I lived in some real crappy apartments when I lived in New York. My first place was in East Rockaway in 1972. There was no stove and no kitchen cabinets. I used a hot plate for everything because no matter what the internet says, no one had a god damn microwave. I didn't even hear of them till like the mid 1980's. The refrigerator gave off shocks, so I had to use an old rubber bathing cap to touch the handle. I had a toilet but I had to use the same shower as the people upstairs. I couldn't stand that, so I might have stayed there 6 months.
Ok. Moved to an apartment complex that was on the border of Oceanside and East Rockaway. 1973. It seemed kind of OK. I think the rent was $225 a month. That was pretty high considering you were lucky if you made more than $2 an hour. I loved the ultra old lady upstairs. She was so hard of hearing you had to scream for her to hear you. She also didn't mind the loud music that came from downstairs.
Oh. Get up in the middle of the night to get something out of the kitchen. Turn on the light and they scatter. It started out small. Damn cockroaches. Everything just started getting worse. The place was built on filled in marshland and the buildings started to sink. Walls had cracks, but the worst thing was the plumbing. The building was sinking so much, the pipes weren't liking it too much. Everything leaked. I had to keep buckets under the kitchen and bathroom sinks. In the morning they needed to be emptied and there was at least one or two dead mice floating in each bucket. At least the toilet worked. The maintenance man in the building looked just like that Dwayne guy on One Day At A Time. He couldn't do anything about it because of the "settling." Somehow this guy was carrying on multiple affairs with residents at the same time. His wife was cranky and they fought a lot. Sometimes clothes ended up out the window.
So this was the time I was working at the Rainbow Diner. My mother already snuck me money on occasion. Back then younger people and their parents really didn't get along too well. Not any that I knew. My parents were actually pretty nice, but there were also lifestyles differences that didn't mesh. This is when I had an unfortunate time with a "man in the motor trade." Let's just say I was anemic for a while. I had to quit work. I was laying in bed a lot. But I had to deal with cockroaches in the kitchen and dead mice in buckets every damn morning. Luckily I had already read "Nausea" so I was kind of ready for life. My "George Wallace voting" conservative sister was nice enough to bring me cooked food and she cleaned a little. Don't remember exactly how long I was there but I'm sure it was less than a year. Had an eviction notice on the door because I was late with the rent.
Then it was Long Beach, NY. In the 1970's Long Beach was the shittiest town you could find on Long Island. But the rent was pretty cheap. The old buildings were crumbling like in the Bronx. It was also the age of a new way of "dealing" with mental health. Which meant no treatment at all. Long Beach was chosen as one of the places that former mental patients were housed. Which meant it was an every day, really constant, occurrence to deal with angry souls yelling into the nothingness. A very high crime rate also.
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| Long Beach 1970's |
I had no car. Not even a drivers license. I walked everywhere or I walked to the bus stop or train station. The first place I lived in Long Beach was the top floor of an old house. It was on Park Ave. Not far from where Billy Crystal grew up. I think it was near Lincoln Blvd. I don't remember exactly. I've only been back there a few times. It's very strange. You would think you'd remember everything, but when you're gone a long time you just don't connect to the streets anymore. The movie City by the Sea (2002) is about Long Beach. I think it has been fixed up fancy since then.
I worked a very short time at the Jack in the Box in town. I had one guy that drove up every time I worked to tell me he loved me. But then I was physically assaulted by being spit on & my hair pulled inside the lobby. Luckily that didn't last long and I got a job doing "paste up" of ads at a large local publication.
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| I worked at this craphole for a little bit |
There were a lot of great things about Long Beach. The boardwalk. It had all kinds of old, abandoned buildings and old amusement areas. Fortune tellers. The kind of beach, though, that you had to check for broken glass before you put down your towel. Everyone cut their foot there at least once. I hear it was fabulous at one time. My parents said that during the depression people would go there to "people watch." The mafia had a presence and they were the only people that could still afford to dress in fine clothes. So you'd plop yourself down on a bench and watch the mob families walk by. By the time the 70's hit there were lots and lots of drug deals on the boardwalk.
So this house had an oven that was from the 1930's. I had to light the pilot light every time I used it. Ok, turn on the gas and get that match in there before the gas was on too long. More than once I had a situation where it blew back on me. A little explosion that singed my eyebrows. Thought nothing of it. The kitchen was big but the living room was pretty useless. It had one of those sloped ceilings because it was on the top floor, like an attic. You could walk in maybe a foot. I didn't have any furniture in there, But the previous tenants did paint one of those twilight zone tunnel things on the sloped ceiling.
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| Like this, but not as good. |
The downstairs neighbors were cool but they put any loud music that was played in my place to shame. They were a large family from Brazil and on Sundays they went wild. I just don't know how they had a stereo so powerful. But everyone enjoyed themselves and everyone enjoyed music.
The other fine feature of this rental was the ceiling moulding. If you hit the wall really hard many, many, many cockroaches would fall to the floor. You could slightly control the population by doing this at least once a day. Get the dustpan out and scoop them up. Make a run out to the yard and hope they die in the elements. As an added feature the toilet stopped working after I was there for about 8 or 9 months. Almost 100% of the time rentals in NY are through a real estate company. You have to pay them a boatload. City agencies were inadequate and corrupt at the time. Wouldn't be surprised if they still are. No internet either, so any complaint you called the real estate agency. For the most part nothing was ever done. And nothing was ever done about the toilet either. Luckily there were nearby establishments. I went to the luncheonette every day. I am also quite skilled, as a woman, at peeing in a bottle. I don't know how it happened, maybe the real estate people finally felt bad, but the house was eventually condemned. I even remember the landlords name.
So the last place that I lived in before leaving New York was the best place by far. It was small but really cute. Built in the 1930's, it even had an old style garden in the back. There were four units and everyone was nice. The place was two blocks from the beach on E. Broadway. The humidity was so amazing, I had to clean mildew off the living room walls every couple of weeks. I went to the beach a lot. It's kind of great to live close to the beach. People even go to the supermarket in their bathing suits. (Or at least they did.) It was just the rest of New York I couldn't stand anymore.
