Apartment Hunting
1995
Living in an NYU "residence hall" was an easy option for me. The cost was completely covered by loans, all paid for at the beginning of each year, so I never had to worry about looking for an apartment or scraping together the rent every month. I soon learned the horrors of apartment hunting in Manhattan -- stories about mad rushes for good places; about tiny, overpriced shoeboxes; about cheaper, bigger places made more expensive by distance or their neighborhoods. Most astonishing to me was the spectacle, every Tuesday night, of a block-long line forming at the newsstand at Astor Place, across from the Cooper Union. People waited in any weather, sometimes for hours, just to get first look at the classifieds in the Village Voice. Calls are made that night, appointments set; newly available apartments are snapped up in a day.
Kevin Walker
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