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| Thursday, February 21, 2008 |
| New York Times profiled a woman living my worst nightmare |
 The New York Times article: Moving Soon to an Apartment Near You profiles 38 year old playwright Brooke Berman who has lived in more than 30 apartments in 20 years in New York. She used her experiences as an urban nomad to write the play "Hunting and Gathering". The idea for “Hunting and Gathering” came in 2001 when Ms. Berman was asked by an arts organization to write a 10-minute play on the subject of home.
“I listed every apartment I’d ever lived in,” said Ms. Berman, who was 32 at the time and had 15 addresses behind her. “I was interested in the juxtaposition between our home life and our ability to connect with other people. And I was just beginning to realize that after 30 an air mattress isn’t charming.” (She gives that line to Ruth, played by Ms. Naughton.)
Seven years later Ms. Berman finds herself in the same tentative state. Living on money from the odd grant, temp jobs and teaching positions, she is emblematic of her Gypsy tribe — theater people are the original urban nomads — and a vivid example of the increasingly precarious domestic life of an artist trying to live in New York.
Rent for a studio or a one-bedroom in the East Village, for example, has more than doubled in 10 years, said Douglas Hochlerin, a broker with Bond New York, a firm specializing in Manhattan rentals. Last year, when the rent on Ms. Berman’s Mott Street one-bedroom, where she had lived for three years, rose to $1,550 from $1,350, she gave up her lease, beginning another bout of itinerancy, as she described it.
“It’s all about money,” Ms. Berman said cheerfully. “It’s not like I have a penchant for the transient life.” Ugh, I just could not live like that. Worse than living paycheck to paycheck, she is living temp housing to temp housing! |
| posted by Boston Gal @ 11:53 AM *
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| 6 Comments: |
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and here I thought moving 15.5 times in 7 years is bad...
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It's crazy but it's what people do to stay in NYC -- assuming they don't flee in terror or collapse from exhaustion first. Even this woman's about to escape to Los Angeles!
But I don't even want to think about the state of her finances.
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It would seem that breaking a lease is not that expensive. Perhaps she's counting spending weeks on other people's couches. Hopefully she has a PO Box.
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Clearly, getting to spend her life doing what she loves is more important to Ms. Berman than a comfortable home. There are still one-bedrooms available for $1,350 or less, so perhaps she doesn't mind the lifestyle as much as you clearly would, BG.
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I think its a bit silly to compare yourself to her and say you could never imagine living like that. Of course you couldn't imagine it, most people couldn't imagine it! But for many artistic people this is a given, and many thrive in it. They would be bored to death by the types of lives we have. I had a girlfriend once who was a bit like this, she worked as a dancer and never had money, constantly moved around, but she loved it. When I first met her I thought she was sort of fascinating, she knew the city better than anyone I had ever met, we used to hit a lot of cool little bars, restaurants, stores and theater houses that she knew about, looking back that was one of the funnest times in my life. This was over 10 years ago when we were in our early 20s, she's married now but I don't know if she works or what.
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She COULD get an apartment in the outer boroughs or Jersey and take a train. There is fabulous public transportation. But I guess that's not for her.
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and here I thought moving 15.5 times in 7 years is bad...