LOL, Jersey. The city is livable on shoe string budgets. Just ask all the aspiring actors/singers/painters/...traders. For example, did you know you can get a hotel room in midtown for ~$60/night
I am not going to live like those losers. They think they get deals when they get a nice apartment and manage to sneak a third artist and an illegal immigrant in off the lease to pay the rent on a 2 bedroom 9th floor walk-up. Jersey has the Pine Barrens. I'm going to live like some kind of crackpot outlaw out of my RV.
A cheap affordable joke. My friend who makes like $60,000 a year has a nice house, a car, and a view of a lake. He bought his place in 2004 and he could pay it off any day. Had I done the same thing in Manhattan, I'd be going into foreclosure and would probably be a divorced chain smoker who sounds like some kind of horse-voiced, steroid-addled Fran Drescher.
The hotel guests are full of hookers too In some places in Brooklyn, you can still get apartments for 1000 for 2 bedrooms.
Yeah, like Bed-Stuy. I suppose if I move there, I should forget this trading equities business and start trading cocaine and stolen automobile parts.
That was my last year in NYC. I was there in WTC #4 when the bomb went off (van filled with fertilizer) in the parking garage near the Vista Hotel, back in 1993. I was just sliding my tray and lunch down to the cashier in the cafeteria when you could here a muffled "blast" go off underneath the World Trade Center Plaza down below. No one thought anything of it, and continued to trade for the next 90 minutes. Shortly thereafter, it was an eery scene for sure. The ventilation system was shut-off and the temperature on the trading floor surged to 85 degrees or so. I remember looking over to the COMEX part of the floor and noticed that no one was standing in the gold or silver pits, even though it wasn't time for those contracts to close yet. I wondered how the metals every got "settled". My Dad had called the Spear, Leeds booth wondering what was going on because CNN was reporting that a subway may have jumped the track down below. Lots of "stories" were being rumored about, but no one knew for sure what had happened till much later. Next thing you knew, the lights were shut off, and people were all lined-up at the coat check room trying to get their jackets because it was cold outside with some light snowflakes falling. Everyone was very calm, except for a security guy who was sweating bullets and yelling on a bullhorn at everyone. He kept telling everyone to leave out the staircase ( and take the 8 flights down to the Street ), but no one budged . . . We all wanted our coats! The coat checkers knew who "buttered" their "bread" at Xmas time so they were very loyal and stayed; manually grabbing everyone's coat off these huge coat-racks via flashlight. I casually walked down the stairwell to Broadway and as I popped out onto the street I noticed a TON of emergency vehicles, patrol cars, you name it. Even some fire hose scattered about. But no sirens, and no noise. Just some light snowflakes falling . . . It was extremely surreal. On another note, my commute was a breeze after the World Financial Center got built. I no longer had to walk across the west side highway because they installed a glass enclosed walkway that exited on the other side of the highway, right across the street from the WTC. Actually, if the weather was REALLY bad on a brisk Winter day, I could walk outside my apartment complex at Gateway Plaza, head right into the Dow Jones building, up the escalator to the 2nd floor, and then walk over into the American Express Tower ( where the Atrium is with Palm Trees ) and then cut back right into the World Trade Center via another enclosed "overcross". Never had to be exposed to the elements for more than 30 seconds.
I live in Tribeca and yesterday I too walked to the meat packing district on route to the Chelsea market in the mid afternoon. You could not move in Chelsea market because of out of towners window shopping mostly. In contrast I passed by the White Horse Tavern on Hudson on my way up there and store after store was boarded up with for rent signs. There several yet to be completed failed condo projects in my neighborhood not to mention the new Goldman Sachs headquarters which is no longer needed. New York is an expensive city compared with other US cities but not compared with European cities. I was in Europe last week. Starbucks tall americano is 2.50 euro or approx $3.25 vs $2.28 in NYC. Likewise for everything else. Public services stink here, taxes are going up and the city's engine is dead.
No, there are some places in Bensonhurst that are cheap and relatively safe. I'm not talking about Bed Stuy or East NY.
800ft one beds in West Village, NoHo, Tribeca are still >$2500. Just take a look at www.housingmaps.com A lot of units look to be 25% under 2007 prices. Lots of incentives like one-month free rent, no deposit, etc.