Thursday, February 15, 2007

You're disturbing my oboe practice...

Since I am winding down things at my old job, I am pretty much bored senseless. Therefore I can regale all of you with more tales of my uber exciting life.

I am pretty lucky to live in a cheap, rent controlled apartment with a Soho zip code. The building is a tenement circa 1900 and my apartment hasn't been renovated in a good 10/15 years... if even that. I think the last big addition was the wall that was put up to take the bathtub out of the kitchen. And with my cheap, rent controlled apartment comes others of the like... and that sometimes means student tenants.

I was a student once... but I was a student in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania and lived in an apartment with other students in a building that was made to house loud, obnoxious, drunken students like me. My loud obnoxious habits didn't bother anybody who wasn't currently living the same lifestyle. Unfortunately that is not the case with my current living situation.

Thanksgiving 2005 I came home to my apartment after a long weekend in New Jersey to find the ceiling in my bathroom caved in from a raucous party that my upstairs neighbor had over the long weekend in which her toilet had overflowed thus creating water damage and a caved in ceiling. She was a local NYU college student. Bless her... Needless to say she has since moved out because now I have fabulous new student neighbors. Boy ones that make loud noises when they walk and have parties where young co-eds giggle till 4AM on Monday nights... Wow.. i sound like Mr. Heckles... :(
Needless to say last weekend I got fed up. I was also cranky and jet-lagged but nevertheless they were being LOUD! Every five minutes or so there would be a huge crash upstairs like they were dropping bodies to the ground! I grabbed the broom and rap rap rap knocked the ceiling three times. "Stop that!" It didn't stop. In a furious rage I ran upstairs and knocked on the door. I could hear them whispering amongst themselves saying things like "Oh shit" and "just say we're sorry" and "just answer the door". A very sweet faced youth answered the door and I calmly tried to explain who I was and why I was snarling. Turns out they are in fact students... film students no less trying to make a movie. What I heard was literally a body hitting the floor - they were filming a scene where somebody was falling out of bed. Well I instantly felt bad (those who know me know my passion for movies) and I just asked that they let me know next time they have to do something like this so I don't think they are just being inconsiderate. He amicably agreed and since then its been pretty peaceful. My luck I told the next Steven Spielberg to keep it down! :)

Wednesday, February 14, 2007


Neighborhood Hangout....

I have slowly come to the realization that I live down the street from a methadone clinic... At first I just thought some really weird people were living in my neighborhood, but then I woke up and realized, nope! They are just struggling drug users! Oh wait.. I dont think my roommate ever knew this... SURPRISE BRIDGET! :)


My typical morning route to the subway brings me up along Lafayette Street and the corner of Spring Street. To most people that know this area, it’s pretty trendy. The streets are lined with cute little boutiques and restaurants. Furthermore the people that live in this neighborhood are either trendy/artsy hipsters, trust fund babies, or high powered executives (I fit into none of these categories personally… I just got lucky with a cheap rent-controlled apartment :)) So when I began noticing a distinguishable crowd that regularly entered this neighborhood every morning and basically hung out on the corner of Spring and Lafayette I began to wonder. And for the record, when I say distinguishable, I mean these people look like they have come from the hinterlands of Pensultucky. Either that or the trailer parks of Suffolk county…

Anyway, I noticed that they were all hanging out by this doorway that looked to be a doctor's office of sorts. Only the windows had bars and the door was padlocked at night. Seemed a little extreme for the local GP if you asked me. And then one day I heard one of them talking about how if you don't go at the time you are assigned they won't give you any and that right there sealed the deal for me... a doctor's office with bars and a regulated dispensing time?? I mean really...


How did I ever confirm my suspicion you ask? Well weirdly enough I was at a work dinner with one of my salespeople who confirmed it for me. I maintain that the confirmation she offered me was because of the fact that she used to live in the neighborhood and not because she herself was a client of that particular clinic… yeesh… :)