Teenage Investment Bankers and a Starbucks on Every Corner: Welcome to the New East Village (or So Long and Thanks For All the Sushi)

I complain a lot about being broke, I know. But that's because being broke takes up so much brainspace. It's hard to think of anything else when your credit card is maxxed out and your landlord can't wait another week to get the rent. I've literally had to choose between buying shampoo and contact solution as recently as last month, because I couldn't afford both (answer: contact solution--this is why I keep the shampoo from every hotel I ever stay in). I do a lot of math in my head and I worry all the time. I worry so much that various people who love me have suggested at various times that maybe it would do me good to invest in some Xanax. But I've realized recently that it's not me that needs to change. There's absolutely nothing wrong with my brain chemistry. The problem is New York.

Fair New York, where citizens wallow in filth and stink and maggots and blackouts and murder and poverty. And that's just the well-educated, white collar luckies like me!

Of course, I don't even live in New York. I live in Jersey City, the sixth borough. But I work in New York and I have lived in New York and Jersey City is becoming just as expensive as New York, so let's agree to do away with the semantics.

I've never really been able to afford my very humble studio apartment. There have always been options, I realize. I could move farther out in Jersey City, where hoards of teenage boys have been shooting, robbing and generally terrorizing people all summer. Or I could go the other way, and get a place in Queens or outer Brooklyn (even dirty Billyburg is too expenso for me now). But I don't know a soul in Queens or outer Brooklyn. I only see my friends who live in inner Brooklyn every few months as it is. And pardon me for not wanting to double my commute again this year. I could look on Craigslist and move in with some strangers and hope that all the horror stories I hear about people who look on Craigslist and move in with strangers don't happen to me. Forget about Manhattan entirely. Artists and musicians and writers are fleeing the East Village like its on fire. The only people who can afford to move into the neighborhood where I first lived when I came to the city are freshly graduated investment bankers accompanied by all the behavioral stereotypes they seem happy to reinforce.

I read a good article recently about the housing crisis in New York. A square foot of apartment space in NYC costs $1100. Approximately ten $100 bills take up one square foot of floor. Literally in New York, you can spread your money out across the floor of an apartment, and if you can still see the floor, you can't afford the place.

(I include Hoboken and Jersey City in this equation, since, like the outer boroughs, their rents are relative to the Manhattan market. But that doesn't really matter anyway: New Jersey real estate is the most expensive in the country.)

So a change of venue seems out of the question. What I really need is to make more money. Having recently taken on two part-time jobs on top of my full-timer, I'm nearly at the point where I can both pay rent AND live acceptably each month, but of course I've given up my writing time. Hence the scant blog entries since June. And my fiction? Forget about it.

This is the thing: there are ways to live in or near New York, but only at a great sacrifice to my quality of life. I already spend half my existence on the train so I don't have to spend half my paycheck on my apartment (except that I do spend half my paycheck on my apartment anyway, and of everyone I know, my rent is the lowest).

This used to be okay, this sacrifice. Used to be that you sacrificed some amenities, some comforts, for the privilege of living in the epicenter of culture, art and invention that is New York City. But now the artists are leaving, unable to afford the rents even in the outer bouroughs, which aren't as friendly to them anyway. They're moving to college towns and smaller cities where their work is still valued, and they can afford apartments with separate rooms, fresh air, electricity and (dare to dream) maybe even a dishwasher. And it's sad to think that the artists who stay might be forced out of art altogether to pursue the kind of employment that pays, but demands so much of their time and attention they have nothing left at the end of the day. Used to be everyone in New York had their day job and the thing they did for their souls--their novel, their comic book, their movie script, their acting career. More and more I feel like the day jobs are taking over. And I have no idea how freelancers afford this place. That seems an impossibility anymore.

(What's really dumb is I say "used to" like I've lived here forever. I've only lived in or near NYC for a total of 6 years. That I can say "used to" just attests to the fact that things seem to be going downhill quickly.)

It's sad that this housing crisis--which has been getting steadily worse since I graduated from college in 1999, despite a brief uptick after 9/11--could be the death of New York as we know it. With all the chain stores and Starbucks and high-rise apartment buildings going up in formerly-affordable, even rundown neighborhoods, where liveth the people that make New York diverse and interesting and something more than an overgrown Hartford, Connecticut? More and more, they live in Section 8 housing. What a consolation prize.

And so it's time to do the inevitable and leave NYC. Fuck surviving, it's time to live.

I know I sound bitter in this post, but all I feel now that I've made the decision to move is relief. I know none of my complaints are new or novel. But it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to. At some point, it ceases to be charming to be the house salad girl, and I have hit that point. I'm 29, staring down the barrel of 30. I'd like to be able to afford an entree before I turn 40.

I'll be applying to PhD programs this fall and moving to Iowa City in December where I will work part time and write full time till I hear back from schools and decide on the next big move. I can't wait. It's going to be fictiontastic. Also, the lovely Brad will be moving with me to work on his own art in one of our two bedrooms in our future apartment! My little mind quivers with anticipation.

I am excited, but still a little sad about leaving New York. For every five things I won't miss (excessive horn honking, crowded sidewalks, rats, roaches, black mold) there is one thing I will miss (cheap flowers). (Human feces in the subway, electrified sidewalk grates, grocery extortion, hipsters, filth) (fabulous sushi).