04.29.13

101 in 1001 {III}: 005 refinance the apartment [completed 04.15.13]

it's unfortunate that my not-entirely-unjustified fear of the co-op board caused me to delete all of the posts i wrote about how joe and i found and bought our apartment a few years ago; the ins and outs of that process (ten letters of recommendation! home visits from inspectors in two states! my father forced to sign an affidavit saying he would never have a dog!*) were much more interesting than this winter and spring's** clerical shenanigans in pursuit of a new and improved loan. that said, this dance of the seven tax forms has made me feel much more adult than becoming a homeowner did; like booking and keeping your own dental appointments, refinancing for a better interest rate is the quotidian TCB of a grown-ass woman. my teeth are clean.

*because new york city real estate nonlogic makes you crazy, joe and i thought at one point that we would be more attractive to the board if we included my dad as a non-resident co-applicant. actually it made no positive difference, and we have been tied together like freakish six-legged-race contestants ever since.

**it took four months, all told. just looking at a bank statement or a fax machine now makes me feel itchy.

06.18.10



{excerpts from "lenny hearts eunice," gary shteyngart's "20 under 40" new yorker story featuring the co-op in which both he and i live}

{with commentary}

First order of business when I got back: to celebrate what I already have. I began with the seven hundred and forty square feet that form my share of Manhattan Island. I live in the last middle-class stronghold in the city, high atop a red-brick ziggurat that a Jewish garment workers’ union erected on the banks of the East River back in the days when Jews sewed clothes for a living. Say what you will, these ugly co-ops are full of authentic old people who have real stories to tell (although these stories are often meandering and hard to follow; e.g., who on earth was this guy “Dillinger”?).

{eight months into ziggurat living, i've developed the same sort of secretive, slightly unsavory affection for said brutal '50s architecture that i have for late '80s volvo sedans. when i lived in southern california, the local drug store, my family's church, and the virulent beige cafeteria that served soapy green jell-o to which my sisters and i were addicted were all right next to leisure world, supposedly the largest gated retirement community in the country. moving to our tower was a bit like going home.}

Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure that none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.”

{i've seen and will admit to giving his wall of books The Bookish Hipster Appraisal; those of you who remember last summer's frantic apartment-hunting and co-op-approval-seeking posts (deleted in a fit of orwellian paranoia when we were getting ready for our co-op interview in september) might recall my sentimental favorite, a sixth floor balcony apartment with so-so views, a renovated kitchen, and good-looking modern furnishings. it also had stacks of the russian debutante's handbook and absurdistan tucked in the closet like a litter of kittens; it was gary's, you see. we totally yoinked his clever faux crown molding technique when we painted our bedroom gray, so i think of him fondly as i drift off to sleep.}

I celebrated the low-rise housing projects crowding my immediate view, the so-called Vladeck Houses, which stand in red-brick solidarity with my own co-ops, not exactly proud of themselves, but resigned and necessary, their thousands of residents primed for summer warmth and, if I may speculate, summer love.

{those houses were one of the big reasons joe was skeptical of casa de gary, actually, and part of why we didn't make an offer on it; they aren't so bad to look at, really, but they are indeed right there. though i've only run into the guy whose pit bull wears a fur coat that once.}

In my trendy old man’s getup I ambled with easy grace down Grand Street, stepping off each curb with the profound “oy” that is the call-and-response of my neighborhood.

{it sort of is, actually.}

She was disappointed by my apartment, by how far it was from the F line and how ugly the buildings were. “Looks like I’ll get some exercise walking to the train,” she said. “Ha-ha.” This was what her generation liked to add to the end of sentences, a kind of nervous tic. “Ha-ha.”

{OMG IT'S NOT FAR. and it's hipster-approved, fictional missy.}

{not that i'm defensive.}

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 could you live in an ugly building?

02 would knowing an apartment belonged to an author affect your interest in buying it?

03 why d'you think gary keeps those books in his closet?

04 how was your week? work carried me around town in its mouth and buried me under the azaleas; i've missed you, internets.

10.20.09: milestone postcards



we burned two and a half hours of chilly october daylight around a conference table on friday afternoon. i spent most of that time signing my name and/or nodding while making earnest faces at our attorney (part of that was to demonstrate my hard-earned understanding of new york real estate; part of it was our bonding over the improbable revelation that she had a three-legged cat). after the previous owners (finally) pushed a hedgehog-sized pile of keys across the table at us and wished us well, we dashed into a drugstore down the street, grabbed little bags of cheez-its and big cans of heineken, and took a cab to the lower east side.* champagne toasts are nice and all, but we wanted to make it to the new digs before the sun set.

we did, just barely. "i wish we could stay," joe whispered.** "we need the cat," i whispered back.



so we took the subway back up to hell's kitchen, where our broker and dear friend judd sang us some bowie. good people, our people.

*joe told his mother about that when he called her a few hours later; she said that when she and his dad bought their first place in arizona thirty years ago, they spent their first night sitting on the floor with coors and beer nuts. heritage!

**though we closed on friday, we couldn't move until monday morning.

10.18.09

101 in 1001 {II}: 010 buy an apartment [completed 10.16.09]

09.15.09

it's hard to transition from talking about our little cat to talking about, well, anything else; many other things have happened in the past week, but i can't say that i care much about them right now. we finally interviewed with the co-op board on wednesday and on friday they let us know that we were approved, so we're circling in on our new apartment; the best thing about that, at present, is that the logistics of closing the deal and of populating our new space with things are very distracting. i've developed weird but probably harmless fixations on spray painting picture frames and hoarding old pendleton blankets. i spin sofa sections around like tetris blocks in my head. i hatch plots to lure birds up to our windows on the eighteenth floor - but that's for the little cat again.

joe and i are more alike than i'd realized, and in the first few days after jude died we behaved a bit like one person. i hate that our family shrank, but i admit that it was comforting to feel thrown together in the contraction. chuck wedges himself between us as he always has. we move together.