up applying for, and the fact that he wasn't prepared with the keys to the unit didn't stop him; borrowing Dave's frequent movie-goer card, he jimmied the locks to both front doors while Dave and I watched openmouthed, and had us in the foyer in three minutes. He was unable, however, to jimmy the lock to the unit itself, and had to jump on his bike to pick up the key from his office. Dave and I waited for him in the lobby of the building and passed the time by talking about how it looked like, if we did get the place, we wouldn’t need seventeen deadbolts for the door after all.

Things I've learned to look for:

-Good light and lots of windows – not as easy to come by as you'd think, since most buildings are so close together that lots of windows doesn't necessarily mean good light. A bright space feels bigger.

-High(ish) ceilings – also make a place feel bigger.

-Wood flooring – I don't even want to know what caused the stains I saw on some carpets, and I certainly don't want to live with them.

-Hallways/stairwells that do not smell like kitty litter.

-Closet space

-Nearby amenities - laundromats, grocery stores, and subway stops

-Safety - I tend not to worry about this aspect (perhaps to my own fault) but Dave, who comes home from work around 5:00 A.M. on the weekends carrying several hundred dollars in cash, does.

Social Graces

Last night, I met up with some friends to celebrate Kat's birthday. Kat is a bartender who works with Dave. She's from Tennessee so I'm predisposed to like her, but I'd probably like her even if she wasn't. The friends of hers I knew already seemed very cool, so I dressed for the occasion and made the trip down to the meatpacking district anticipating a good night.

It ended up being a good night in that I learned a lot. Otherwise, there wasn't much that was good about it.

Kat's friend had made reservations at an Italian place called Nero. The guest of honor was an hour late, but we all had a decent enough time munching on free bread and sipping very much not free cocktails. In observance of my budget, I had only one glass of wine, which I regrettably paid for up front (more on that later). When Kat finally arrived, we ordered our selections from a highly overpriced menu and chatted while we waited. I'd met up with Dave for a huge, late lunch that day, and he and I decided to share a pasta dish since neither of us was particularly hungry. Kate (not to be confused with Kat, although I get it wrong fairly consistently), on Dave's other side, has just begun her 8,937^th diet and so ordered a salad and a glass of water.

Our food came, and Dave and I quickly polished off the noodles in Prego sauce that I could have probably produced in my dorm kitchen in about a quarter of the time for about 1/100^th of the price. But I liked the group I was sitting with and tried to be cheerful, while simultaneously making mental notes not to return to Nero unless someday I felt that my bank account was troublingly large. I was glad Dave and I had elected to share a dish and that I hadn't ordered any more drinks, and skipped an after-dinner coffee as well. At least I'd had a reasonably good time for a fair price.

I didn't even see bill come, but I definitely heard one of the girls at the other end of the table, a vapid-looking brunette who had spent most of the evening busily spilling out of the top of her strapless dress, announce that we each owed $60. A flurry of surprised chatter arose, as all everyone around Dave, Kate and I commented on how surprisingly low the total was, considering. Dave and Kate and I held a hurried, whispered conference that involved much swearing. Kate's salad was $15, and for her portion of Kat's dinner/drink costs and tip she should have put in no more than $25. I owed something like $15, and Dave, figuring in several Coronas, owed something like $30. I had actually been a little concerned about a situation like this earlier in the meal as I watched the girls around me order trays of drinks, appetizers, and coffees. But instead of lightly announcing early on that I was on a budget and therefore was going to pay only for what I ordered, a I certainly should have done, I didn't say anything.

The only thing our disgruntled trio wanted to do less than pay $60 a pop for water, lettuce, and several noodles was to create a ruckus that would put Kat's moronic friends in their places and almost certainly ruin Kat's birthday outing. So we ponied up the dough, bid the group goodnight, and hurried to a dive bar where Kate and I had a pina colada each and Dave polished off a pint of beer. I hadn't known Kate well before all of this, but a sense of camaraderie seems to have sprung up between us. I rode the train home poorer, wiser, and happy that I made a good friend.