Lesson learnt when considering leaving Manhattan.... Don't

As many of you know - my lease has come up for renewal and thanks to the hefty increase in rent (ridiculous) I was to move in with a friend of mine temporarily. And then eventually find an apartment together. You also know what they say about best laid plans. So now with me having to leave the apartment by the 14th and C at the end of Aug....... we are in a bind. Finding a decent apartment in NYC within 2 weeks?

How was I to know that the holy grail would be the quest my friend and I found ourselves on this week? You'd think given the city that the quest would be simple. Clean, 2 bedroom apartment in decent area of Manhattan..... not too expensive, not too small, short term lease.

What can I say about apartment hunting in NYC? After going through the experience twice in the last year - I have to say that I am hard pressed to think of worse ways to spend my time (ok maybe attending a Manolo sale without my credit card).

NYC moves at the speed of lightning for everything. Including apartments for rent. Apt's disappear faster than free beers at the pub. And those are the crap apartments. Apartments smaller than most people's bathrooms in Aus and where you'd go through at least 2 bottles of antibacterial cleanser just to get through the door. In the words of my friend "they are all muck!"

So we have desperately been scrambling.... including actually considering New Jersey, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Am not kidding.... so serious - we trekked all the way up to South Bronx to check out a "fabulous 1400sq ft apartment" in an "up and coming area". Hmmmm After it took us close to an hour to get to SoBro (the new name for South Bronx) which meant passing through Harlem in order to change subways, we made it to a rainy and "not so up and coming" area. After walking a mile to the apartment (pass a number of project buildings) we made it to what was certainly a 1400sq ft apartment - however what he omitted to tell us was that there was so much junk that there was no room for either C, me or either of our shoe collections. The fact that there was a "police precinct" around the corner that was stated as a positive to living there and McDonalds and KFC were actual "restaurants" we might want to consider dining at.... pretty much helped us decide we were not quite ready to leave Manhattan. I will not be leaving Manhattan for quite a while to come thanks to this experience. And yep D ..... that includes any pub crawl in Brooklyn.

Anyway not all is lost... we finally found a great 2 bedroom down near Wall Street. Should (hopefully) be signing the sublease this week with move in on Fri. It's got partial river views, a kickass rooftop area, games room with massive plasma and pool table which should keep us out of trouble. Ok so the high population of yuppies is a bit of a downer..... but who can complain when we're a short walk to the subway and to the east river/battery park. Will at least keep us covered until the end of the year.