We love our little New York City one-bedroom apartment, and it has served us well over the years. We’ve even made it work with the baby and have somehow managed not to constantly trip all over each other. In fact, it’s a point of pride that our one-bedroom apartment works for the three of us (plus canine). We brag, publicly, about how we’ve harnessed our collective creative powers to quite literally utilize every last available square inch. For example, we had a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, insulated, champagne-colored silk curtain installed in the living room to make a cute little 8×12 “nursery,” while still maintaining a “common living area.”
This past weekend however, while joking around, somebody (I’ve since forgotten if it was the wife or me) compared our cramped quarters to the Lower East Side tenements of 19th-century Russian Jewish immigrants.
It was all very funny. Ha ha ha.
But then, over the next couple of hours, the comment sort of lingered in the air and began to make our little New York City one-bedroom apartment (which we love so much!) start feeling, well, kind of sad.
So, we commenced upon a (cursory) search for a little New York City two-bedroom apartment.
This, as anyone even remotely familiar with NYC two-bedroom apartments is certainly aware, is enough to make one feel as if the universe has tipped into the realm of the absurd. Prices notwithstanding (dollar amounts which can only be described as ridiculous), New York City two-bedroom apartments tend to skew what otherwise ordinary human mammals might view as simply “residences fit for human occupation.” What we in the City see as big, beautiful, and perfect, other ordinary human mammals residing beyond the five boroughs would almost certainly consider “tiny little shit holes, and people will pay what for this?! New Yorkers are crazy!”
Perhaps they are right. Perhaps we are crazy. Even with supply and demand out of the equation, these prices are certainly gouged right out the left side of the wazoo, but what’s a person to do? Nobody wants to live like Russian Jewish immigrants in Lower East Side tenements at the turn of the last century, no matter how much those same persons might love their tiny little New York City homes.
But while we’re still here, in our tiny little tenement, why not have a little fun at the tenement’s expense? What’s the harm in a little joke now and then, even if it does make the place feel a little bid sad?
So, ha ha ha. Yes, yes, yes. Funny, funny, funny.
It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an apartment.
