Blog Posts

On My Bay Ridge Apartment

Living in a shoebox in the Big Apple

The joke is that people live in shoeboxes in New York City. And it's true - space is costly in the city and everyone either lives with a dozen other roommates or they pay an arm and a leg to get some semblance of the space they had when they lived outside the city. I was (un)luckily used to space at a premium - I was living in San Diego, California for fiveish years before I moved to the Big Apple. The rent for my new place was costlier than the living room setup that I had grown fond of by about a couple hundred bucks but at least I would get my own room with a door I could close. Never mind that there were five of us sharing the single bathroom that was about as big as a broom closet. 

I made the choice (mistake?) of looking for a place based on the cheaper rents in the Brooklyn area. I avoided the east side of Brooklyn because I was scared off by the crime rate maps from the NYPD website. Bushwick and beyond were bright red while Bay Ridge was a comforting pink and the reports promised that the only crimes I'd have to worry about were home break-ins. I told myself, those I could deal with - who wanted to break into the humble abode of five poor college kids? Like most city-neophytes, I was more concerned about getting mugged on the streets in some shady alley at midnight. Of course, living in the city for some time gives you a sense for avoiding shady alleys and sticking to the busy streets - there's always someone awake and about in big cities. 

Our Bay Ridge apartment was on the second floor, counting the ground floor separately. When I arrived at the place, my to-be-roommates were waiting to help me lug my suitcases up the narrow flight of squeaky wooden stairs. Two heavy suitcases packed right up to the airline weight limit because of course, I needed all these pots and pans and packets of instant foods and masala powders. It feels like every Indian parent tries to send their kids with idli patrams and MTR masalas thinking they have all the time in the world to make sambar and rasam regularly. A silly notion while in college; though all of those utensils came in mightily handy when I started working from home years later during lockdown and cooking became my only solace and safe haven from the stir-crazies. 

The living room was the biggest space in the apartment and the three bedrooms much smaller comparatively. The floor was wood, aged and groaning under my average weight. There were spots and dirt marks that seemed baked in, no amount of cleaning could loosen them. Some months later, when we properly instilled a cleaning routine, we found entire colonies of dust bunnies behind all the furniture. Special mention to the luxurious sofa we had in our living room - its origin story felt like it rivalled Superman's. It was patterned dark beige, black and brown: all the easier to hide whatever years of grime that festered within. It was super comfy to sit and sink into, as all aged sofas of dubious origins are. Our present landlord and roommate told us the story of how he and a previous roommate had been given the sofa from some other generous Indian household who had no more use for it and were giving it away. Over the years at their place, it had apparently soaked up all the masala, spices, turmeric and other pungent aromatics that form in the air so heartily from Indian cooking. It was quite possibly the most comfortable sofa I've ever sat on, when I let go of the thoughts of what-and-all it had possibly been through. 

For the duration of exactly one year (we could stand his presence no longer), we had one roommate who lived in the living room on a mattress by the window. Having previously lived in a similar setup (though I did buy an actual bed) I was sympathetic to his situation. Over the next 12 months he gave us all reason upon reason not to be. His newfound freedom from family and cultural restraints had rubber-banded him into a life of excess, constant debt, and wholly unfocused partying. At some point, he coloured his hair blonde - only the top. He really made it easy for us to abhor his presence. I adjusted so much for him - trying to be mindful that he was sleeping in on the mornings when I was leaving for college. I would tiptoe around and try to cook as quietly as possible while he would click his tongue and exaggeratedly cover his face with his pillow to hide from the ten AM sunlight and the raucous sounds of my preparing a sandwich. Thank heavens for some months in when yet another new roommate couldn't stand him and told him off for being a pain-in-the-ass. This living room guy behaved like the world revolved around him otherwise. 

All this and I haven't even mentioned my room. It was shaped like a narrow rectangle, with the window-facing wall lopped off at an angle because that's what happens with city grid systems. I had room for my mattress on the floor, the standard, small white IKEA desk by the window, and two tall, white IKEA bookshelves to house my books, games and assorted personal effects. There was a small closet where I hung some clothes, kept my suitcases and i don't remember what else. It was a small space but I was glad to have it and a door...which didn't have a lock on it. I quickly made a trip to the Chinese convenience store down the street and bought a 29.99 dollar doorknob with a lock and replaced it. I felt so much better after. 

There were lots of little problems that kept popping up in the apartment that we would have to solve somehow. Either with my roommates' beloved 'jugaad' approach or by my having to spend precious greenbacks on some dumb product that I knew I wouldn't get my money back on. Like the aforementioned doorknob. Our landlord should've been the one improving the house, not us. Winter brought new revelations about the miserly state of our apartment - the rubber sealing on all the windows were, of course, weathered and effectively useless. I was freezing daily overnight. My roommates won the battle on this one and we ended up stuffing plastic bags all around the window panes to seal the heat in and create some sort of insulation. Come summer, and our problems evolved  with the seasons. My street-facing room got a lot of sunlight streaming in during the day - excellent for Winter but consider the fact that none of the windows in this apartment had any curtains or blinds. So then, of course, I had to buy black chart paper to hang from the walls to cover up the intense sunlight streaming in and cooking me like a tandoori chicken. 

Let's even ignore the usual struggles of living with other people in shared spaces. No matter how many systems and chore wheels you make, you just gotta always expect a bumpy ride. Ups and downs, you know? You do the best you can to not go ballistic and to live with each other. That rent aint gonna pay itself. And when you actually get what you want - a studio apartment far away from everyone and everything - you most acutely feel the experience of humans being social animals. People and company suck until you don't have them. Better to be like the hedgehogs and settle in for a little bit of needle-pricking pain. 

The other thing that flabbergasted me about this city was the garbage collection - twice a week the streets were piled up and overflowing with trash bags and trash. Why the heck would they collect the trash from piles on the streets? I wondered. That's when you realise how much of a human construct a city really is - there's so much concrete and roads and paving and buildings - where else would you put the trash? Somehow, you eventually get used to the biweekly display of raccoonery. 

Cities are not the suburbs - there's few patches of grass and dirt to break up the overwhelming uniform slab of tar and concrete that the city lives on. I was used to the outskirts of Bangalore, where growing up I saw nature get overwhelmed by the highway roads and fly-overs; and then La Jolla in San Diego, which was a nice college campus in the middle of a very affluent neighbourhood that fiercely guarded the natural and public spaces.

You'd think with so many complaints, I hated my time in New York. Patently untrue. I had to force myself to adapt to the city's rhythms and its ways of being; but as I did I came to love its quirks and foibles. I found people and spaces that I enjoyed being a part of and they allowed me to tap into the energy of the city - vibrant and bustling, just waiting for me to step into its flow and sail along.