The One with a New Home

Now it is official - we are residents of NYC. We have a fabulous apartment on the corner of Christopher and Bleecker streets. Our doormen are pretty cool and the view is fantastic - check out the photo!

Ben Stiller: Not just funny in movies

The girl grabbed us tickets to a show she thought I might like starring Ben Stiller. He has pretty much been in every single decent comedy for the past decade and a half so we were quite interested to see how his acting translated onto the stage. The play was entitled “House of the blue leaves” and also starred Edie Falco (mother in the Sopranos who I disliked for that very reason).

As it turned out the play was a tongue in cheek comedy where Ben Stiller portrayed the main character quite well. My biggest surprise however was Edie Falco who played some deranged wife, on the edge of insanity, rather convincingly.
We realised one of the perks of living in NYC was the two block walk to the theatre. Dinner was at a steakhouse on the way home so our total journey time for the evening was around 5 minutes.

Need a place to live? Stalk buildings...

The real estate market in NYC is cutthroat. Most places that are for rent require you to have a broker who takes a 1-2 month "commission" for finding you a place to live. We used a couple of brokers while we were here but it became pretty apparent that these brokers do not have access to all the available apartments. In order to put in an application form you have to pay a fee. Essentially you are down at least 10 grand just to rent an apartment.

We were getting a little frustrated from the lack of understanding of what we wanted from our brokers. Walking through the village one morning, we stumbled across a street fair. Thinking it was a very cool area, the girl decided to take matters into her own hands and cold call on an apartment block. Inside she approached the doorman. Surprisingly to me the guy was rather helpful and told us his place was full of condos (no rentals) but directed us to a couple of others that rented along the street.

Trudging into the second one we were told there was one available and the doorman happily gave us the key to head up and inspect it. We walked in and found a great view. The flat itself is a little cosy but perfect for the 2 of us. We got the details of the real estate and put in an offer the following week. Having found it ourselves we happily saved paying the brokers fee.

This proved how sometimes it pays to be a crazy stalker chick to save a couple of bucks...

Characters - where everybody knows your name?

Growing up as the generation of television kids it is a fair assessment I had a well earned butt groove wedged into the couch in front of the television. Featuring regularly throughout the entertainment was the US sitcoms. One of the regular locations would be a bar (where everyone knows your name). So it may come to you as no surprise that within our first week of being in NYC we have one such bar – Characters. Characters is an Irish bar, open until 4am every night, that serves rather delicious pub grub, talented bartenders and helpful waitresses. And to not keep you in suspense, yes they know our names.

I think it was the second time we went in there when they welcomed us as one of their own. They know what we drink and are ever so quick on the refill. Not to mention the free rounds that get included. Our favourite bar tender is called Sean. He is very Irish and looks after us very well. In fact the girl thinks I have a man-crush on him (whatever that means). But you’ve got to have respect for a guy who pours your drinks, throws in the occasional freebie and can slyly liquor up your girl....

UPDATE: The bartender has now memorised my offshore schedule so he knows when I should be away and returning. This leads to a few more freebies (of some top shelf scotch) thrown in during the week leading up to departure.