The JC Look

It was a beautiful day here yesterday. I made a 30-minute walk over to a friend's house and enjoyed the view the whole time. Jersey City has such an interesting look to it. Where I live, it's 19th Century brownstones and bodegas-turned-organic restaurants. Quiet streets and a real sense of neighborhood.

Most of Jersey City has a different aesthetic going on, though. I took a few pictures yesterday, things I'd been meaning to get on "film" for awhile now. Peaceful cemeteries overlooking the skyway. Abandoned vans in vacant lots. Concrete above you and below you.

Jersey City has been struggling for several decades. The last 10 years have brought a number of "immigrants" from Manhattan, and that accounts for the lovely historic district with its refurbished brownstones. The rest though, is generally still a bit tougher. Sometimes a lot tougher. Shootings in parks, homeless people hiding out in your basement storage unit (as my friend recently experienced), etc. So yeah, there are problems. But there's pride too. As there should be. Rock on, JC. I hope you make it.

The Pimp

At work this morning, I looked out the window onto the street below. I was pleased to see that The Pimp was back.

I see The Pimp once in awhile, walking down the street. Today he wore a pink suit, pink shirt, pink tie, pink dress shoes, pink and black zebra coat, and floppy pink and black zebra hat. He sauntered across the street, talking on his cell phone.

It made for a nice 30 seconds, watching The Pimp.

Really?

I didn't look especially stellar today. A project kept me up late last night, and as I scraped the sand from my eyes I knew the day ahead would be long as well. Nothing terrible or overly stressful. Just long.

So getting ready this morning, I didn't have it in me to put forth any real effort. No makeup, no more than a perfunctory comb through the hair. My outfit, which I normally have a few minutes of fun each morning putting together, was an afterthought.

Clean and decent but not much else, I strapped on the laptop case, stuffed my notebooks, textbook and umbrella into another bag, and staggered down the street. A few steps down the road my sneakers started bothering my feet, and I started doing a shuffle thing meant to delay the onset of blisters. A block or so later I saw a woman crossing the street towards me. Black sweater, beautiful cognac suede skirt, black tights, black boots. Bouncy hair, bouncy step. Ugh. Just give me a goiter and an eyepatch already; let's get this over with.

A block later, I crossed paths with another one of my fellow JC residents. Baggy jeans, sweatshirt, baseball cap, swagger. "Hey sexy," he said.

Me? Really? Really? I know he said the same thing to every woman he passed that day, and I'm glad he didn't see it... but I had to smile.

Associations

I love associations. Whenever I smell cut grass I immediately picture the front yard of the house I grew up in. The scent of a leather jacket reminds me of my high school boyfriend. A whiff of allspice or cloves reminds me of visits to my grandma, where a jar of watermelon pickles (made with allspice and cloves) was inevitably produced, emptied into a glass dish, and transferred to my plate with the aid of a tiny pickle fork. Just the other week, the sunlight mixed with the new warmth in the air and the tiny buds on the trees jolted me back to all those Thursdays before Easter, when my family would pack up the van and start driving down to Florida for vacation.

I had another association experience last week. I had just bought a couple travel guides, and one of them was a Let's Go. I used Let's Go when I backpacked in Europe back in 2003, and relied on it for all my travels in China. It's got a certain paper, and a specific typeface and setup. Leafing through it in a little tea house in the Village, I suddenly remembered how it felt each time I had read a Let's Go in the past. Not that I've ever forgotten how amazing each trip was, but I had lost some of the specifics of how it felt to plan these things. The initial planning of a trip is such a great thing. You know, that moment when you begin to see all the specific possibilities and imagine that you can do every one of them. Yes, I think I'll go and see the Pyrenees. Hm, I do believe I'll stop by Xi'an and see the Terra Cotta Warriors. The memory of thinking those things and the intoxicating sense of freedom that comes with it, to me, can be as satisfying as the memory of the experiences themselves.

All this is to say that we've gone and bought tickets for a three-week trip in August. !. I do love seeing new things.

All Set

We move fast. We do a lot of things quickly, but in terms of boxes, trucks and leases - we move fast. None of that uncertainty crap, none of that drawn-out hemming and hawing. None of that patience. Virtues are for pansies.

Subwayed it to Brooklyn in the pouring rain Saturday morning and signed a lease. June 1 = we are residents of the city of Brooklyn in the state of New York. We're a block and a half from Prospect Park too, which is Brooklyn's Central Park. Even designed by the same man.

The Pluses:

• 3rd floor apartment means no more bars on the windows.
• this new place will also not be a dim, sunless cave.
• Brooklyn! Let the adventures begin...
  
• Park Slope has a lot more going on than downtown Jersey City.

The Minuses

• But I like Jersey City. I'm a little sad to leave it.
• Less closet space in the new place means heated bickering a la "you're never going to learn Arabic. Throw the book away - we don't have space for it!"
• No ceiling fans in the new place means the purchase of an air conditioner. Heat rises.
• Leaving Jersey for Brooklyn means less kitchen space.

One more plus. Our street looks like this. This is not a photo of our actual street - it's a couple blocks over - but it looks about the same. !!

photo by wallyg

The Fevah

Moving fever, that is. It's been four days since we found out we have to move this summer, and in the past three days we've cruised Craig's List and considered living in the following places (in purple - our current apartment in red):


Apartment hunting drives me crazy. From the moment the search starts I'm seized with this panic that I'm going to miss out on a great deal somewhere. An adorable apartment in a great neighborhood for a low price. It's right... oops. Just slipped away. I search constantly, but always feel like I'm searching in the wrong place. No no, not there! Go look at apartments in Brooklyn! No no, the Upper East Side! Have you seen how cheap the rents are up there?

Argh! Too many choices combined with pessimism (An apartment in the West Village for that price? It must be overrun with bedbugs.) leaves me paralyzed and restless. Should we stay in our current neighborhood? I kind of like this idea, but Oliver wants out. Maybe we move to Journal Square, a gritty part of Jersey City - a bit further from the city and a little more dangerous but a lot cheaper.

What about Brooklyn? That's where we'd like to move once school and all that is over. Why not move there now?

Ooh, but what about New York? The rents we're seeing are surprisingly cheap - some of them aren't even that much more than our current apartment. Still, we'll get half the space for the money...

Anyone feel like making a decision for me?

Stressin'

I think I generally keep things pretty light here, on my little blog. Part of that is because I have a pretty "light" life (take that to mean what you will), but also because I don't really like focusing on the bad things here - or anywhere, really.

Lest anyone think my life is a series of bike rides, city jaunts, camping trips and amusing conversations with my husband, below is a short list of things that are weighing on me right now. I feel like venting.

1. My incredibly uncertain future. I graduate in 9 months - is there a job out there for me? Everywhere I turn right now, all I hear is "cutbacks", "hiring freeze", "it's going to get worse before it gets better." Wait, when you say it's going to get better, do you mean by December? That would be great, thanks.

2. My still somewhat uncertain summer. I've spent the last couple months at an increasing level of panic re: summer internship. Good, solid experiences in the field. Rutgers offers little or no (emphasis on no) help finding them, so I've been sort of flailing around, trying to figure things out on my own. I think I've got it all settled now... but what if it falls through? Additionally, am I doing the right thing? Is there something else out there that would be an even better fit?

3. Oliver's uncertain future. He works for a bank that keeps posting good numbers... a little too good, actually. Can't be real. Any day now, we're going to see his CEO on cnn, being led away from the office in handcuffs. And then Oliver will come home at 3 in the afternoon, box of personal items in hand.(**Sidenote: Oliver works in IT. He is not a banker - not a bad guy.**)

4. Housing. Our convenient, affordable apartment will soon be no longer ours. Our landlord emailed us yesterday, informing us that he is putting the apartment up for sale - uncertain economy... he's not sure how long he'll be able to hold on to his job... needs to unload this mortgage... he's so sorry to do this to us... we've been good tenants... we can stay beyond May 1 if we want... can stay until he sells the place...

Crap. We JUST moved. And there is absolutely.no.way. I am moving in the middle of my final exams. It's just not going to happen. And I've just gotten used to things in this neighborhood. What if we can't find something else in the area? I don't like being told I need to leave. I like coming to those conclusions on my own. Whine whine whine.