This article basically mirrors our own experience in searching for an apartment in NY. We had the same naivete and the same sense of desperation at the end. We ended up with an apartment in the area she described as far from civilization, at 78th and York. Dude, whatever, our neighborhood is nice, clean, and safe, and honestly much nicer than most of Midtown, which seems wrecked by comparison. It is about a 15 minute walk to the subway and not near the cooler stuff in lower Manhattan, but it's hardly Siberia.

Though I think for our next apartment we're going to look for something Upper West Side or Midtown ourselves...

***

Good weekend. We found a good 'coffee house' (though I don't want to call it that, it's much nicer than just a coffee house. I can't think of a good way of describing it) called Le Pain Quotidien near our apartment, and had breakfast there both Saturday and Sunday. We also had decent Japanese food at this very noisy and very cheap Japanese place Friday night. We had a ton of food and drink and it only cost us 33 bucks. I don't remember the name of the place, but there were several notable things about the menu; it was illustrated with Japanese men with long and hairy genitalia, Japanese women with equally hairy genitalia, and offered turkey testicles and bull penis for diners to eat. A very charming place, actually. The service was no good, it was crowded, but it was also very fun.

Yeah, so NY wasn't so bad this time around. I'll try to write more later about this weekend.