Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Food and shelter

Tonight I had dinner with Masha and Katherine at Song, a Thai place on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. For some reason, while the typical restaurant on that strip has dishes in the $12-$18 range, Song's rarely exceed $7. Yet the portions are enormous, the food delicious, and the usual incubation period of pad see eww-derived illness has passed, yet I feel if anything revived. Cheap, Asian-inspired stirfry with the word "eww" in it can be quite wonderful.

Unrelated to see eww yet highly relevant to life in this fair city, damn the real estate situation is a disaster. I am the very first person to notice this. Craigslist presents a series of options each more pathetic than the next. Want to live alone? Ready to shell out a couple thousand a month for a room with a slanted floor, a shared bathroom down the hall, and a loft bed a foot from the ceiling? Ready to introduce strangers into your life? How about the man who will only live with a gay white male who keeps kosher? (Shouldn't that be a personals ad, not one for a roommate?) Or the two unemployed recent college grads (redundant, as any "recent college grad" who refers to himself as such is by definition unemployed) who require a roommate under 26 who's similarly unoccupied, as a gainfully employed individual would be too much of a show-off? What about the many otherwise reasonable-sounding apartments which come with several cats, allergy-shot fees presumably not included? Am I "420-friendly" enough for the good people of Craigslist, or even friendly enough, period? I'm guessing not. Where is the Song of apartments, the inexplicably half-price one-bedroom, complete with window, horizontal floor, kitchen, and bathroom?

That last question was not the least bit rhetorical. Comments welcome.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Where is the Song of apartments, the inexplicably half-price one-bedroom, complete with window, horizontal floor, kitchen, and bathroom?"

Philadelphia.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

In theory, fine, but the commute could pose a problem.

Anonymous said...

My experience at Song was that it's just like every other Thai restaurant, except for the DJ playing the Star Wars score at full volume while I ate.

For apts., you're better off just walking around neighborhoods and finding buildings with "For Rent" signs on them. It's also a better way to explore neighborhoods you might wind up living in.

I live in a huge renovated 1 bedroom in Greenpoint for $1100/mo. It's very close to Williamsburg, but other than that, it's a very pleasant place to live. Best Thai restaurant in Brooklyn is Thai Cafe on Manhattan Ave.

I gave up and just used a broker. In the end it was worth probably worth it.

Anonymous said...

Just want to plug Long-Tan as imho the best Thai place on the slope. The mains are pricey, but the noodle dishes are comparably priced to the other places and much better. Check out the wok seared udon for my number 1 cheap pick.

Will