Living in Manhattan

The Last Poker Night

June 20, 2009 by Joseph Rand

Last night was poker night.

For the past two years or so, I’ve been part of a very fun group of people who play an irregularly scheduled cheap-money poker tournament at various homes in Manhattan. Mostly Fordham Law grads who went to school with my friend Jack (odd coincidence is I used to teach there, but that’s not how I know any of them). I’ve hosted a bunch of times.

So this was my last time hosting, and to make it extra-super-duper-special, we also hosted an extraordinarily unsettlingly competitive game of Cranium run by the wife. People don’t realize what a terror she is at games, to the point that I like playing a completely different game in a totally different part of the apartment when she’s playing Cranium. So she inflicted her competitive zeal on her group, and my group played a nice laid-back game of poker.

So that’s what it’s come to. I guess once you turn 40, and are getting ready to move to Suma, the fun night out really does become poker and Cranium. And, to be honest, I had a lot more fun just hanging out, eating pizza, playing poker, and listen to my wife yell at our friends, than I’ve had at any club or bar or lounge or restaurant I went to all year. Guess I’m getting old.

Filed Under: Living in Manhattan, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: Cranium, Game Night, Poker

Lessons for Exiles: How do you get city people to the suburbs?

June 1, 2009 by Joseph Rand

So my wife and I are looking for a new place in SUMA, and we’re telling our friends about it. Trying to get them excited, because we’d like to, you know, stay friends with them, and it would help if they were willing to, you know, visit us now and then.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that we’re never going to see them again.

And I really don’t blame them, because I never visited my friends who left the city. Once they left, it was like the Morlocks got them. We cast them from our minds. Chris and Kate have left 83rd and Third and they’re now in Rye, and let us not speak of them again….

So I was just as bad when I was on the cool, Manhattan side of that equation. I was never taking a weekend night to schlep out to Scarsdale or Montclair or God-Forbid-Long-Island to go visit someone who had the effrontery to leave this great city. Almost as if their choice to leave, by itself, rendered them somewhat less interesting.

I guess I deserve nothing better. I’m sure I’ll find nice, umm, replacement friends.

Anyway, I do have one idea. When I’ve discussed the houses we’ve been looking out, I’ve detected a common thread in the questions I get. No one seems interested in bedrooms or bathrooms or location or square footage or the type of oven we’ll have, but they seem very interested in one feature of some of the homes we’ve seen.

Whether it has a pool.

The pool is the equalizer, maybe the one thing that elevates a suburban household in the eyes of the sneering Manhattanariat. A pool for those hot days in the summer when your Hamptons share is in an off-week, or you’re afraid to go back and face the friend-of-a-friend that you woke up next to LAST weekend. A pool to escape Manhattan’s summer heat, a place to eat barbecue.

After all, the Hamptons are really just a suburb. I hate to tell that to all of you who just plunked down a month’s salary for four weekends in a five bedroom house on a one-acre lot in a cul-de-sac, but doesn’t that description sound kinda like a typical suburban house? So you’re spending all that income to drive out 4 or 5 hours on a Friday night to sleep in a bunk bed like a 12 year old, in a house that has as much relationship to the beach as Woody Allen, and you’re too good to come visit me a half hour north? Did I, ummm, mention that we have a pool?

Great, see you then.

Filed Under: Advice, Humor, Living in Manhattan, Living in the Suburbs, Moving to the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: Friends, Pool

How to Sell Your Home in 30 days

May 17, 2009 by Joseph Rand

People have been writing to ask me how we sold so quick in a market like this. Okay, we didn’t actually sell our home in 30 days. We put it on the market for a few weeks in November, and quickly realized that it’s not a great time to sell when the market is falling 300 points every day and people are talking about the next Great Depression. We took the holidays off, and went back on the market in February. Things had calmed down a little by that point.

Obviously, though, that was not the best time to sell an apartment in Manhattan, not in a market that’s probably going to show a significant transactional and pricing decline in the second quarter. But once we put it back on the market, we had an acceptable offer in about a month, in contract a few weeks after that.

How did we do it? Well, we had some advantages that maybe you don’t have. Like, my wife is a real estate agent here in the city. And I own a real estate company out in the suburbs. Chances are your wife probably isn’t a real estate agent, and you’re not a real estate professional.

But don’t worry. That’s now why we sold quickly. The only reason those “advantages” actually helped us is that we actually listened to our own advice. What for years she’s been telling her sellers, and I’ve been telling my agents, we actually did.

As in:

1. If you’re moving, start now.
We started the moving process about a month before we actually put the apartment on the market. As in, we actually started moving. We spent about three weekends clearing out the apartment, taking out about boxes and boxes of assorted stuff we had filling the place. Some of it we kept and stored upstate, some it we threw away, some of it we gave away. But we took out about fifteen boxes of stuff: books we don’t read, clothes we don’t wear (or no longer fit into), food we don’t, furniture we don’t need to sit on. Emptied the place out, made it look a lot bigger, nicer, cleaner. And we were planning on moving, which is why we were selling the apartment in the first place, so it helped us get a head start and make the final move a little less intensive.
We also hired a guy to come in and do all the little things that had degraded in the apartment since we did construction in 2005. Everything from lighting fixtures that never got installed and were sitting in a closet to smudges on walls. $2,000 later, the place looked like it did when we moved in.

2. Be Accessible
We wanted the place shown as much as possible, whenever someone wanted. You want to come over on Sunday morning? Come on down! Wednesday night! What time? We did open houses almost every weekend it was on the market. Every morning, we’d clean it up, put the dirty clothes in a hamper and hide it away. It was ready for show anytime an agent wanted.

3. Price to Sell
We priced aggressively for the market, underneath other apartments that were for sale in the area. We knew that the market might be tough, so we wanted to strike quickly. If we’d sold a year ago, we probably would have gotten over $1,300 a square foot. We priced at $1,200 a square foot and sold for about $1,100 a square foot. We didn’t get the best price possible, and maybe if we’d waited out the spring market we could have done a little better, but we got good terms and a good, trustworthy buyer and we had our money off the table. Even now, I’m seeing comparable apartments that were for sale when we put our place back on the market in February, and they’re still priced above what we sold for.

Would that work for everyone? I don’t know. But when I was buying I looked at a lot of apartments that had clothes stuffed in the closets, or were dirty, or smelled like cats, or were only available for show on alternate Wednesday afternoons. So I think it helped.

It also helped, of course, that I had a great agent. I highly recommend her.

Filed Under: Advice, Living in Manhattan, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: Real Estate Agent, Selling Your Home

Best Celebrity Sightings

May 8, 2009 by Joseph Rand

You know what’s really cool about New Yorkers. In the past five years or so, I’ve probably seen 15 or 20 celebrities in my neighborhood, and not once have I seen someone pester them or ask them for their autograph. New Yorkers know what it’s like to be annoyed by people, so I think they don’t generally inflict themselves on celebrities. At least not that I’ve seen.

Lots of celebrities in my nabe on the UWS. I see Jerry Seinfeld, Howard Stern, John McEnroe, Willie the tall guy from Morning Joe, used to see Bobby Canavale when he lived next door, same with one of the Baldwins before he made the move to Suma.

Two good celebrity stories. First, long time ago, before I met my wife, on a first date, going to the arty Lincoln Plaza theaters over on Broadway in the lower sixties. Going to see some Chinese language movie. But got to the theater late and it was crowded. No seats together. So we see that there’s two seats in one row, but on opposite sides of the row. The movie’s about to start, so we don’t bother people to shift over, we just each take a seat apart, but in the same row. But people in the row see what’s happening, and a powerful surge of romanticism takes over — “let’s help the young guy out on his date” — and they all get up and shift over so we can sit together. Only one person protests, fighting it until she gives up, exasperated. Barbra Streisand.

Second, a few years ago, I was walking on 83rd street, going east from Amsterdam toward the Park. Walking towards me is Jerry Seinfeld, who I used to see all the time. He’s carrying a “Banana Republic” bag as he walks west from Columbus. Not a big deal, but here’s why I like this story. He lived on Central Park West, so he’s walking away from home. There’s a Banana Republic at 86th and Broadway, which was probably where he was going. So why was he carrying a bag? Probably because he was returning something that someone got him at Banana Republic. And that’s why I love this story. It’s nice to know a guy like Seinfeld, who is worth a gajillion dollars, still takes the time to schlep back to the store to return a sweater that’s a little too big for him.

Filed Under: Living in Manhattan Tagged With: Celebrities, Upper West Side

What I’m going to miss

April 30, 2009 by Joseph Rand

I’m going to miss Manhattan.

I’m going to miss the Upper West Side.

I’m going to miss the owner of my local dry cleaner, Ms. Kim, who has been in that store just about every time I’ve gone there in the past 15 years.

I’m going to miss the ability to get stone drunk, crawl into a cab, and be able to get safely home so long as I can properly recite my address. (I’ve always thought of getting a temporary tattoo on my forearm with my address on it, so I could just thrust my arm into the front seat and show it to him on particularly tough nights).

I’m going to miss the first really nice day of Spring, when the horrific winter weather breaks and everyone bolts into Central Park. The best park day of the year, because everyone is just so happy to be out of their apartments. And the crowdest, much more crowded than any summer weekend, since so many of those fools choose to drive five hours on Friday night to sit in what is actually a suburban house all weekend reading Hamptons magazine trying to find a hot party to go to and fooling themselves into thinking that they’re having a great time.

I’m going to miss being a 15 minute cab ride from the best live theater in the hemisphere.

I’m going to miss my neighbor Cindy, who owns the building next door to me, a four-story townhome that she bought in the early 70s for what she now gets every two months for renting the top two floors out.

I’m going to miss my wife’s “Menu book,” room service from like 50 restaurants, arranged by cuisine type (seriously).

I’m going to miss the mushroom veggie burger at the UWS Shake Shack, and regret that Danny Meyer didn’t open the damn place five years ago.

I’m going to miss going from a hot platform to a cold subway car.

I’m going to miss taking that subway car to Yankee stadium, 25 minutes from my apartment by the D, if you catch the trains right.

I’m going to miss the joy of seeing a new storefront opening up in the neighborhood, and peering into the windows to see what’s coming.

I’m going to miss going into Gin Mill on Amsterdam on football sundays to see the same group of guys, one of whom is the most dedicated displaced Eagles fan I’ve ever met.

I’m going to miss not going to museums. I’d like to say I go to museums, but…not so much.

Last, I’m going to miss telling people that I live in Manhattan, and feeling that this fact alone entitles me to a certain level of respect.

Filed Under: Best of, Living in Manhattan, Moving to the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: Broadway, Cabs, Central Park, Restaurants, Yankees

Return from Exile: Another day, another screening

April 29, 2009 by Joseph Rand

Manhattan is taunting me. I’ve lived here for 17 years, never went to a movie premiere screening. Then last week, I get to go see Grey Gardens premiere at the Zigfield. And then yesterday I got to go see a very funny comedy at the the Tribeca Film Festival called Timer. The reason? Another college friend in show business, this time my friend Christopher Wood acting in a quick role (there are no “small” roles…) at the beginning. His role was much too small for his talent, but it was still fun to see him on the big screen.

It was bad enough when Shake Shack opened on the Upper West side, right around the same day I put my apartment on the market. And then Time Warner added a ton more high definition stations to my cable lineup. But now Manhattan is just beating on me, sending me interesting things to do, the kind of things I never do, as sort of a “you’ll never have it this good” hate-screw to me.

Filed Under: Living in Manhattan, Moving to the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, Return from Exile Tagged With: Grey Gardens, HBO, Michael Sucsy, Movies, Premiers

Why am I leaving Manhattan for the suburbs– I un-heart NYC???

April 19, 2009 by Joseph Rand

Someone pointed me to two articles in the Sunday Post, asking if I was leaving because I am bearish on Manhattan, the real estate, or the general economy. The first is a Post review of an economic report saying that New York is dead last in something called “economic outlook.” The Post calls it non-partisan, but it was written by the guy who created supply-side economics, so I think it’s probably got a viewpoint.

The second one is by Peggy Noonan, predicting a downsized world, where people forego cable and the internet and raise pigs and some such stuff.

And then the Post profiles a bunch of people who are leaving Manhattan to go to parts far away. Places like Minnesota and West Virginia.

Okay, let me make this clear. That’s not me.

I’m not moving to West Virginia.

I’m not going to raise pigs.

More importantly, I’m not down on Manhattan. Far from it. I hate leaving. Yes, I think that Manhattan real estate is probably going to go down in value for a period of time, although I priced my home to get it sold so I think my buyer got a pretty good deal. But that’s not why I’m leaving.

I’m leaving because I work out in the suburbs, and I’ve been commuting out there for seven years, and it’s finally gotten to me. Plus, the stairs. The damned stairs. More about the stairs another time.

But I love Manhattan. And if it becomes a little more affordable for people, I think that’s a good thing.

Filed Under: Advice, Living in Manhattan, Moving to the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, SUMA Lifestyle Tagged With: Home Prices, New York Post, Newspapers

What I’ll miss most — room service

April 16, 2009 by Joseph Rand

This is going to be hard.

Just got home after a loooong day. The wife is out with some friends, so I have the place to myself. Perhaps there was a time when I’d go out and play some pool, actually interact with other human beings. But, again, it was a long day with a bunch of extra “o’s”, so all I want to do is collapse on a sofa. And no way I’m going to cook anything.

Which brings me to room service. Maybe the best unsung feature of urban living. Actually better than room service in any hotel in the country. I’ve literally got a notebook full of menus (the wife is crazy like that), probably 50 restaurants in my area that deliver, just about any cuisine you want. 14 types of Chinese food. Sushi, Italian, Jewish deli, Malaysian food, French, Thai (although we’re strangely a little lean on Thai food on the upper west side the last few years, and the closing of the Vietnamese place on 81st and Amsterdam was a tragedy on par with the Watchman movie).

(Quick aside — call up Penang. Get the roti telur, ask for an extra side of the curry sauce. It’s like $2. Also get some coconut rice. When you’re done eating the Roti Telur, pour the sauce over the rice. Eat the rice. Email me and tell me how much you love me for turning you on to this.)

Tonight it was onion soup and fettucini with short ribs from Bistro Citron, which is also a dependable place for mussels provencale. $25 bucks, plus tip (you gotta tip the delivery guys well, with the life they lead), 25 minutes tops, and I’m eating. I will miss this.

I don’t know why suburban restaurants don’t focus on delivery, but my guess is that they’re bound into the idea that people in the suburbs cook their dinners. I don’t know about that. Seems a little “Leave it to Beaver” for me. I work in the suburbs in a workplace that is 85% women, and when I’m there at 6PM with a lot of them I don’t get the impression that they’re on the way home to cook up a casserole. I already have a job, but I encourage some young entrepreneur to start one of those services that connects restaurants about to go out of business with suburban families eating their fourth Chinese delivery meal of the week.

UPDATE: looked up some places online, like this one. But my guess is that they service only selected areas. Alas!

Filed Under: Living in Manhattan, Living in the Suburbs, Moving to the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: Delivery, Restaurants, Takeout

Return from Exile: A night at the movies

April 15, 2009 by Joseph Rand

Right when I decide to move from the city to the suburbs, I have the kind of night that you can only have in a city — attending the premiere of the new HBO movie “Grey Gardens.” The premiere was at the Ziegfeld Theater in midtown, which is really one of my favorite movie theaters in the world. Just a great old theater. I know it doesn’t have the stadium seating and I’m sure techie types will tell me you get a better picture and sound in your living room, but I really like it.

I should be clear that I don’t go to a lot of premieres. This one was, now that I think about it, my first. And the only reason I was at that one was that the director of the movie, Mike Sucsy, is a college friend, and he was kind enough to invite me and my wife. The movie is absolutely terrific, particularly the performance by Drew Berrymore as Little Edie. For those people who are fans of the documentary, the movie kind of fills in some of the gaps, explaining how Little Edie got pulled into the vortex of her mother’s, ummm, idiosyncracies. And it was fun to be at the premiere, seeing the red carpet and the whole thing. And free popcorn.

(The movie premieres on HBO on Saturday night, 8PM, April 18.)

Going to the Ziegfeld reminded me of some of my favorite New York City movie moments, to wit:

Going to see Independence Day on the weekend it opened in the middle of July 1996, only getting in to the midnight showing, getting drunk first, and later spilling out of the theater into the summer heat with a bunch of fired up humans hooting and hollering (spoiler alert: the humans win). Come on, say it with me: “Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!”
Waiting on line at the Ziegfeld for opening weekend of Apollo 13, twisting all the way around 54th and 55th street, totally chaotic, getting to our seats half an hour after the movie was supposed to start because of the disorganization of the staff, and then finally the movie is supposed to start and they start with commercials (back when commercials at movies were still new), and people start booing and throwing things. Ugly.
Numerous times when I have had altercations with people who annoyed me in a theater. I’m not a good row-mate, apparently.

Filed Under: Living in Manhattan, My Life in the Suburbs, Return from Exile Tagged With: Grey Gardens, HBO, Michael Sucsy, Movies, Zigfield

I Love Manhattan, but I’m leaving….

April 11, 2009 by Joseph Rand

I love living in Manhattan.

I love watching the evening news, and seeing that someone was run over by a car or stabbed or something, and being able to say, “hey, that’s like three blocks from my apartment!”

I love getting room service any time I want from my big book of delivery menus that my wife has actually collated, three-hole-punched, and put in a binder organized by ethnicity.

I love going to Central Park on Saturday mornings for some of the pickup softball games in the Great Lawn or the uptown ball fields.

I love the fact that my little neighborhood sandwich shop, Lenny’s, is now all over the city, and that other people get to share in the joy of a Thanksgiving turkey sandwich all year round.

I love pretending that I go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art because I have a membership card that says I’m a supporter, even though I never go.

I love my local restaurants Calle Ocho and Barbao, run by people I like and respect, although I liked going to brunch at Calle Ocho more before everyone else found out about the free sangria.

I love going to the meatpacking district and remembering where the transvestite hookers used to hang out, and seeing people buying $1500 handbags there.

I love walking around my neighborhood on the upper west side, playing the game of “what used to be here.” Like, the northeast corner at 82d and Columbus is a “corner of retail death,” one of many in the city. It’s now a Mexican restaurant called Comida. Before that, a semi-Southern-creole-could-never-quite-figure-it-out place called Madaeline Mae’s. Before that, a faux Irish pub called TJ O’Briens. Before that, the estimable and lamented Kitchen 82. And before that, Corner (run by the Lenny’s folk until they realized they could do better just making more Lennys). And, finally, before that, a local grocery called Casanas, which I still miss because they had these cheap homemade burritos that I’ve never been able to find anywhere else.

I love the fact that you can buy a nudie mag on pretty much every street corner, not that you would when so much more effective material is available now on the internet. But they’re still there, and basic economics says that someone must still be buying them.

I love being able to decide spontaneously to drink one night, knowing I don’t have to drive home, and that I can get back to my apartment so long as I can remember my address and be able to speak it out loud.

I love it all, and yet, and yet…..I am leaving.

I’m moving out. Selling the apartment that I bought in 1994, renovated and combined with another unit in 2004, and getting out. No more Upper West Side. No more delivery food. No more Central Park.

Why would I do this? It was time. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years, soaking up as much Manhattan as I could. But I work outside the city, and have for about six years. A 45 minute commute, each way, every day. That wears on you. And, frankly, as much as I love Manattan, I wasn’t getting a lot out of it when I’m getting home at 8PM exhausted from my drive and long day. And as much as I love my brownstone apartment, I’m tired of climbing stairs every day. People joke about how it keeps me in shape to climb two flights to my living room. It doesn’t.

But here’s my problem. I grew up in the suburbs, I work in the suburbs, and I know the suburbs. And I’m terrified about living in the suburbs. I don’t see why my life should change, I don’t know why I shouldn’t be able to create some semblance of my city life in the suburbs, with interesting bars and good restaurants and fun things to do. So I’m writing this blog to document my search for that life, that search for an urbanized existence in a suburban environment.

But some of the signs are not so good. My wife and I were exiled to the suburbs in 2004 when we were renovating our apartment, six months of Cheescake Factory Fridays and bars filled with guys wearing flannel and wierd sections of the New York Times that I never saw before. We kept saying we’d come into the city, and we did. Three or four times. Not a good sign.

Can I really live there? Can I live without mixology and Malaysian delivery and a short subway ride to Yankee Stadium? Can I find new friends and new places to hang out without becoming the suburban guy that I was as a kid.

I’m going to find out.