i blogged a long time ago about "the hunt", one of my favorite columns in the NYtimes. the most recent one features a girl (umich grad! woot!) who's looking for a 1-bedroom apartment in which she could create a second bedroom by building a wall. sounds pretty good. then the usual folly ensues, where we discover people's hidden prejudices and sheer stupidity.i highlight only the best quotes:
A wall divided the living room, creating a third bedroom. The guys were investment bankers, “and were making way more money” than she and the friends she was planning to live with earned, Ms. Stephens said. (Two-bedrooms in Stuyvesant Town start at $4,025.) The wall was so nicely installed it looked like “part of the original structure," she said.
It was on to Brooklyn. “Every place I looked, I looked because people had told me about it,” Ms. Stephens said. “It was all hearsay: So-and-so is living in this neighborhood; you should look there. I guess we were looking in Park Slope. We didn’t know much about Brooklyn.” But it felt far away, and nothing there seemed worth the price.
[Ed note: these girls were willing to spend nearly $2,500 for a 1-bedroom. What were they looking at?!]
Ms. Stephens had Stuyvesant Town in the back of her mind. Now that she was certain she had a roommate, they could afford a one-bedroom. With a wall, of course. Ms. Pakfar wasn’t sure what Stuyvesant Town was. “I had seen it in a cab going down the F.D.R., and I always thought it was projects,” she said.
Both are happy in their new home. “It feels very grown up and clean,” Ms. Stephens said. Some of her colleagues and former sorority sisters also live in Stuyvesant Town, so “I have neighbors I know, which is nice when you are moving away from home.”[Note to self: don't go to Stuy-town]
