Jonah’s Blog

Sorry I’ve been MIA for so long. I know you’ve all been panicking.

“Where’s Jonah?”

“I heard he was doing a bid Upstate.”

No. Don’t worry. I’ve been fine. Just holed up, moving.

Sunday I’ll be in the new place, and we can all forget about the travails

of switching apartments for a while. The whole thing makes me feel

like a hermit crab. My current apartment is looking more and more like

an empty shell that I’m about to discard. The next bottom feeder will move

in soon, use it for a while and eventually leave, unless the super finally

fixes the hot water.

In the living room cardboard boxes are stacked four high and packed with

CDs, books, rocks and shells from around the country, towels, and so many

other little things. It’s like a storage facility where I sleep and keep my stuff.

My cat loves it. She lies on her side on the tallest stack of boxes, her tail

and one of her legs dangling over the edge. She makes noises and paws at

my arms when I walk past. Sunday she’ll stress out. A crew of movers is

coming to take our stuff to the new shell. I’ll see you(s) all there.

I found an apartment. Thanks to all of you for your unending assistance.

At the end of this month - or the beginning of the next - I’ll be moving

a huge railroad on 6th Avenue, between 19th and 20th Streets. If you’re ever

in the neighborhood, drop in for a visit. I still think the rental real estate

business is corrupt, and realtors encourage shoddy, unnecessary

“improvements” that leave tenants with a lower quality product for a

higher dollar. All so landlords can get around rent-control price caps.

But if you look, and if you’re patient, you may find something nice

like I did. Talk to Brad Einhorn - he’s a good guy renting apartments in

Brooklyn - or Roger Grossman, if you want to live in Queens.

I’ll put you in touch with them, if you happen by my billboard on this

dusty, old dirt road.

I know this blog is supposed to be bullshit, and I promise it will be again,

but I just have something on my mind. Please humor me for a few minutes.

I’m moving. If any of you ever want to do anything just completely

stressful and self defeating, try looking for an apartment in New York.

But I’m sure most of you have done it more times than I have, so who

am I to talk. I’ll tell you who the fuck I am: I’m Jonah Bruno, and I’m

living it right now, every goddamned day! In addition to all the usual stressful crap

that makes looking for a pad in NYC so aggravating, we are currently in

the midst of a major rent gouging. Landlords are “renovating” perfectly good

apartments, just to add a couple hundred dollars to the rent. The end

result is diminishing quality and skyrocketing costs. Many of the renovations

involve replacing classy, old pine cabinets with particle board and Formica,

antique claw-foot bathtubs with hideous square tubs that peel if you use

scouring powder to clean them. It’s crap. My renovated floor has been

peeling plastic varnish since I moved in. And I won’t even talk about the

realtors, because I have some good friends in that business. There are

good people just trying to make a living doing it, but there are a lot of

frighteningly sleazy bastards encouraging the renovations - or so a

remorseful realtor friend of mine tells me. That’s a weakness of the rent

control laws. Landlords are allowed to hike the rents a little more when they

“renovate.” Landlords should be required to fix busted places, but they should

not be able to jack the rent up just because they refinished the floor and

replaced a working bathtub. I’ll leave on this: when was the last time the

Rent Guidelines Board actually ordered a reduction in rent? See for yourself. www.housingnyc.com

Today I cooked a chicken.