StreetEasy is a hell of a drug, man. We’re moving at the end of the month, which means I’ve been devoting every non-working, non-sleeping moment of my life to trawling it, going to physically examine its many deceptively-photographed apartments, and deciding how many exclamation points with which to pepper the friendly! responsible-sounding! emails and text messages I’m forever sending to various real estate agents. Graham and I spent three hours on Wednesday night side-by-side on our respective computers, feverishly clicking through listings, sending each other emails with links and subject lines like “3 bed 3 bath???,” “this shit is banananananas,” and “so what’s wrong with this one.” You’ll be relieved to hear that I’m not going to pretend renting an apartment is akin to shopping for shoes or a bag, but I will point out that the same emotional and monetary calculus is used, and that often, both tend to look better online than they do IRL. But then, doesn’t everything these days?
Both also play into my lifelong personal obsession with beating the system, and my suburban dad-like need to feel like I “got a good deal” on something. For so much of my time in New York, which is also the entire time I’ve been a self-supporting adult, I’ve been trying to prove to myself and the world that it is, in fact, still possible to exist comfortably and happily here as a normal middle class person — that it wasn’t long ago taken over and redesigned as the world’s most sprawling, ornate playground for the idle rich and their pseudo-entrepreneurial offspring — even though there are so many days when I suspect my efforts may be futile. I’m always trying to negotiate a loophole that makes it somehow feel less unrealistic to live here in the way I want to, whether it’s finding a place to buy lunch for $8 (a veritable steal in Manhattan!) or going to see what feels like two-thirds of the available apartments in Brooklyn in the hopes that one has new appliances, two bathrooms, a private outdoor space, a living area big enough for my sectional sofa, and central air conditioning, all for under my budget cap. I want the kind of apartment people speak of in hushed voices while walking down the hall after leaving, amazed that such a deal ever existed and incensed that they were not the ones to come upon it. Similarly, when shopping for clothes, I want designer pieces at sample sale prices, and I will stop at nothing to get them, because getting them proves I really can have it all. (In this scenario, “it all” refers not to kids, a career, and a happy marriage, but rather a job I love in a creative industry, and also expensive clothes I can’t technically afford on my salary from said job.)
StreetEasy, much like my beloved designer resale site The RealReal, engages me in the notion that, if I just keep digging — one more page, one more search — I’ll finally have the moderately-priced answer to my high-end dreams. It’s a manic, ambitious energy that keeps me up long past my bedtime, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Of course, I’ve never found anything on either site that I can honestly say fulfills me, but that never stops me from feeling like I just might.
This is a lot to put on inanimate objects, though, and that’s become clear to me, even as I struggle to cut myself and the things I surround myself with some slack. Every time my current apartment, which I thought was the find of the century four years ago when I moved into it, has a leak in the basement or a weird electrical problem — and these have, unfortunately, not been rare occurrences — I take it as a personal slight, proof that deals don’t really exist and that I was silly to think I could ever have the kind of spacious city-dwelling life I aspire to. I’ve felt similarly betrayed by the patent leather Valentino shoes I saved up to buy for 60% off that I have to admit pinch my stupid wide toes on the sides, the Maryam Nassir Zadeh sandals I can’t find and may have left at a hotel in California (don’t pack while hungover, kids!), and the Lorenzo Serafini dress that fit like a glove last summer but now no longer zips. The weight of these things not working out, not being what I need them to be — or is it I who betrayed them? — sometimes feels so vast that it makes the decision to ever buy, rent, or believe in anything again seem like setting myself up for disappointment.
I’ve been trying to stretch those patent leather shoes with shoe-stretchers for a solid year, though, and I don’t think they’ve gotten any wider, but I refuse to stop trying. Just like how, after we saw the gross apartment in Bushwick that reeked of soup (???) earlier this week, or the one in Crown Heights with a basement too short for Graham to stand upright in, we went home and immediately back to StreetEasy. More clicking. More searching. More thrill. I mean, if nothing is ever as good as it looks online, isn’t it best to just exist in that fantasy world? (Isn’t that like Instagram’s whole business plan??)
Last night, though, we saw one we liked so much, we called off our other three appointments for the night, called the broker from the Lyft, and filled out the paperwork as soon as we got home. Assuming we’re approved, StreetEasy will be gone from my life just as swiftly as it took it over. (The RealReal, for better or worse, will not be.) Now, the trick is to not imbue this apartment with such insane expectations that I freak out when something is inevitably imperfect about it. I’ll let you know how that goes.