As I sit in the living room of my new apartment with a gin and tonic to soothe the muggy spring air away, I can’t help but wonder… how long does it take to be considered a “New Yorker”? I pilfered that famous Carrie Bradshaw line because it was Sex and the City that theorised – that’s certainly where I first heard it, but who knows where it originated – that it takes five years of living in this city to be able to call yourself a local. Five years of dodging its slow walking pedestrians, enduring its humid spring showers, navigating its grid of criss-crossing streets, and accidentally stepping of rubbish-feasting rats late at night in Chinatown. That latter act is, so I’ve been old, a New Yorker rite of passage. Five years and a rat: they should put that on the pamphlet.
It’s not like Sex and the City is anything to go by for realistic depictions of life in Manhattan – a stunning apartment on the Upper West Side with the salary of a weekly rag columnist? I don’t think so! This article at GetNYC puts the number of years at around seven or eight. How about we slice the difference and call it six? No matter who you listen to though, it’s looking more and more like I’ll never be able to say “I am a New Yorker” unless a magical money tree suddenly sprouts from between the cracks outside my new apartment. Who knows what the future will bring, but I doubt it will be that.
Oh, yes, I’ve said “new apartment” twice now. At the start of June I officially became a resident of the city of New York and not just a glorified tourist. Last week I moved in to the suburb of Astoria in Queens. I think I did a good job in prolonging the agony of rent long enough by crashing on friends’ couches and spare rooms, but the time eventually had to come and thankfully it was a rather painless exercise that belied the usual horror stories of finding an affordable apartment in New York.
Glenn’s room before and during the unpacking process…
I am one of four in the apartment, located on 30th Avenue of Queens’ north-west. It is supposedly the most culturally diverse street in all of the five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island). Whether it is or it isn’t, I know it’s very hard to walk a block and not be hit by the wide variety of cultures that can be found here. It makes ordering take away really hard, that’s for sure.
I am paying less to live here than I was in Melbourne – albeit with more flatmates (“roommates” as they’re confusingly called over here – I’m not sharing a room with them!) However, these guys’ schedules are so off the beaten path that I might as well be living alone for as often as I see them. And furthermore, I’m living only 15 minutes from the centre of New York (at least in regards to the public transport system), Times Square, which makes getting anywhere else relatively simple.
And after!
Now that I’ve finally gotten up off my arse and decided to sort my room out, it’s looking more or less like a home. No half-filled suitcases on the floor with clothes strewn about. No piles of papers that I have kept for no reason. No stacks of LP records and books atop one another without a shelf. Okay, I’m lying – there’ll never be a day when I have no clothes thrown about or papers that I look at and wonder “what on Earth am I keeping this for?”
Still, at least I feel like I have achieved a sense of balanced normalcy that had been alluding me. It’s a calming effect knowing I have a bed to go home to every night, being able to come and go as I please without the worry of disrupting gracious hosts. I have a large space all of my own with easy access to everything that this city has to offer (and an all-night transport system that allows for 4am drinking sessions in the Lower East Side to not end in expensive taxi rides home). What more could I possibly want? For the time being, at least: not much. We’ll have to revisit that question at a later date though.