Luma

Real Estate can be heartbreaking in NYC.

I arrived in the West Village in the early '90's. It had lost most of whatever bohemian feeling it may have had at one time but the rents were still semi-reasonable and it wasn't THE WEST VILLAGE then.  It was a nice place to live.  A friend of mine thought she might be leaving her apartment on Hudson Street and told me to stay in touch with her.  Things weren't like they are now where saying the words "I am looking for an apartment" seems to be like shouting into a canyon.  Or would a canyon magnify sound?  (I live in New York.  I don't know.)  I looked at about 10 places - which seemed like a lot at the time - and then I saw her apartment -- she was so cosmopolitan and the apartment was gorgeous.  The landlord seemed to find her recommendation of me enough and it worked out.  If I had only known then what my later years of apartment searching would be like, I would have savored that experience even more.

I lived on Hudson Street for 8 years.  Things started to change mid-way through once the New York Times started espousing how hot the area was with Sunday Real Estate section cover stories blaring the words "THE WEST VILLAGE."  I would cringe and hope my landlord hadn't seen it.  But of course he had. That was when my rent started going up $250 a month!  (insanity, eh?)  My landlord thought he was giving me a break.  He was a good guy but his rationale was that he had to make up for the years when he couldn't find a tenant.  (That is an even harder situation to imagine now.)

As nice an apartment as it was, and as much as I enjoyed the West Village, I could not find any sense of community there.  I met some 'old timers' recently and they clearly felt it had remained the same and community burst from the seams there.  I found much greater sense of community and connectedness with my neighbors in Park Slope, but I also lived a different type of life in Brooklyn than in Manhattan.

The thing is, people in places like Park Slope believe that, despite the changes - loss of diversity, more upscale chi chi shops and restaurants, kicking out of 'old-timers' - that the area can retain the community and realness while becoming increasingly affluent.  The bohemian/artist friendly nature seems to go and then everything falls in line, like ducks in a row.  It changes.  (Look at almost all of Manhattan.)  It may take awhile but it does.  Affluence has a cost. 

In my Park Slope apartment (yes, in a brownstone), I mostly loved living there.  I loved the block, the location, the ambiance, if you will.  I really inhabited the place.  I had *my* neighborhood squirrels, birds, trees.  I knew my neighbors.  I sat on *my* stoop and it was magical.  That was a difficult place to leave(last year). 

I wonder about the collective trauma we're all sort of forced to face over where we live.  No place seems ever entirely secure.  Not that anything is ever totally secure in life but, in New York, real estate is ruthless.  The last two times I've looked for an apartment (both times because the existing building was being sold!), I have looked at many more places than any person should have to(or want to).  In year 2000, I looked at 109 apartments!  The second time (most recently) I looked at 73. I figure the next time, maybe I'll only have to look at, say, 35.  And then after that, something really should just fall into my lap!!

Post 2, The Naked Guy

I envisioned Luma to be about encounters, things that 'happen.'  Of course, that can encompass a vast territory.  Things 'happen' all the time but some are more notable than others. 

The New York Times Magazine, in its year-end issue covering people who died in 2006, wrote about Andrew Martinez aka "The Naked Guy."  I'd never heard of Martinez before but I was touched by his story, recounted very thoughtfully there.  In the early 1990's, at college at Berkeley, Martinez decided to take a stance on the idea of, well, wearing clothes.  He felt that it was a form of oppression.  His reaction? To not wear any.  For awhile there, he was a media story.  Somehow, in a very different time period and societal millieu, he got 'away' with not wearing clothes in public. Even though that was not that long ago, it's hard to imagine anything like that happening today in our rule-oriented society.  It seems that instead of freeing up, we just get more restrictive.  According to the story, The Naked Guy felt "that all clothes were a form of repression and that by not wearing them he was making people think about the coercive nature of convention." (Jason Zengerle, NY Times Magazine, Dec. 31st, 2006.)  Martinez had a strong position but over time the school did indeed pass a rule banning not wearing clothes.  The media lost interest, as did other supporters.  Apparently he got angry and he also developed (or was it caused by the loss of being taken seriously?) a form of mental illness.  He didn't want people to know about this because he didn't want people to think that being the Naked Guy was a form of mental illness and therefore lose credibility for those actions.  And I understand that.  Our society is so frustrating.  If you are not frustrated by it, you have probably accepted it. 

This past year, after some 'run-ins' with the law, in a jail, at age 33, Martinez committed suicide.  It's sad.  If his cause, if his beliefs had continued to get attention, would this have transpired differently?  Could he have recognized that things change, people move on, and that's part of life too?  Hard to say.

Rose, the Missing Turtle

It seems fitting I should start my blog on December 29th, six months til my b'day.  I always look at the half way mark as a time when you realize all you still want to accomplish before that big day.  It's like a bell goes off!  Plus December is such a great month and January feels so new, so barren in a way.  I'm always happy once February comes along. 

So, recently, while out walking, I came across a flyer on stark white paper on a lamp post with a hand-drawn picture of a turtle on it with the following text :

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HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TURTLE?

(insert hand drawn turtle)

Name is Rose.

Very small and fast.

email:  turtle@shishigami.com

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Cute but sad.  I looked around but, alas, no sighting of Rose, the turtle.

I went back to take a photo of the flyer but it was gone, just a few white shreds there stuck to the post.  I don't know if that means the turtle was found or just some mean-spirited person came by and ripped the sign down.  It doesn't quite pack the same punch without the picture but you get the idea.

How would a little turtle survive out on its own, running fast away from any person who came near?

 

That same day, I saw two parrots in the trees, not very high up, on a random street in Brooklyn.  I stopped to admire.  They seemed like they knew what they were doing and where they were.  They had found a tree that had some kind of big berry on it that they were eating -- meticulously unpeeling and unearthing the fruits of this berry.  It was fascinating.  I don't know where they went at night - perhaps they came from Greenwood Cemetery ? - but I hoped for the best.