I Hate The Living Hell Out Of The Two People That Moved Into A Different NYC Apartment Every Month For A Year
NY Times- Alistair Cooke once described New York as “the biggest collection of villages in the world,” and I dreamed of living in them all. That wanderlust, rather than my work as an academic physicist or diplomat, had compelled me to move constantly between continents with my wife, Elaine Kuok, for more than 15 years.
Last fall, we decided to follow her art career as a painter and sculptor to New York and finally settle down. But after we had searched for a home to buy or rent long-term, Elaine realized she didn’t want to take the plunge without first knowing the city and its neighborhoods better.
Here was my chance to live the dream. I proposed that we do an experiment and move to a different neighborhood every month for a year. We would find apartments using Airbnb, the website that has rocked the travel industry by offering short-term rentals, often in private homes.
Moving is the worst. But moving in and out of apartments in New York City is the ABSOLUTE worst. Your tiny apartment is basically 90% boxes, the hallways are cramped, the elevators are busy, and you likely have to finagle/create a parking spot for some shitty rental truck to move your belongings from one overpriced shoebox to another. But for some reason, New Yorkers love to move. I have a bunch of friends that switch places every year and it actually makes me questions their intelligence. If you are dumb enough to put yourself in a situation where you have to live with the pitfalls of moving in New York once every 365 days, I can’t respect you. It’s just that easy.
Which takes us back to Elaine and David. First of all, doing this for the story is such a “look at me” hipster move, it makes me sick. Just something to discuss over IPAs and wine at their ironic Christmas party. In that article, they complain about the smells, the noises, mice in the street, and even compared one neighborhood to Hamsterdam from The Wire. Just basically outing themselves as weaklings that cannot hang in the big city. Because any normal person’s soul dies within 3 months of moving to this city and they learn not to complain. So if you are thinking about moving here to do something like these two idiots did, only to bitch and moan about it, do something else instead. We don’t want to hear your shit. We hate enough things in our lives already.
