Life in the 'hood

Gooooood Morning World!

I hope this blog is informative for any and all readers. My intention is to share my experiences as I live here in a Manhattan apartment, known as an affordable housing apartment.

Mine is one story among a possible 2.5 million stories of persons who live in Manhattan; or, one story among the 8.5 million other New Yorkers who live any of the five boroughs in the greatest City in the world.

Well, here it is a beautiful September New York late summer/ autumn type of day: September 18th 2009.

As I mentioned, I live in a apartment in New York's 'affordable housing', which I must say right off, is not bad, all things considered.

The apartment is a proper one bedroom, (living room, bath, separate kitchen, bedroom) about 500 functional square feet in all, is high up on a twenty one story building (13th floor, unobstructed westerly view that gets great sunsets) and is clean and in good working order: fridge, stove, bathroom. Lots of cabinet space and closet space.

Considering some of the apartments I saw in my affordable price range when I was shopping for an apartment to rent, in and about New York City from early Summer 2008, to the time I found this place in March 2009, this is a great place. I ought to know. I've lived in many places both in and around New York City, the US and in Europe.

What is bad is the way some tenants treat the infrastructure of the building. More on that later.

My apartment and my life here generally is good to excellent, considering the factors which will reveal themselves over time. I'll leave those aspects of my life to other chapters, but for now this blog is about my life in the neighborhood, or otherwise known as: life in the 'hood.

It will relate from today onward.

Living here was not necessarily my first option, but in a manner of speaking it became my only option, once various realities set in. And, the available apartments in Manhattan and in the Bronx where I looked, were way overpriced for less than I have now. Much, much, less.

In comparison, the other places I saw (when compared to this place) were nothing short of insulting. This place has great promise and on balance is quite decent.

The maintenance guys are the hardest working folks I have ever encountered. Unfortunately, some of the tenants (and visitors, I suppose) create havoc by what they do to the place. I do hope that the building management finds a way to better monitor the comings and goings so the everyday tenants who are seemingly decent law abiding, hard working people, get to live in a healthy and safe environment for them and their families.

For the most part this building is very safe, and kept as clean as it is humanly possible by overworked staff.

I can and will only report what my experiences are.

As with most days it is fairly quiet and the ambient noise from the street is similar to the noise from any New York City street, in most neighborhoods. The building faces an avenue and thus we get the constant din of cars, buses and fire truck and police siren noises.

One thing that especially bothers me is loud music which we hardly get, that is music from either the street or from other tenants. I find the unnecessary banging of doors quite disturbing.

(The sound of music from a fake Mister Softee truck – it’s not even a real Mister Softee truck!- is also very annoying to a fault and the truck comes around about 4PM daily, and leaves and comes back about every half hour till 7PM or so. The constant playing of the Mister Softee music while it is stationary is enough to drive a sane person crazy. I have called 311 several times in the past. Maybe, some day, the ice cream trucks will stop playing the soundtrack of the music, as in other neighborhoods where the trucks do not play the music when they are stationary.)

On my floor, the doors to this section of the building and the stairs have no fixture to minimize the slamming and I often put home made stoppers in the bottom of the doors to keep them open and prevent slamming. Some tenants remove the stoppers for their own reasons, and I keep putting new ones down. I make the stoppers from duct tape and cardboard. Today I also put a sign: "Please stop slamming the doors and please do not remove stoppers." Let’s see what happens.

I notice other tenants in other parts of the building do the same, and some visitors or tenants remove the stoppers for their own reasons.

Right now all is quiet and I must do other things. More next time.

Feel free to write and let me know if you enjoy this blog and wish me to focus on other aspects of life in the hood.