We’ve been in NYC for almost five months now (doesn’t time fly, etc etc). Mr is freelancing, so we’re never quite sure how much longer we’ll be here, as there’s always the chance that he’ll suddenly get work on a film and we’ll have to move somewhere completely new. This means all our apartments have been short term sublets, slotting into other people’s lives for a few weeks at a time. I was talking to a friend about this recently and she thought it might be a fun thing to write about, as it really is quite an odd way to live. So, here I am, writing about it.

When we decided to come down here from Montreal, we didn’t know if we’d be here any longer than a month. So, my first job was to find a place to house us in July. As any in-the-know American (or Canadian) will tell you, the only source for this is Craiglist. Yes, AirBnB is an option too, but the charge per night thing makes most places crazy expensive for a monthly stay.

Craiglist is partly a mine of pervs and scams, check this amazing ‘job offer’ I found. Revel in the nonsensical creepiness of it all. No, strangely bearded man, I would not like any of your roofied green drink. Thanks though!

Fortunately for the usefulness of Craiglist, hidden among the pervs are a sh*t ton of apartments needing paying guests while owners bugger off to cooler climes (remember, this is July. There aren’t many cooler climes than NYC in November, except Montreal. It would appear that Mr loves forcing me into freezing my tits off every winter). Rent in NYC, and especially Manhattan, is astronomical, which is conversely good for us, as it means most people have to find strangers to pay them to nose through their things while they’re away (strangers meaning other people, Mr and I are perfect tenants and never nose through other people’s things).

Sadly, most people (understandably) want to meet prospective subletees (is that a word?!) before they hand over the keys. This meant that as I was searching for our first apartment from Montreal, I got gazumped repeatedly. We were also slightly hampered by Mr and I being a bit silly and unfamiliar with NYC. In Montreal, he’d had a ten minute walk to work through a park and we decided that he should be able to walk to work in Manhattan too (in Soho, where he worked for a couple of months when we first arrived). Basically, we were bloody idiotic, meaning we eventually ended up paying an obscene amount for an apartment at 27th and 3rd (a forty minute walk, which I reckon he probably did twice the whole time we were there).

We never met the woman who owned the apartment, she’d already left the city when we arrived, and her ex husband (I was in no doubt he was her EX husband, as she told me about 30 times… She had a bit of the Manhattan bolshiness about her. I’m actually glad our contact was limited to Skype) met us with keys. Obviously unhappy with the idea of strangers rifling through her private things (how was she to know how perfect and uninterested in her things we were?!), the apartment was sold to us minus the use of her bedroom, which was locked. This left us with a tiny kitchen, tiny bathroom, tiny living room (are you sensing a theme here?) and tiny second bedroom, where we were to sleep on a blow up mattress (her babies cot not being big or strong enough to hold me and Mr). This plan fell apart less than an hour into the first night, when it became apparent that the sole a/c unit in the living room wasn’t powerful enough to cool us next door. This meant a month of eating, sleeping, sitting, everythinging in the teeny weeny living room. The kitchen was a little hot box that made me sad and, as everyone kept telling me, NOONE cooks in New York. This means that, plainly put, our first month we spunked money right up the wall. New Yorkers will tell you that it’s cheaper to eat out here than to cook at home. They lie.

On the brightside, we could see the Empire State Building from our balcony (most apartments here have balconies, although they insist on calling them fire escapes).

In the next instalment, we move to Midtown. Try to contain your excitement until then, yeah? Thanks.

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