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If nothing else, zdg, the stories that people come up with in response to your question should make you feel smart for waiting for a more, shall we say, financially established phase of your life to move to NYC! Everyone has a war story about their first low-rent hole in the wall. My first place was on an industrial thoroughfare, with one window overlooking the BQE and my bedroom looking out onto a beautiful auto repair shop. I knew that going in... what I didn't know is how freaking loud air brakes are at 3 AM. But overall it really was not so terrible.
Don't move into a building with food -- meaning one with a restaurant, bar, or grocery store in it, or even two or three buildings away from it. The further your apartment is from food-related businesses, the less often you will see roaches or mice.
This is New York. There is noise. There are honking horns, sirens at all hours, predawn garbage pick-ups, bars closing at 4:00. Car alarms are not the bane they were some years ago, and they only wail for a few minutes (instead of eternally, as they used to).
You will not want to have a window over a street or avenue that serves as a bus route. You want a view of the river? Beware fog horns, even on the clearest of days. And you probably don't want to live right smack by a school with students of any age.
Take these and other city sounds as a given. The noise of nearby neighbors is another matter.
Really, you can do all the noise research you want. That won't stop them from jackhammering the street day and night right after you move in. Or my favorite throwing some metal plates over a gaping hole in the street. Trucks going over that all night is something of a "NY lullabye". It's going to be loud. All the time. Seriously.
Did you move in and find out the first night that there was a bowling alley above your flat? Did you forget to ask about heat or running water? Anything else that is unique to NY that someone renting for there for the first time might not think about?
Does that nail salon below on the gfround floor open 24/7 or are those girls there conducting a "side" business? (If the latter, do other tenants get discounts?)
good one!! ya know i was searching my address recently and found my building had an illegal sports betting operation going on in 1997 before i moved in
Does that nail salon below on the gfround floor open 24/7 or are those girls there conducting a "side" business? (If the latter, do other tenants get discounts?)
Yeah see, I would have just assumed the answer to all those questions was "yes."
Yeah see, I would have just assumed the answer to all those questions was "yes."
Well, glad you're a man who knows his way around! Friend of mine relocated from Boise, assumed that he was going downstairs for a late night manicure and ended up being called something sounded like "john" by two plainclothes officers, and he found himself in the lockups with the manicurist and a couple of customers.
Anyway, you seem aware of stuff, so there's nothing I can add to your thread. Good luck with the move!
Last edited by Moderate Guy; 12-04-2008 at 09:52 PM..
Anyway, you seem aware of stuff, so there's nothing I can add to your thread. Good luck with the move!
Well, I appreciate that. And I'm really not directing this at you, I swear. I just find it funny when people from NY or LA honestly believe that if you're not from that city, you couldn't possibly be street wise enough to know when you're walking into a drug deal, sex shoppe, or sting operation.
Are there just that many yokels moving to NY??
I think I was aware of all that crap when I was 18, living in Austin and it wasn't like I had some hardscrabble life or had to "grow up quick."
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