Winner takes all: New York in 2006

Monika is this weeks guest at My Music Highway Project. She picked a great song. I feel strongly about this project for two reasons: I adore Shayna, and dare anybody not to, and I love music. It can unite us.

This week is action packed and filled with very exciting events that aren’t worth mentioning here. I have been taking pictures. Don’t expect any of Christmas trees as I would rather take pictures of holiday things found in unexpected places. I was at Penn Station today. The first train I saw mentioned was The Silver Meter that goes to Miami. I first took a train with that name when I was eighteen months old, and my mother and I were going to winter in Miami Beach. We never did that again, but it sounds so grand. We stayed in a very cheap hotel in South Beach called The Waves. I was too big a distraction for my father and it was tax season.

I had a deep desire to get on that train. Then I saw a train to Boston, then one to DC, then….I almost bought a ticket for any destination. But I did the responsible thing and took the train to the train to Newark airport to pick somebody up.

I realized that I’m suffering from wanderlust or a deep desire to be irresponsible and to travel anywhere. For a few minutes I dreamed of taking trains everywhere in America. At the airport I wanted to get onto a plane to London. Then Zurich. When Warsaw seemed exciting, I realized that I have an insatiable desire to go anywhere.

This post doesn’t mean that I’m leaving. New York worked its magic on me many years ago. It takes me a long long time to make a decision like this since I do have to sell my apartment, and the majority of my close friends and family are here.

I feel very at home in New York in a way that I know I will never feel anywhere else. However there are quality of life issues, and New York’s a hard place to be in 24/7. Had I bought a summer home when I bought my apartment–couldn’t have, the coop board doesn’t allow you to buy another home the first year-in the two years to five years after that I might feel very different.

But I had an elderly mother, and my attention was focused on her and other family matters. Then after my Mom died, I was totally screwed up. I realize now that my reaction was healthy. That to mourn for my own mother was more important for me than to mourn for strangers who died in the attacks.

Thanks to bloggers I have been able to work through my grief, and don’t even remember how it feels anymore as I don’t remember how horrible pain feels afterward.

There are no people in the world like real New Yorker’s. Opinionated, brash, funny and caring. But so many have moved.

There’s a statute of Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden at The Port Authority. I decided yesterday that there should be a statue of Larry David on the center mall on Broadway. Most of his lines are so brilliantly New York, my uh very smart friend Lucia assumed that they had been in the lexicon forever. He lives in California but is a very real New Yorker.

I guess most people would want a statue of Jerry Seinfeld who does live in The Beresford on Central Park West where I rejected an apartment that was much larger than this one, cheaper, and in need of much more work. I didn’t look at real estate strictly as an investment but as a place that I wanted to live in.

It’s probably worth twice as much as mine now, but it didn’t have the light or the views and that is priceless to me. Oh, I don’t think Seinfeld should be the statute because David wrote the words, but maybe Seinfeld in the puffy white shirt…..

The info in the following articles does make leaving harder rather than easier because if I don’t sell my apartment, I would have to find a tenant willing to go through the board and to pay at least $2,500 a month for a small apartment. If I sold it, I don’t know if I could ever afford to move back if I wanted to.

The New York Times had several interesting articles about New York this weekend. Actually they were very depressing.

Our city used to be a multi-industry town. Now our economy is all Wall Street all the time. And while the average salary is $8,300 a week, it’s about to layoff employees.

But yes I said “average $8,300 a week, and they all seem to live in my building, or in da hood. Obviously “average” isn’t a precise term, and most people on Wall Street make considerably less because a gilded few make so much, but Wall Street is about to lay off employees.

So the job growth is in non-lucrative service industries, and where are people supposed to live? Though coop and condo prices are falling, the average apartment though not mine, goes for over a mil.

I bought my apartment nine years ago, when there were only seven condo’s on The Upper West Side, and I disliked them all. Last night I thought about the nine references my coop board required: three career; three professional, I used my accountant and two brokers, three personal; fortunately I have many friends in da hood. Lucia’s made me cry it was so beautiful. But nine references to show that I’m not dead wood. Even then I was amazed that I could get the references.

I would never buy a coop or shares in the coop’s corporation again. Living with a coop’s rules is like living in a very luxe dorm.

I was in the fortunate position of being able to pay cash as I bought my apartment just before the country went real estate crazy. While many people would have gotten a mortgage, I didn’t trust the stock market and wanted to ensure that I would always have a home. My ohmigod I’m going to be bag lady scenario. I know that I’m not alone in that fantasy.