Subways

Riding the subway in New York is like going to the movies.

I've based at least two characters directly off photos I took of strangers in the subway (yes, I'm that creepy guy), and been inspired by tons more.

So I guess it was inevitable that the subway made it's way into my thesis film.

I love riding the subway. I will miss it so much when I go back home. Sure it's dirty and full of urine, sure you occasionally have people going on homophobic rants at every guy that passes them (issues...) or yelling out repeatedly about presumably traumatic past events ("I'm ON my WAY to the BRONX!! They HAVE iDENTified the KILLER!!" <silence> "I'm ON my WAY to the BRONX!! They HAVE iDENTified the KILLER!!" That one was really really sad...), or asking for money to feed their family which is also really really sad, but A) you don't have to drive a car, ever B) barring some occasional stop-missing, you can mostly daydream / read / write / cry / secretly listen to Taylor Swift to your heart's content and C) you'll never be in a tinier space with a wider range of human specimens anywhere in the world - that can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how much sleep you had - which is usually little, hence the crying & listening to Taylor Swift, but it's a remarkable and treasurable thing.

So to recap: I am terrible with directions and I hate paying for gas, paying insurance, paying for 6-month checkups and tire replacements or having to pay attention while travelling from my home to anywhere else. So subways - however hygienically unwise - are a godsend to me. And the perfect resource for any writer.

More pictures from my movie!!!

Ugh - these screenshots are making me realise how badly my film needs some good colour grading.

Home

The search for a home in New York was very traumatic & one that binds every New Yorker - barring the stupidly rich and famous - together. From epic application requirements to sky high prices, finding an apartment in New York will cut you down to size.

We'll live in Brooklyn, we thought. That should be affordable. If Brooklyn Heights and Williamsburg are too pricey, we'll aim for Park Slope or Cobble Hill or something nice like that, we thought... By the time New York apartment hunting was done with us, we'd be happy to have a roof over our heads at a price we could half afford in any corner of the five boroughs. Mareesa used to joke that we'd sleep under a bridge if we could just get here. From our safe white middle class bubble in Pretoria, we had no idea how close we'd come to eating those words.

It was quite an experience, but I'm so grateful for it. Even if we had five times the money we did, we learnt firsthand - for the first time - what discrimination feels like. As a foreigner with no social security number, realtors and landlords alike look at you like you're about to rob them and skip the country with their hard-earned goods. It sucks. Also, as a married couple, finding a roommate to share with is no easy feat. Understandably. It's a weird setup.

So thank God for Gazino Scott, the super laidback Jamaican brother who took us in with very few questions asked - and gave us a chance to prove that we really can and will pay the rent on time every month, even though we are from Africa & don't have an American sugar daddy. Gazino has since moved out, but our new roommate is just as nice and easy to live with. We try to forget that we used to pay a third of what we pay for our room in Brooklyn than we did for a whole apartment back home. Now we're just glad to have a place to come home to. We live in New York, after all, so who's complaining?

And we really lucked out in terms of location. Although we had all sorts of panicked ideas about where we'd like to stay, the man upstairs had our backs as always. We chose our neighbourhood - Prospect Leffert Gardens - because we had no other options but, had we known what we know now, we could hardly have chosen better. We're just 3 blocks from the Park but, being on the non-Park Slope side of it means prices are super reasonable and our neighbours are way more interesting. We're really close to the Q - arguably the best line for getting into Manhattan - and the 5 runs a few blocks from our house straight to NYFA Battery Park campus. It's a great, green, clean neighbourhood full of families (and all the noise you become accustomed to in Brooklyn - which I presume is much the same for the fancy pants in Manhattan).

Ironically, we're mere blocks from the street in Flatbush that we were initially so freaked out by - you know, the one I joked about and got outed as a racist over. It's true. I come from a white suburban bubble and I was a bit freaked out by the sheer urbanness of geniune Brooklyn. Now my bubble seems embarrassing and extremely limiting and I hope I  never get stuck in it again.

It's really great in terms of life experience, and really fun once the privilege bubble bursts. It's so funny how I ever thought I was poor back home. Hilarious. Hopefully I'll never take all the extraordinary opportunities and and options I've been given for granted again.

Anyway - this is home now. Even when we're both earning actual money again, and if we're fortunate enough to still be in New York, we'd like to get our own place, but likely still in Leffert Gardens, cause you can't beat being so close to the magic that is Prospect Park while having so much jerk chicken all around you.

Where we started:

Used to sleep on an inflatable mattress, now we have a real bed!

These days we have furniture & drawers

Where we are now:

Our apartment is quite lovely, really. We decorated it as an act of faith / defiance when we genuinely thought we'd be going home with our tails between our legs. Worked out well.

We only share this with one other person!

This is an enormous kitchen by NY standards.

Racist

So, after my Hunting post, someone online called me out as being racist, which was bizarre, and also a major bummer in my first few, emotionally excessive, weeks in NY. I'm not sure if it was the observation about the high volume of Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights (which is just a fact - & a fascinating one at that!), that I called East Flatbush awful (for which I apologise - see explanation below), the ridiculous map at the head of the post which was posted (if you read the whole blog) to make fun of its gross over-simplification, or my own gross over-simplification about the safety / desirability of neighbourhoods in Brooklyn (basically, the further it is from Manhattan, the more likely it is to be dangerous) - see apology below.

I think the person may have misread the tone of my blog, and misunderstood my intentions, but they were right to call me out. I don't believe any of my comments were racist (it's kind of racist to read race into my comments about neighbourhoods, but let's not go there), but I do believe I was insensitive, and for that I thank my offendee for calling me out. I found it disproportionately embarrassing (I was still pretty weepy at the time and was having some culture shock issues as it was), but I did learn from it.

I made sweeping statements about certain neighbourhoods which were intended to be an exaggerated, comical depiction of the ups and downs of NY apartment hunting. I do see how those sweeping statements would be offensive to people who actually live in those areas, know people who live in those areas or make a living in those areas. I also see how my statements may reinforce annoying stereotypes that inhabitants of those areas likely spend their lives having to disprove. For that I genuinely do apologise. It annoys me when people make unintentionally condescending presumptions about South Africa (or Africa in general), but I do try to remember that I have many blind spots of my own (case in point), laugh at their ignorance and enlighten them with more accurate information. (Other times I confess I make up ridiculous stories which they will hopefully repeat to the next South African they meet...).

So I apologise for my insensitivity. I won't update my blog, because I said what I said, even if I said it badly, and I learnt from the experience. Which is what I'm here to do. I appreciate being called out on it.

Also, I love Brooklyn (all of it) and everyone who lives there. It feels far more like home than Manhattan (which is fun in a different way). I admire those who come from edgy neighborhoods (and let's be honest, some are more edgy than others), and would love to know all their stories, because I'm sure I have no idea what their lives are like. To be frank, I probably grew up quite sheltered and spoilt, but there's nothing I can do about that except try not to be ignorant about how others grew up. I'm probably also a white hipster gentrifier, but there's not much I can do to help that either, except try to be a considerate, rather than a presumptious, version of that. I do want to live in a neighbourhood where I feel my wife could walk home safely from the subway at 2AM, even though I come from a country with notorious violent crime rates (the difference is; in South Africa, we know how to be street smart. Here; we're still learning).

Anyway, as long as I'm learning, I'm grateful. If any of this came off insenstivie, let me know. I'm still learning & I want to know. Thanks for the lesson, New York!

Hunting

Week One in New York:

Day 1: Arrive. Jet lagged. Taxi (expensive). Brooklyn Sheraton. View (Statue of Liberty). Overwhelmed. Jet lagged. Asleep by 9h30.

Day 2: Caroline weekend visit! Brooklyn Bridge! Chinatown / chinese maid outfits! Street performers! Brooklyn Bridge (again)... Snow! Brooklyn Bridge park! Snow! Mmakgantsi! Mmakgantsi's baby! Amazing pizza (Brooklyn Heights)! Piano bar in Greenwich Village (wrong bar but still great)! Extremely crowded, ridiculously rude waitress! Jet lag kicks in... Manage to stay awake til midnight!

Day 3: Central Park, snow, attempted snow angels, attempted sledding, amateur figure skaters, successful snow woman, Belgian waffles, Strawberry fields, John Lennon's apartment. Caroline leaves... jet lag sets in...

Day 4: HOLY CRAP WE NEED A PLACE TO STAY (NY honeymoon is over)!!! Take up permanent residence on Naked Apartments, Hotpads, Zillow and Craig's List. See East Flatbush. Cold response to lack of US Credit Rating. Need US Guarantor. Who? Who? Mareesa cries. Find out NYFA won't allow me to work at all, even though my Visa allows it. Friedl cries (a little, mostly inside). Everjoy Gutu calls, Mareesa feels 76% better. See Crown Heights. Realtor called Mendy shows us two terrible apartments. Drown sorrows at McDonalds. Watch homeless guy take steel pipes out of his jacket outside. Confused. Wait 30 minutes in freezing cold for realtor called Juanita. At least she shows us a decent apartment, but Mareesa is not convinced.

Day 5: More realtors, more subway, more running. Late for every appointment. It gets pretty repetitive from here on out. Apartments in our price range are hit and miss. If they're big enough, they're old and rundown. If they're clean & remodelled, they're tiny. If they're both, they're at the end of a subway line.

Day 6: More apartments... more realtors... my introvert "small talk" quotient is waaaay maxed out... I potentially get a bit grumpy and mopey. See apartment that is perfect in every way - but just too expensive. Consider blowing our savings on it anyway, but realise that may be unwise. Ignore all further calls and head to Prospect Park instead. Magical walk in the snow. So. Much. Snow. Successful snow angels. Soft powdery snow. Snow frolicking. Snowball throwing. Dead cold hands. Walk right through all the way back to the top of Washington Ave to get into Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (for FREE - cause everything is still frozen) Wander through Conservatory, visit snowed-over Japanese Garden, as featured in Woody Allen's Manhattan (or was it? I can't remember now. Perhaps it was the Cherry Orchard. Perhaps it was neither). Feel guilty for shirking house-hunting duties. Go home. Read about gentrification in Crown Heights. Try to research crime rates in Brooklyn cause, you know, you hear a lot, but how safe / dangerous is it really? (UPDATE: compared to where I'm from, really quite safe) - this and this were actually useful, this not so much, this is kind of racist. Bay Ridge appears to be the safest place in the world. Bed Stuy not so much. (UPDATE: Bed Stuy is great & right around the corner from where I live. Brooklyn is very safe & generally much friendlier than Manhattan. Be patient with us white people. We're silly and easily frightened).

Day 7: SO over apartment hunting. See some terrible places catch a manic lift with a realtor who drives like a crazy person, from Queens to Downtown Brooklyn. At least three accidents barely averted. Do appreciate the lift, though, and the guided tour of Brooklyn. Dinner with the Gutus in Times Square. Nicest people on the planet. Go home with more home-cooked meals than we could possibly eat.

Day 8: See, like, six properties in Bay Ridge. But feel more confused than ever. Great area, but really far out. Also, don't see any really good places. Work until 3AM to finish up some of the Summit work I've been putting off since England. Hotel's Wi Fi hits a wobbly and causes the slowest, most fatally drawn out working experience of my life. Nevertheless, get two newsletters out in time and manage to email chat with my former colleagues as they start their Fridays at the office in South Africa.

Day 9: Mareesa's birthday! Skype with family!!! Then see more properties. End up seeing only one. Almost sign up for it before realising the massive Agent's Fee and 4 month security deposit is not a good deal. Also we don't really like the place (not enough to sign up for 12 months). Rethink everything. Question everything. Doubt everything. Renting in New York is like taking out a mortgage. Go to the Little Cupcake Bakeshop and have birthday Lucky Charm Cake and tea. Realise we can probably live with the Gutus in New Jersey if all else fails and decide not to rush into anything. Take a walk past the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that connects Brooklyn to Staten Island. Get Mareesa's nails did (ok and mine too) at best-rated Viatnamese nail parlour in Williamsburg - thanks, Caroline! Get all dressed up and take the subway out to Brooklyn Heights for an incredible dinner of cheese platters, raw meet platters, beef stew, butternut pastas, spanish wine and dessert containing yoghurt, ice cream, cheddar and Thyme at Colonie - thanks Dean and Andrea (and thanks Elsa for the recommendation). Put our cares behind us. Combination of sleep deprivation and wine brings Friedl's detached emotions unexpectedly to the fore and tears are momentarily strewn in public. Sleep like babies (minus the waking up and crying and the dirty nappies).

Day 10: Oversleep. See two more properties in Bay Ridge. Epically convoluted travel arrangements. Options options. More confused than ever. Consider sharing until we find our feet. About 15 realtors left hanging - will probably have to notify them at some point that we are not interested in their properties, or risk persuasive calls, text and emails until the end of days...

Also Day 10: Pack up our lives into 9 pieces of luggage, again. Check out of Brooklyn Sheraton. Enjoy last breakfast of fruit, bran, creamy scrambled eggs and dripping, crispy bacon (and Bagels). Enjoy last free Starbucks coffee.

Later on Day 10: Collect bags, find taxi big enough to take all our bags, and move into a dude named Rob's spare bedroom in trendy Greenpoint, for four nights (via Air Bnb). Consider venturing out to watch American Hustle. Stay in and watch Miranda July's The Future instead. Tired and mentally drained enough to find it amusing. Then blog til Midnight.

I promise future blogs will be more engaging. This week was pretty overwhelming, what with the jet lag and apartment hunting and far-and-wide subway riding, and late-night working, and missing everybody and everything. It is insanely exciting to be in New York, though, and to be preparing for my course work at New York Film Academy.

Tomorrow, we just enjoy being in New York. (Update: mostly just managed to go to Hillsong NYC, cry like babies and wander aimlessly around Manhattan - I believe Mareesa spent some birthday money in the process. Then tried to watch the Oscars online, gave up and went to bed early).