Our 24-Hour Search for a New Apartment

On Sunday we viewed our first three apartments in our quest to find a new home.

Less than 24 hours later the search was over. We're staying put.

That's mostly because our landlord on Monday proposed reducing our rent $150 a month. It didn't take Paul and I long to realize it was an offer too good to refuse. I'm already deciding what plane tickets that extra $1,800 is going to buy next year.

But truth be told, our afternoon of apartment hunting was pretty discouraging.

The first apartment we looked at was in an excellent location, directly 80 blocks north of where we live now. Each of the two bedrooms, however, had room for only a bed. No dresser. No nightstand. Barely a pair of shoes.

The second and third apartments were in another building, only a block from a good subway station. But the views were just as ugly as the apartments themselves, and the kitchen counters didn't even have room for a microwave.

And the bathroom of the bigger apartment was tiny. I'm talking minuscule. The bathroom was triangular, and if you sat on the toilet you certainly would have to tilt your legs to the left in order not to touch the wall. If you stood in the center of the bathroom with both arms straight out, I'm positive you would always be touching a wall no matter what direction you faced.

We didn't expect to find a better apartment, and Paul and I both love our Bay Ridge place. The floors and appliances were all new when we moved in, we have more windows than we did even in our house in Ohio, and three bedrooms for two people is pretty luxurious by New York standards.

But while we like Bay Ridge, we don't love it. The work commute isn't so bad (it's actually 10 minutes shorter than my former commute from Galloway to Springfield), but waiting for the trains at night and on the weekends, when they don't come as often, gets to be a bore. Really, we just want to move our apartment to Park Slope, a neighborhood about four miles north with a younger crowd, good bars, and nice restaurants.

And while we've decided to stay put, the bar two floors below us has evidently decided the same thing. As you may recall, it was supposed to be evicted in two weeks, and that was six weeks ago.

Since then, there's been only one night that we considered filing a noise complaint. Surprisingly, it wasn't the night in which I assume it hosted a bachelorette party. How could I tell? The next morning the sidewalk outside my front door glittered with sparkly, multi-colored confetti-- all in the shape of tiny penises.

Bay Ridge: Keepin' it classy.