Apartment Rentals in New York City – what you need to know.
Monthly Archives: February 2008
For a flat fee, you can sit on the NYC subway\’s longest train line — the A train — from 207th St in Inwood all the way out to the Atlantic Ocean at Far Rockaway. I haven\’t done this yet, but Kevin P., a Listings Agent at RDNY.com who lives in Inwood, has done it and he says it takes…
Five Points, the area near Columbus Park in downtown Manhattan so lovingly portrayed in The Gangs of New York, is nowadays part of Chinatown. The movie faithfully shows you the violence, squalor, filth, and poverty of The Points, but it missed the vibrancy of NYC\’s melting pot. In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Liam Neeson are Irish immigrants who are…
Don’t wait – anticipate! Try not to call the Super unless there’s a problem you can’t fix. You should have a renter’s tool kit that will help you take care of small problems: (1) 2 pairs of pliers: one needle-nosed, one regular (2) 2 screwdrivers: one flat, one Phillips head (3) A hammer (4) A sturdy rope, like the kind…
Guess who can be your best ally when you\’re looking at an apartment. (Besides RDNY.com, of course.) Yup, the Super. Many renters meet the building Super when you look at a vacant apartment. Many small landlords defer to the Super\’s opinion about prospects because how you talk and act during the showing reveals a lot about you. So always be…
The Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers are eternal New Yorkers. They all were born over 100 years ago but their legacies resonate into the 21st Century. The Three Stooges were mainly the Howard brothers (born Horwitz), Lithuanian Jews who grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn at the turn of the 1900s. Brownsville had a well deserved reputation as a vicious…
Two common problems that you can fix yourself: #1: The chain attached the flapper gets tangled and the flapper does not drop back into place after the water rushes out. The toilet tank will not re-fill and you\’ll hear water running all the time. Just untangle the chain so the flapper can drop back into place. Most times, all you…
In my office, we have a surprising number of New Yorkers who have no idea how to deal with a malfunctioning toilet. Our poor RDNY.com Office Manager has to fix all toilet problems and mop up overflows, which takes her away from more important things like arranging the NCAA office pool (lol). Here is my explanation about how your toilet…
Here\’s an interesting article from the New York Observer that says rents are going down in Doorman buildings:
What can you do about a construction site next to your building that you think is all wrong for your neighborhood? Who do you go to in local government to complain? According to NYC’s organizational chart, the Mayor, the five Borough Presidents and the City Council are equal partners in NYC government. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is our current mayor, and…
When you’ve lived in NYC long enough, you’ll know the addresses of the buildings you see on TV as the homes of the characters. RDNY.com\’s Listings Manager, Clay, is a whiz at this game. I count on him telling me the address of most buildings in the establishing shots (come people call them “bumper shots”). Friends: Monica, Chandler, Rachel, and…
Jazz music is uniquely American, a blend of all the music immigrants brought to this country. New Orleans, Kansas City, and Chicago are the cities that are most identified with jazz, and now — yay! — I can add Corona to this list. Louis Armstrong moved to 34-56 107th St in Corona, Queens (that\’s his house in the photo) in…
HBO had one of the funniest shows on TV last summer called Flight of the Conchords. New episodes are coming in 2008, but you can watch clips of 2007 shows if you missed them on HBO. The show says the guys live in the East Village. I wonder how they afford the rent since they seem to never work. I…
I\’m a klutz and if you\’re a klutz, too, one of the first things we\’re thinking when it snows is if the sidewalks are safe. Here\’s a simplified summation of the sidewalk law in NYC that I found on a personal injury website: 1) Snow and/or ice must be removed from the sidewalk within 4 hours after the snow has…
I didn\’t know Astoria was happenin\’ until I read this in the Daily News: A growing number of college students are uniting online to rescue Astoria\’s famous Greek culture from \”guitar-playing hipsters\” they charge are ruining the increasingly artsy neighborhood. Change is hard for everyone. In the 1960s, Astoria was a totally Greek neighborhood and at one time had the…
According to the New York Sun, the developers of a new condo building at Jackson Square Park have installed a wireless broadcaster at the construction site that allows free Internet access for anyone in Jackson Square Park. Keep the address 122 Greenwich Ave handy for those spring days when you want to work on your computer outside.
This town we love was first settled by the Iroquis and Alaconquin tribes, and later (1625) was invaded by Dutch members of the West India Trading Company — businessmen! Isn\’t that soooo New York? Our town was called New Amsterdam until the English took over and re-named it New York. Here is a list of words you\’ve seen around town…
NYC calls the time period when it\’s cold outside \”The Heat Season\” which to me is the opposite of what I\’d call it. Anyway, the city\’s Heat Season starts every year on Oct 1 goes all the way to May 31. (This photo is my sister Amy\’s friend Amit in Amy\’s apartment one January. They were living in Ukraine at…
More history to honor Black History Month. Manhattan was urbanized by the Dutch in the 1600s and they named this part of the island after the largest tulip-growing town back home: Haarlem. Tulips were a huge, HUGE business for The Netherlands back then. Really. In the 1920s, NYC\’s Harlem became the center of a conflagration of brilliance that happens oh,…
NYC zoning laws detail every little thing about the houses and buildings we live and work in. One of the more interesting zoning details, to me, is what a room needs to have in order to be called a \”bedroom\”. For a room to be a legal bedroom in a listing, it has to [1] meet certain size requirements, depending…
Bay Ridge will always be the place where John Travolta and his friends danced in the movie Saturday Night Fever. I grew up hearing those songs but when polyester was stylin was before my time. It\’s time for an update! Bay Ridge is adorable. It\’s snuggled between the Shore Parkway and the Gowanus Expressway. The parkway promenade has sunset views…
Now I\’m going to sound like your nanny who knows what\’s good for you, which distresses me because I prefer to be light-hearted and entertaining. But I have to tell you about the most important part of being a renter: really, really, REALLY buy renter\’s insurance. I know it\’s dull and you can\’t get any good info on the web…
I first heard this record back in the days of vinyl. It came from a friend\’s older sibling\’s or maybe parents\’ record collection. I was in 10th grade in Alaska at the time, and this music and was the strangest thing we\’d ever heard. We all loved it even though none of us knew what the heck it was. Not…