Move to New York Update

It’s been about 16 days since I announced our pending move to New York, so I thought it would be a good time to give an update.

On the 10th of this month Lauren and I had the great pleasure of attending my cousin’s wedding in Los Angeles. It was a wonderful affair in the open air patio at the Oviatt Penthouse. There we were able to see my sister, brother-in-law, mom, aunts, uncles, cousins and their spouses. It was a wonderful visit to LA: sunny and hot, but not too hot with a warm glowing evening that lay rich upon the night-crawling denizens of West Hollywood.

Thence we flew to NYC JFK and spent the next week looking for a new home. We worked with a wonderful broker named Alexa Williams with Elliman. She took us around to a beautiful property in the Battery: high above other skyscrapers we could look down and across Manhattan’s stock exchange districts. From the sky deck we could look out over the East River, look toward Staten Island and see the Statue of Liberty…it was a dream.

But it wasn’t for us. It was too corporate, too far from a safe green space, too close to my work, and, frankly, for an Austin / San Franciscan type, just too darn busy. We also tried another gorgeous property in Greenwich Village. But again, for a couple with a poodle the terrain was too small and too far from the green that our little Byron loves so much.

Sadly, the spaces just didn’t feel right. We were back to square one. We found a broker who specialized in Brooklyn and the Prospect Park area and she said she knew of a unit that was just about to hit the market. We were invited to come out and check it out. When we entered it we just knew that it was the one.

It’s a 3rd floor, walk-up, 1 bedroom in the Park Slope neighborhood. It’s most special feature is that it’s one block away from Prospect Park. The space is freshly refurbished with new appliances throughout. We spent the rest of the trip arranging cash and paperwork but when we got back on the Virgin flight back to LAX we had a signed contract for our habitation beginning on November 15, 2014.

One crucial and very, very big piece of our relocation has been locked in. The next steps are packing, moving, and becoming landlords ourselves. Gulp. Today we went and picked up the collapsed boxes of another couple in San Francisco who just moved apartments. We loaded up my car with their boxes and dumped them in our living room floor. Now comes the boxing part of the move.