Apartment Hunt 1 

So getting off at Atlantic Avenue: yeuk! garbage everywhere, horrible traffic and not even tall buildings to make it interesting. Cheap and nasty shops. Not inspiring. Still, onwards. I rented a bike from 'Bike Brooklyn', served by a muscly thin girl with a kind face and those huge round disk earrings that stretch you lobes out like an African tribal lady. Simple and efficient to rent a bike and had to have it back by 4pm. Tight but perfect for my needs.

Brooklyn is cheaper than Manhattan. It attracts the young arty crowd. It is the 14th biggest 'city' in USA. It was once the biggest.

So I got to the first place through the huge Prospect Park by 12.30 - half hour after the open house session began. A Spanish New Yorker was at the door - very confident Spanish New York accent, very routine handshake, the common very insincere enthusiasm to meet me, the darkest black shiniest hair imaginable, and a cellphone for a left hand. Told me to look around. I did. Place is clean and painted but ugly. The view of the 'grass' inbetween the flats depressing as hell: garbage strewn, uncreative. Bad. She thought this too. She wouldn't live there. But the place is on for $1100. Cheap for 5 mins to the park. Once other people had left, she said this is where not so well-off people live. It's affordable but still safe. It's not fancy - there is no coffee shops - you need to take a ride to have brunch and meet friends. And she basically sold living on the upper east side near Central Park to me upon knowing 'what I make'. She said why live here?

Next place was on the corner of a very long graffiti'd street with only closing down car repair lots showing any life - pretty depressing. There was a grungy yard on the opposite corner with scary distorted music playing from a ghetto blaster perched on a red workman's truck. Then I noticed in the chicken-fenced yard were piles and piles of used jeans under plastic (it had been raining) - with a few people rummaging. Black people - it looked cool. I began to like the edgyness, even the music. And this was near where I stayed last year which felt poor but with its own dignity.

Anyways, the block for rent had balloons outside and candles on the stairway. The broker had to talk me up the stairs on cellphone as the entrance seemed like a to a black Christian party to me. I couldn't believe I was in the right doorway - the balloons and candles gave a very strange impression. So the phone goes dead as I reach the top of the stairs. And I am greeted by....a young Chaka Khan! What a body! What hair extensions! What nails! What a white suit!

And as she lead me into the kitchen of flat number 1, I could see the project. There was a rental price list printout pile next to laptop on kitchen table - lady Khan gave me one to hold as we walked around. And one of a bunch of black guys, who were evidently part of the business too, all very smartly dressed (again seemed Christian? I learnt apparently not) greeted me with sushi from a fancy tray. I took a delicious avacado piece. And then I got the tour of all of the dark brown and white themed flats - all identically newly kitted out with shiny veneer: gloss-painted over fireplaces - rather choked with paint really, huge super-shiny but perhaps cheap (too much varnish!) laminate floors, smell of paint everywhere and huge cooker and heavy heavy fake marble sink unit. Not nice views from windows. Stange warped leaning floors - ideal for skate-boarding. And I could see that they were launching this project - 10 or so flats hewn out of an old block. Nice new veneer but not nice - soulless and the partitioning of the flats made them odd shapes. They had named the flats 'Bergen Manor'. Manor my arse. Or rather Chaka Khan's. But I could not see myself there and so enjoyed the Chaka show instead, one feature of which was to include the word 'definitely' before the verb in every sentence. It didn't definitely make me definitely want to buy.

This happened to be the first time I've interacted with black folks in a professional context I think. I get the sense that there is more integration in American society than in London. Fascinating.

'Seems like a party' I said as I left with another sushi piece. 'It is!' said Chaka.

ps. Blog title is from Paloma Faith's 'New York'
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