movin' on up

I moved on Saturday. To the east side. The Upper East Side. I never thought I was the "Upper East Side" type of person. In my mind the Upper East Side was boring and conservative and full of women who wear pearls to brunch.
In April I decided I to break my lease at my current apartment. Since moving in, life at Jerome had never been boring. The first morning we were there we experienced our first bout of cold water. Unfortunately, cold showers were not limited to this one morning. Rather we experienced a lack of hot water several days every month we were there. In the winter, the lack of hot water was coupled with a lack of heat. While we liked our apartment, we hated the building. There were also the three great floods, each resulting with crashing ceilings and damage to the apartment as well as our personal items.
Although we were the minority in our building and even our neighborhood, we never felt unsafe. However, as the year went by more and more loiterers began hanging out in the lobby of the building which happened to be right outside our door. The noise was often very disturbing. Not only did this group of teenagers feel the hallway was a good place to smoke cigarettes, play craps, and makeout with each other, a few felt the hallway was actually a toilet. The smell of urine reeked each time we stepped out of our door.
Many complaints were made to the super, the landlord and the city. We were never able to reach the first two and the third was merely to provide us with a paper trail of the problems.
So in April, as we experienced no hot water for the umpteenth time we finally decided to call it quits. My roommate was planning to move out of the city for the summer. I had the choice to stay and find someone to sublet or move. The choice was easy.
I wrote a letter to the landlord documenting the reasons we were breaking our lease and moving out. I was confident the landlord would allow us to break the lease. I included over 10 letters we received from the city documenting our complaints as well as photos of the ceiling cave-ins. I sent the letter via fax and certified mail. I was not surprised when I received a call a few days later saying we could break the lease. I was surprised when he offered to apply the security deposit to the last month rent and adjust the $700 we withheld from several months of rent (due to the no hot water situation) to a $0 balance.
Unlike the first time I looked for an apartment in NYC on my own, this time I decided to use a broker. When I saw the second apartment, I decided to take it. It is a studio apartment that was $5 under my maximum rent range. It is located a few stops from the 96 crosstown bus to take me to the Upper West Side for work. Given that most of my friends currently live on the East Side, I was eager to move closer to them.
The move took nearly 5 hours. I was glad I hired movers. Especially since I live on the 5th floor of a walk-up. The tip I planned to give them increased with each trip they took up the stairs. I was glad they were young guys, otherwise I thought one of them might have had a heart attack.
So far I like my new neighborhood. It is quiet, yet interesting. There are lots of restaurants within walking distance. I'm less than 1 block from the subway and the crosstown bus. I've decided the Upper East Side isn't at all boring.
And I'm enjoying my hot showers and supers who actually return calls.
This is a picture of the final crash in the bathroom that often lacked hot water at Jerome Apartments.