7th between C & D is my would-be home. I have an acquaintance there and when he goes away (sometimes for a couple months) I rent his place -- he makes it affordable -- and burn up all my vacation days for the year, some years, just to live in that city. Man.
I grew up right outside it and in the mid-80s in high school, I figured my future was to live in a giant loft with a freight elevator, full of half-finished art projects, in a crap hood like TriBeCa, where I'd throw parties and 100 strangers would show up, and once in a while I'd recognize one as an actor or rock star.
I ended up going to a couple of parties like that in the 90s, but I never had a NYC job that paid me enough to live there. So I slept in NJ most nights but spent all my free time in the city, trying to stretch my spending money in low-cost East Village bars. That area was full of streetwalkers too, and rock clubs where friends' bands played, and every night felt fraught with mystery and promise. For a while instead of going back to NJ, I couch-surfed, living out of a duffel between Mott St, Gramercy Park where a painter friend paid $850 (way beyond me) for cavernous digs with a fireplace, and a few places uptown, Astoria -- wherever I had a friend... then I ended up dating a girl whose dad bought her a place in Hoboken, so that became my base. But I watched Hoboken gentrify at a dizzying pace, and just wanted to go live someplace near Tompkins Square, which would Never Change. In the end, every inch of NYC seemed too expensive... so I quit my job and moved to ultra-cheap (it was!) Los Angeles, figuring I'd seen so many shit movies, I could easily write a better one and return to NYC flush with cash...
Twenty years later that plan has not worked out 100 percent. But it is still, maybe, who knows, the plan. I do feel a bit like a man without a country.
I just started reading Chris FrantzтАЩs book Remain in Love and Jesus, does that take me back. Like Roy says, sometimes I still dream about that era and some of those clubs and dive bars from the old days.
Almost the same here with walk-up and rent. I wonder how many times we passed one another on the street, LOL.
7th between C & D is my would-be home. I have an acquaintance there and when he goes away (sometimes for a couple months) I rent his place -- he makes it affordable -- and burn up all my vacation days for the year, some years, just to live in that city. Man.
I grew up right outside it and in the mid-80s in high school, I figured my future was to live in a giant loft with a freight elevator, full of half-finished art projects, in a crap hood like TriBeCa, where I'd throw parties and 100 strangers would show up, and once in a while I'd recognize one as an actor or rock star.
I ended up going to a couple of parties like that in the 90s, but I never had a NYC job that paid me enough to live there. So I slept in NJ most nights but spent all my free time in the city, trying to stretch my spending money in low-cost East Village bars. That area was full of streetwalkers too, and rock clubs where friends' bands played, and every night felt fraught with mystery and promise. For a while instead of going back to NJ, I couch-surfed, living out of a duffel between Mott St, Gramercy Park where a painter friend paid $850 (way beyond me) for cavernous digs with a fireplace, and a few places uptown, Astoria -- wherever I had a friend... then I ended up dating a girl whose dad bought her a place in Hoboken, so that became my base. But I watched Hoboken gentrify at a dizzying pace, and just wanted to go live someplace near Tompkins Square, which would Never Change. In the end, every inch of NYC seemed too expensive... so I quit my job and moved to ultra-cheap (it was!) Los Angeles, figuring I'd seen so many shit movies, I could easily write a better one and return to NYC flush with cash...
Twenty years later that plan has not worked out 100 percent. But it is still, maybe, who knows, the plan. I do feel a bit like a man without a country.
I just started reading Chris FrantzтАЩs book Remain in Love and Jesus, does that take me back. Like Roy says, sometimes I still dream about that era and some of those clubs and dive bars from the old days.