The Times seems to think everyone needs to live in an apartment by themselves with their own bedroom on the Upper East Side to be comfortable. Precisely. However, there is a very comfortable world outside of this that is graspable for many--it just doesn't get much coverage. My apartment in Astoria, where I moved when I came back to the city in 2007 and lived until last year, was a 2-bedroom in a triplex with a separate entrance, two large bedrooms, a bathroom, a large kitchen with separate dining room, and a living room. My rent was $1600/month, which I shared with a roommate. Heat and water were included, we paid electric and cable only. My average rent was $850-900 a month. I would have stayed in the apartment forever, but I moved out to live with my fiance.
The apartment was much nicer and larger than most friends who lived in Manhattan or parts of Brooklyn. A friend recently moved into a four-bedroom duplex in Brooklyn for $3000/month. Good apartments for all budgets are still very much out there, most people just don't know where to look.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 8/11/13 at 10:44 AM
