April 28, 2008

Fuck you, you fucking fucker**

I am now a New Yorker.

In what is surely the strangest chapter of my more-often-than-not strange life, I will be residing here in the Big Apple for a few months. I have a job, it is not glamorous but it is interesting in ways that will never make my portfolio. I have a home, but only for a brief amount of time. I have friends in the city, which means I have social obligations. I’ve been here two weeks and I’m exhausted already.

This is definitely not the normal ‘moving to New York’ story thus far.

I have two roommates, one of which I’ve not met. She’s a PhD student at nearby Columbia and keeps hours like I did in grad school, which is to say she comes home very few days to sleep for 4 hours, shower and change clothes. So in reality, I have one roommate, who is an architect from St. Louis with a coffee addiction to rival mine. We get on quite well as you might imagine. We live in what is now being billed as Hamilton Heights but is, in reality, Harlem. It’s an interesting neighborhood that reminds me of my triangle in LA where people stare at me because I am a white girl who is quite obviously lost. Eh, whatever. I’m thrilled to have my room even if I am moving in a week. The girl who normally occupies this room is crashing with her boyfriend until next week, when he leaves for a month-long business stint. He’s an actor I guess and I’ll be moving into his room while he’s gone so she can have her room back. It’s literally a case of giving me the shirt off her back and on short notice too. Bless her, because I was this close to hitting Chinatown for recipes for Pitt Bull Stew if I stayed a minute longer in Kevin’s apartment. I have so many bruises and scratches on my legs from a dog named Schmuck.

The commute to work is now a quick 20 minute subway ride. I exit the system at Zabar’s and then walk 2 blocks to the office which is a further 2 blocks from Central Park. I spend my lunch hour there on warm days. It’s cherry blossom time and all the trees are pink. It’s wonderful. The whole city is pink at the moment and next weekend I’m going to the botanical garden’s Cherry Blossom Festival. It’s all so very gentile for a city once renown for porn theatres and muggers.

I like taking the subway for the most part. It is the loudest subway I’ve ever experienced, which, to me, explains why New Yorkers are loud talkers: they’re all deaf from the subways. No wonder they shout when they speak. A train pulls up, even if it isn’t yours, there is no way to communicate. With the curved tunnels and hard surfaces, there are never enough people standing around to absorb the noise. But the artwork in the stations is charming. The mosaic tiles at Lincoln Centre are all opera figures and very dramatic. One station features Alice in Wonderland mosaics; one is decorated with hats from the 1900s, another with silhouetted figures of street life. Every stop has a different theme and I rather like that. Not that it helps me navigate but you know... it breaks up the ride.

My office is a small firm and while I enjoy the day-to-day, it’s nothing I’ll be putting in my portfolio. I’m working on a smoking terrace for a strip club. Yep, from Four Seasons hotels to Debbie Bares It All. (not the actual name, as if you couldn’t tell) I am on the trajectory UP. This is the first time I’ve ever refused, vehemently even, to visit a job site. Loads of stupid jokes in the office for this one, as you can imagine. Oh, and the best part is, on the strength of this work, we’ve just gotten another job from Igor the 25 year old Russian ‘diamond broker’ who wants to open a strip club and pay us in cash.

It doesn’t get better than this really. If I wrote it in a book, people would never believe me, but I’m telling you, this is my life. 2 weeks here and I’m on the periphery of the seedy underbelly of Gotham.

God knows where the money comes from, laundered to within a millimeter of its life, but he actually called to ask if it was ok to pay us in cash. Ummm… yeah, what do you say to that when you’re actually a legitimate business? I mean, money’s money and I’m in this for the paycheck but still, do I want to know the actual source of that cash? Helllll no. And should I feel ethically tied to it? I don’t know… They didn’t cover this in my professional practice classes.

I spent my first weekend here with friends from Dublin. Mark and Eithne just happened to be in New York, so we met up. Nothing much happened, other than loads of laughter and a very funny French waiter. Being with friends from home was a great way to 'move' to a new city.

The following weekend I went to my friend Ali’s birthday party in Brooklyn. It was at a BB-Q place that sold beer by the gallon. Seriously. $32 for a gallon of beer and the food was served on baking sheets, priced by the pound. Did I mention the glasses were mason jars? And that the neighbor was an auto salvage yard? This is the most sophisticated city in the world and I’m sitting on a tractor seat welded to a steel post? Faaaan-tastic.

It was definitely not Sex in the City material but it was a great night.

My upcoming weeks in New York, if they in any way rival the first few weeks, promise to be the stuff of legend. Let’s hope not. I’m tired and old and trying to move back home to Dublin where they are sane. Well…

**an actual phrase in New York and a delightful t-shirt I spotted the other day

1 comment:

D-Vaz said...

Up yours sister! You haven't talked about pizza or bagels once. Makes me believe those New Yorkers are full of sh*t when they promote how good that stuff is. hahahahaha. kidding! Glad everything is going well. If you need a consultant on nudie bars, you've got Poerio's and my number.