Moving Update: Finding an apartment in LES and our new place!

I recently moved to New York City. I moved in with my boyfriend and we are both still unpacking and getting settled. I've gone through a lot of changes in the last few months and it is really great to get started in a new city, even if things have been a little bit stressful. 

It was hard to find an apartment that we both loved, was a good size, was within our budget, and was in Manhattan, but not impossible! We came out from DC for a long weekend, a Thursday through Sunday, in the middle of January and had our own little House Hunters. Jeremy, my boyfriend, was a little reluctant to go to Upper-anywhere and was more insistent on laundry in building than I was, but other than that we agreed on most things. So instead of passive-aggressive arguments we just had a lot of coffee and overpriced snacks between tours. We had a really tense week after we found our dream apartment -- a 1-bedroom at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge in the Lower East Side -- but once we got past the pay stub hump, the rental history explanations, and the co-op application, we were able to celebrate with some champagne and start packing. 

Tips for finding an apartment in Manhattan:

• Ask friends for a broker recommendation. We saw some really crappy apartments with some shady brokers, or rather people who may or may not be brokers that we found on Craigslist. It's not that Craigslist isn't helpful, it is, but going with a reputable broker will make the process a lot easier. You can find an ok apartment without a broker, but we did not and we didn't have time to wait it out. If you are looking for a room in a house/apartment, try something like this Facebook group. 
• Have all your paperwork ready to go before you start tours. This includes: 
  • Letters of Reference from past landlords. I suggest getting these before you leave your prior apartment, because it will be annoying to track down your landlord later and these may become time sensitive. We were asked for a letter of reference after we already started the application process and thankfully my last landlord pulled through for us quickly.
  • A lot of cash -- there's the broker's fee, which is usually about 15% of one year's rent, the security deposit, including first and last month's rent, and anything else that might come up, like an application fee. You often will need it in the form of a certified check, which means you should be conscious of where your bank is and when it is open to make sure getting your money doesn't prevent you from getting your dream apartment. You may also have the option of taking the apartment off the market if you pay a deposit, which we did, so you'll want to factor that cost into the cash you will need ready. 
  • Pay stubs. If you are like us and are self-employed, you should have a contract ready that shows ongoing work, or your business's books in order to share. If you have a willing client, have them write you a letter saying the kind of work you can expect as some proof that you get paid regularly. If you don't have any of those things, you might want to have a guarantor ready just in case, with all of their paperwork. Fortunately, we ended up not needing one.
  • Last two years of tax returns.
• Be patient, but don't hesitate when you find the right place. If it checks all your boxes and you have a really good feeling about a place, you should apply immediately, as apartments go very fast.
• Be realistic. If you have a budget, stick to it. Brokers are likely going to push it anyway. 
• View as many as you can. We viewed almost 20 apartments, some that were a little out of our price range or outside of the bounds of our ideal location, but this made us even more confident about our final choice. 

Good luck finding an apartment! 

Here are photos from our place -- I'll update on our decor progress soon, but right now it's time to bust more boxes open and get organized. 

When you first walk in there is a mini-kitchen area, with a washer and dryer, stove and oven, dishwasher, and microwave. Down the hall is the bathroom and some closet space. 

Our living room has exposed brick and while it doesn't get a ton of natural light, it is a really cozy space. 

The bedroom is the highlight of our apartment. You have an amazing view of the bridge, sky, high rises, and even the Chrysler Building. The double-pane windows keep it pretty quiet for being right next to the bridge. And there is also exposed brick! 

Wanderlust Wednesday: Caracas in the East Village

Caracas, East Village Travel time: not long. Ideal length: an afternoon. Directions: L to 1st ave, F/V to 2nd ave,6 to Astor Place, or N, R to 8th st. Go to 7th St. it's at 93 1/2 E. 7th St. Tips: Bring friends and an appetite.

Ok, so I did not go to Venezuela, but I did eat amazing food at a Venezuelan restaurant. Walked all the way up from Ost Cafe. I have no idea if the food was authentic as I have never been to Venezuela, but I loved every bite. The atmosphere was extremely warm and we literally stayed for hours eating, chatting, pondering our friendships and life journeys. I am so thankful to have seen some of my best friends--regardless of where we are we somehow stay close. From Los Angeles to New York, we're still together, still able to pick up wherever we left off.

Caracas has a few locations in New York and a fantastic lunch special (from noon to 4pm): $8.50 for a soup or salad and any arepa. They carry Blue Bottle coffee, so we were able to enjoy that afterward! I miss my friends already, but I will see them soon--on which coast I do not yet know!

happy wednesday

Heading back to SF for a bit. Here's a hello from the East Village!

Weekend outing: Le Corbusier at SFMOMA

Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes at MOMA

June 15–September 23, 2013

NY Times Review...Celebrating a Poet of 3 Dimensions by MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Great piece about modern Brazil architecture and Le Cobusier...

A year later, 1929, Le Corbusier first visited Rio de Janeiro. The conditions he found were not promising. As fascinating as Brazil was for him, it was also at that moment an isolated and provincial culture, only 17 million in population, mostly rural, and socially backward. What high culture existed was imported from Europe. As Lauro Cavalcanti has noted, the fact that Le Corbusier spoke only French on his Rio visits –apparently without interpretation – meant that his audience was limited to a highly educated, middle class. It seems that the audience for his 1929 talks in Rio numbered as few as ten, mostly the architects (Costa,Niemeyer, et al.) with whom he would go on to collaborate. Even then, Costa recalled dropping in on one of the lectures and leaving again, not really having paid much attention. In the mid-1920s there were only eleven subscriptions in the whole of Brazil to L’Esprit nouveau, edited by Le Corbusier and Amedée Ozenfant, a journal usually considered vital for the development of Modernism. The great Brazilian historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda complained that Brazil’s culture was just ‘grafted’ from elsewhere: ‘this means that a false tradition has arisen which doesn’t stop short of prolonging foreign traditions . . . what we need to is to find our own way’. --- Modern Brazil Architecture, read more here

asterisms...in Berlin

Berlin. August. 2012.

Last August while in Berlin I stopped by one of my favorite art galleries - the Deutsche+Guggenheim. The current show happened to be a commissioned body of work by Gabriel Orozco: Asterisms. Later, the Guggenheim in New York also exhibited the show, resulting in a less-than-desirable review in the NY Times by Ken Johnson.

 "The transformation of detritus into art and chaos into order resonates, for example, with ancient alchemical procedures in which the processing of low-value stuff into priceless material is supposed to have the magical effect of advancing undeveloped souls toward higher orders of consciousness. But any such flights of interpretive fancy are left for viewers to supply, since Mr. Orozco has not framed the project in ways that would connect it to psychological or spiritual spheres. Imaginative liftoff stalls at ground level." - Ken Johnson, Swimming to Shore

While I somewhat agree with Johnson's assessment, I had a very different experience. Instead of consciously ascending to the top floor of the Gugg in NY expecting to see Art, I locked up my borrowed bike on Unter den Linden, wandered into a familiar yet foreign place, floated through the room of found objects, then drank a cappuccino in the gift shop and tried to read German fashion magazines. Not that the experience was trivial, but I just wasn't making it more than it needed to be.

When I first moved to San Francisco I taught 'found art' classes to children. While I've taken some art classes and had been making art in a printshop in Bilbao for the previous year, I didn't think I was the most qualified. I founded my curriculum in my knowledge of the Duchamp's ready-mades, Dadaism and the cultural theory of Adorno (not that my students ever had any idea, but there was a reason behind the cutting and pasting, the de/re-construction). I was helping those kids relearn what art making was - creation (through critical thinking) -  instead of fearing it (like I sometimes did and often still do). We would think about context and connections, but mostly I just wanted them create without fear. To get to a place other then wherever they were. And accept that, enjoy it if they could.

Back to Asterisms. When I wandered into the gallery I wasn't thinking about anything. I was present and able to look at each object, and everything all together, without any preconceived notions. But of course I was thinking about something, and of course I had preconceived notions - these things can't really be erased... they are sometimes just firing off in your subconscious until they resurface again. Like now, I think about that show and how real it felt. All those things just sat there waiting to be reckoned with. If they hadn't been collected and assessed and transported by Orozco and his team, they'd still be sitting on the beach in Mexico or hanging out in a baseball field in New York. But instead they were laid out in this art gallery in Berlin and I was there, too, looking at them. Or walking around them. Or maybe thinking about them and where they had been before they were in that new place. Being objects they are simply used. Nature, man-made materials, human remains, whatever the substance--they are inanimate. Or at least we don't know them to think or talk or move around on their own. And that is what I liked most about the exhibit: I was able to see objects as objects regardless of their origin without being told the context. I got to create the context. I got to reconstruct what I wanted them to be. I liked the colors. I liked that I could just look deep into something and see things and imagine and enjoy the pleasure of it. And I'm sure I thought about consumption and culture and decay, but I mostly remember looking into the colors.

I'm glad Johnson mentioned the video “Whale After Waves” (2012). I stood there for a while watching the sea gulls. I stared at the video and thought about  how I've been in many planes and have landed in all these places and someday I'll be in the ground, landed forever, as we all will be, and that will be that. And maybe a part of me will have an interesting color and be displayed by some future artist that collects things. And that is ok. It's not anything more than what it is.

(On the note of collecting, my flatmate has a blog about things he collects. It's pretty funny.)