No Place is Perfect

Photo by myself outside the Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue and 29th Street.

Each gold ribbon outside the building represents a US service person killed in Iraq.

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I'm replacing a post I'd written on a great job offer I received last week.

I decided to revise the post because, well, to spare everyone. I'll make my decision in the next few days and we'll see. It's not an easy decision. I happen to be a very hardworking, devoted employee, who doubts her own abilities. Egad.

Of course, no office is perfect, no employee is perfect and no city is perfect, either. In terms of jobs, it's either the people or the boss or the pay. In terms of cities, it's the weather or the cost of living or the crime rate. There is always something.

Without the somethings, though, wouldn't life just be boring? If there were no troubles in the city where you live, no traffic to hold you up, no homeless people in the street, no flights of stairs to climb with the groceries, wouldn't things seem meaningless? I think so. If every day resembled The Stepford Wives, we'd go berserk.

I suppose this is where I should launch into a diatribe about balance. I will spare everyone and tell a story about my Upper West Side apartment, instead.

My apartment was the result of a minor ordeal. The small, two room apartment located on a beautiful, historic block on the Upper West Side was listed in the Times. I could live there if I sublet from a woman I never met. I signed the lease with the landlord, who said the previous tenant had moved to Jersey.

Fine. A couple years passed. Then I received a letter from the mysterious woman, saying she planned to move back. I had to leave.

Just about that time, I met a woman who lived a couple floors below me. She'd lived in the building many years and was eccentric (meaning, she was close to nuts). This woman, whom I'll call Alice, asked if I was new. I said yes, and that I was subletting from the mystery woman.

Alice then tells me the mystery woman was the landlord's daughter, who'd never lived in the building. So instantly, the plot thickened. Seemed like landlord and daughter had faked the sublease, and were trying to kick me out so they could increase the rent. The apartment was rent-subsidized, and with each new tenant, you were allowed to increase the rent a certain percentage.

I got myself a lawyer. Under his advice, I withheld my rent. And because of my refusal to pay rent, I was taken to housing court.

Before the court date, the landlord glued both my locks shut on two occasions, which required a locksmith and some 200 bucks to change the locks. I called the police. I considered getting a surveillance camera. My coworkers couldn't locate me one day and feared foul play. A case was in the news during that time, where a landlord did away with his tenant. Everyone's imagination was on hyperdrive.

In the end, I went to housing court and before anything could happen, the landlord caved and we signed an agreement that gave me a real lease. It was a long, nerve-wracking ordeal, and if the same thing happened to me today, I'm not sure I'd do the same. I was idealistic, younger and more tenacious then.

So as I was saying, not every place is perfect. I know from personal experience.