magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

I somewhat accidentally stumbled across a listing for an apartment in Inwood this afternoon. Inwood is the neighbourhood way up at the tippy-top of Manhattan. Up at like 200th Street and above. That's a long way from East Williamsburg, Bushwick, Park Slope, or even Roosevelt Island. Which is partly why I followed up on it. The other reason was that it sounded like a really fucking cool apartment:

Deluxe (approx 800sf+) Gut Renovated Prewar Alcove Loft Studio!!!!

Spacious sun-filled alcove mini-loft completely gut renovated in order to provide all new amenities while maintaining its prewar charm!

• High ceilings with re-touched original prewar mouldings and oversized windows with great exposure/city views (FANTASTIC LIGHT all day - you won't turn your lights on until 8pm!)
• HUGE sunken living room with crown mouldings, carved wall recesses, and wall to wall windows
• HUGE sleeping alcove with corner windows and views
• Large entry foyer, perfect for home office!
• Separate dressing room with walk-in closet
• Dark stained and sanded oak strip hardwood floors throughout
• Seperate renovated windowed kitchen
• Renovated bathroom with pedestal sink, vanity mirror and deep tub
• TONS AND TONS of closet/storage space
• Cats and Dogs of all sizes OK!

Well-maintained prewar elevator/laundry building on quiet tree-lined block (west of broadway) steps from both the A/1/9! Attentive super lives in basement.

I canceled an appointment to look at an apartment in Bushwick so that I could take the A all the way up town because I thought that this might be the place. Rob and Marie just found an amazing turn of the (last) century floor through three bedroom. At work on Monday John.S couldn't talk about anything but the great apartment he had just signed a lease for. So far nothing I've looked at has really moved me with the possible exception of the Southside lofts that there's no way I could afford. The picture that I was forming in my head of the place in this ad might just have been it.

Now, I know that all real estate ads exaggerate square footage. It's like the old joke, 'Why are women bad at math? Because all their life they are told that this much is eight inches.' And the point is, the more ludicrous the exaggeration, the more you're telling a joke and not describing an apartment. It would have been pushing it to say that this place was 500sf.

It was basically a medium-sized sunken living / bed / dining room, a tiny kitchen, and a tiny bathroom which you walked through a slightly widened hall to get to. You could conceivably walk into one of the two closets if you had nothing hanging in it. The 'foyer' was about 4x4 feet, and if you put any furniture in it you would end up blocking one or more of: the front door, the coat closet, or the entry to the kitchen.

As for light and views, one corner of the main room, the 'sleeping alcove' we are led to believe, although there was nothing spatially to distinguish it from the rest of the room, had three rather normal sized windows, looking primarily at the other wing of the building across the entry courtyard. I can be a little forgiving over space. I don't need much space. A bed, a bookshelf, two desks, maybe a couch. But 'wall to wall windows' and 'city views'? If you say it, fucking mean it.

People are going to come and look at the space before signing a lease. You are not going to trick them into anything. No matter how cute your assistant is.

I might continue looking in Inwood though. The building itself had a beautiful art deco lobby, as many in the neighborhood seemed to. Almost everything up there is a few blocks from a park. The population seems very diverse, judging from the people I passed on the street. And the A train runs express and reaches midtown in under 30 minutes.

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Leaving Inwood I called Ellen, got her voicemail, but didn't leave a message. I ate dinner by myself at VP2. And home, on my roof in Brooklyn, took a few drags off of a painfully stale cigarette before throwing it, and the rest of the pack away, and called my dad, who I hadn't spoken to in about a month, not even noticing the skyline of Manhattan in the distance.