Many years ago my girlfriend and I sublet an apartment from a woman who will have to remain nameless, but I can tell you that she was a hard-charging movie producer who had already basically relocated to L.A. However, the woman still wanted to hang onto her place in the Village -- it was a rent-stabilized 1-BR on 9th and University which contained an entire wall of black-and-white photographs of hairy men's backs, an enormous collection of pretentious hats, a sleeper sofa full of mouse droppings and, in the bathroom, two entire drawers filled to the brim with sleeping pills.
But I have to say it was a gorgeous apartment at an excellent price. Now, I know that people in New York can have an annoying habit of gloating about their real-estate conquests. I once spent an evening listening to a distant relative of mine recount the Manhattan palaces she'd scored in the 1970s and 1980s; she ended her description of each place by naming an act of violence I would have done to her if I'd seen the place, as in, "A duplex on 12th Street! You would have killed me!" Then, later, "A two-bedroom condo on Sutton Place! I had my own framer! You would have kicked my teeth in!"
But having said that, I really have to tell you that if you'd seen this apartment, with its wall of sunny French windows opening onto a placid, tree-filled courtyard, you might have contemplated giving me a vigorous purple nurple, or perhaps jabbing me in the gut with a stick.
Of course, as happens with all sublets, everything fell apart. The landlord caught on. He was a persistent, crafty man who knew that if he kicked us out he could slap on a new coat of paint and double the rent. Phone calls were made in the middle of the night. Neighbors and private dicks were enlisted to spy on us. Threatening letters and legal notices were nailed to the door. There was one memorable phone call where he asked me how much we were paying the movie producer to live there.
"Gee," I said, "I don't know."
"You don't know how much rent you pay?"
"Of course I don't know. Why would I know that?"
Later, the determined old man would leave message after message on our answering machine, breathing heavily and saying, "This is [name redacted] . . . I know you're living there . . . I know you're in there . . ."
Clearly, it was time to look for a new place. And this was really before the emergence of craigslist.org or other places to look online -- in those days the thing to do was to wake up early on a Wednesday morning, when the Village Voice was just coming out, and try to be the first to call in to the very rare apartment listing placed in that publication that was not an outright lie.
Now, in those days I walked from 9th Street up to my workplace in Midtown. So I'd start out early on a Wednesday and grab a Voice from the newspaper box near Madison Square Park. On the way, I'd stop at a coffee cart on the west side of Broadway, near the movie theater at 19th Street, and get a small coffee with cream and sugar and a chocolate glazed donut. Whenever I didn't have the WALK signal -- and most of the signals in NYC still said WALK and DON'T WALK back in those days -- I would stand at the corner and peruse the apartment ads, searching in vain for something acceptable.
I had half a mind to throw myself into an oncoming bus. If you've ever had to find an apartment in this city, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So many ads full of lies, so many weasel words, so many thoroughly unreliable brokers. I remember one broker, a gentleman named "Spyder," who was peddling all sorts of nonexistent apartments and never did arrive at any of the places he directed me to. There was the very nice young Israeli man who spent an afternoon taking us to one building after another, only to discover each time that he didn't have the keys to the front door. There was the middle-aged Long Island woman who pulled up in a VW Bug in the pouring rain, a couple of poodles leaping about in her lap, and rolled down the window and flung the keys at us. "Take it or leave it!" she cried.
My only solace in those days was that coffee cart chocolate glazed. I do not know where this donut was made, and I wish I'd asked the nice Middle Eastern man in traditional clothing who ran the cart. I remember the glaze was thick and crusty and extra-sweet. The donut meat itself was moist and rich. And of course, once you've added the sugar to your coffee cart coffee, you simply can't go wrong.
Eventually we crossed paths with a wonderful broker in Brooklyn, a kind and patient Irish man who took us from place to place by taxi. His commission was worth every penny. Not only did he find us a great place -- where we stayed for over five years -- but he spent hours on the phone convincing the landlords to take us on.
I never found out what happened to the coffee cart.
June 16, 2008
Remembrance of Donuts Past: Coffee Cart, Broadway near 19th St., Spring 2002
