After two years of excellent parties and disastrous house-cleaning, my Sugar Shack roommates and I are headed our separate ways, leaving me, once again, on the apartment hunt. Having fallen increasingly in love with the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, I’m not likely to move far. And, fortunately, there seem to be endless no-fee one-bedrooms recently vacated within just a few blocks of my current 51st and 9th corner.

Less fortunately, it’s clear why most of the former tenants moved out – for one reason or another, each apartment leaves more than a bit to be desired. But, if I learned anything from my two prior moves, it’s that apartment hunting, like so many other things in life, is a numbers game. As I saw literally dozens of places before signing either of my last two leases, I’ve disallowed even fleeting moments of refrigerator-box-in-Central-Park despair until I’ve scoured at least thirty potential apartments this time through.

So, over the next few weeks, during all the spare spaces in my day, I’ll be dropping by pre-war walk-ups and modern elevator buildings, buzzing supers and phoning in management companies. And, in the end, I’m fairly certain the pavement pounding will pay off. I don’t mind the time spent at all, so long as it garners me the sort of apartment every New Yorker’s looking for: one that inspires at least a little bit of hatred in anyone who finds out how little I’m paying for so very much.