Took this photo out our window, about an hour back. Since then, police presence has doubled (to about 120 on that corner alone), barricades have gone up at the end of our block, and buckets of snow have started falling.

Next year, anywhere but Midtown.

As I’ve mentioned before, Jess and I are looking to move. Over the course of the last couple of years, Times Square has grown and grown, increasingly eating our neighborhood, and – most recently – entirely taking over our corner. This time of year, I can barely push my way through the lines of tourists waiting for uptown double-decker sightseeing buses as I head to work. And, to add insult to injury, in a climate of downward spiraling real estate cost, our landlord is trying to raise our rent.

So, we’re leaving.

Jess, however, already has. At least mentally. While we’re still just knee-deep in the apartment search process, she’s nearly finished decorating our notional apartment.

She has colors picked out for various rooms, magazine and blog photos clipped for layout inspiration, and a growing wish-list of replacement furniture and art, as much of what I own is old, well loved, and certainly ready to retire.

The problem is, Jess can’t resist the siren song of an excellent deal. And, worse, she’s a consummate deal-finder. So, though the apartment is still imagined, the furniture we’ve begun to accumulate for it is real. Real, and very large.

This past week, for example, she found a high-end, multi-thousand dollar armchair, at 90% off. Not long before that, she found a giant Ming lamp, similar to one they sell at William Sonoma Home for about $800, at an antiques warehouse for $10.

Fortunately, it all barely fits. At least until the new sleeper couch and recliner – both significantly discounted, and both delayed by custom upholstery – arrive.

The countdown is on.

Early 20’s babysitter, to the two little kids with whom she was holding hands:

“You know what this is? This is Time Square. It’s a place that people who don’t live in New York like to visit.”

When I moved into my apartment, some three years ago and change, I really liked Hell’s Kitchen. I had already lived in the neighborhood for several years, and was moving just two blocks down and a half block to the east.

But that small distance was a big change. It put me on the corner of 8th Ave, less than ten blocks up from the heart of darkness: Times Square.

Which was bad. And with each passing year, got worse. The area gentrified. More and more tourists poured down my block.

By now, on my way to work, I have to elbow through crowds of gawkers from fly-over states. (A family of ten standing motionless in the middle of the sidewalk as the father points: “look, Martha, it’s a tall buildin’!”)

During ‘christmas season’ (September through February), I have to divert my commute entirely – five blocks up, five blocks back down – just to avoid the enthralled-to-standstill Rockefeller Center crowds. (“Look, Martha, it’s a tall tree!”)

Jess arrived long after the neighborhood’s grit had been largely polished away, never lived closer to 9th Ave to see that there really are (or, at least, were) restaurants and shops nearby aside from the Olive Garden and the Phantom of Broadway Gift Shop (“We have good price I [HEART] NY shirt!”).

So, not surprisingly, she hated it from the get-go. Not our apartment itself, which we both really like. But, in short, pretty much everything within a ten block radius of our front door.

And, increasingly, so do I. So, post-wedding, we’ll be kicking off an apartment search.

It’s a terrible, terrible time to do so. Sales prices are on the verge of ‘readjustment’, yet rental prices are fast on the climb.

Still, for the sake of our sanity, we’re not sure we really have a choice.

As for specifics – like neighborhood – we’re not yet entirely sure. Maybe downtown. Or uptown. In short, pretty much anywhere but where we are right now.

They say Time Square’s the core of the Big Apple; by now, we’re both pretty sure it’s the pits.

You’re trying way too hard.

Sincerely,

joshua

It’s 101 degrees here in Union Square, the humidity is off the charts, and, of course, the air conditioner in the Cyan office decided today would be a great time to take the afternoon off.

It’s time for a drink.

New Yorkers generally maintain that our reputation for standoffishness is unfounded, that we’re actually a rather friendly group.

And, by and large, I’d agree.

Except for in my apartment building, where none of the tenants talk to any of the other tenants. Ever.

I’d noticed this when I first moved into the building three or four years back, but hadn’t thought of it again since, until Jess observed the same thing a month or so back.

In her prior Murray Hill digs, she pointed out, neighbors would say hello waiting for the elevator, chat idly on their way to and from their front doors. But, in our current building, a veil of silence descends at the lobby, and doesn’t let up until people slam their apartment doors behind them.

We’ve tried to bend that unwritten rule – a simple ‘have a good day’ on the way out of the elevator, a ‘how are you?’ on the way in – with zero results. The tenants stare at us blankly, or continue to intently examine the walls.

At this point, I’m considering options for upping the ante – breaking into song and dance in the lobby, doing elevator handstands – but I’m a bit worried even that might not yield a response. Stepford, indeed.

Since Jess moved in a year or so back, ‘my’ apartment has slowly evolved into ‘our’ apartment. Furniture has moved around, been replaced. New art has appeared, along with more blankets, pillows and trays than I can count. And, as of this weekend, the bedroom has changed colors.

Yes, after much deliberation over the differences between Polar Sky and Polar Ice, Seaside Blue and Ocean Blue, we finally bit the bullet and purchased several buckets of one of those, though I’m no longer sure exactly which.

Painting the bedroom of a small one-bedroom apartment is a great way to make yourself glad that you at least don’t live in an even smaller studio, because emptying the contents of said bedroom into the living room makes for a very, very tight fit.

We did that moving, and then the painting itself, on Saturday, in a single stretch that extended from afternoon into evening. Then, on Sunday, we went back and filled in the patches we’d inadvertently left completely white in the later, sunlight-less stretches of the day before.

The end result? Surprisingly good. The coat of light grey-tinted blue makes the room feel a bit more a real home, less an impersonal, temporary rental. And while we’re still reeling from the cleanup efforts (the brunt of which has been handled by Jess, who spent today at home repairing the wreckage), it looks good enough that, in another couple of weeks, we just might forget what a pain in the ass the whole process is, and take on the rest of the apartment.

For the past five years, I’ve lived in Hell’s Kitchen – a fast-gentrifying neighborhood to the west of Times Square. And I really like Hell’s Kitchen. Especially as Ninth Ave., between 42nd and 57th, is full of an ever-increasing array of interesting little restaurants and bars.

Jess, however, hates Hell’s Kitchen. She thinks it’s dirty, overrun by tourists, and perhaps not even really a neighborhood (a contention backed earlier this week by my cousin Barbara, an editor at the NY Times).

This time of year, from Thanksgiving through New Years, a part of me can’t help but agree with her.

My previous commute, to an office in East Midtown, took me daily through Rockefeller Center. Except during the holiday stretch, when I’d walk five blocks out of my way, just to avoid the tree-gawking crowds.

Now my commute takes me just a couple of blocks through Time Square, to the 49th St N/R/W subway stop, en route to Cyan’s newer Union Square digs. Yet most evenings this month, emerging from the subway, I’ve barely been able to elbow my way back home, past tourists so overwhelmed by the display of neon lights they apparently lose their ability to walk or step the hell out of the way.

And it only gets worse. On New Year’s Eve Day, the police barricade off our corner, as people begin streaming in by 9:00 in the morning to secure themselves ball-watching spots. Getting in and out requires ID, or (as in past years, before I relinquished my Californian license) toted phone and electric bills.

Which is one reason why, ideally, Jess and I may not be heading out at all. Despite a handful of celebratory possibilities, I’m not sure any of them compete with mini egg rolls, pigs-in-blankets, crap champagne, and a chance to stay quietly in our apartment, pretending we don’t, at the stroke of midnight, live a few blocks up from the temporary epicenter of the entire world.