BLOG WORLD

I Started a Blog in New York

But didn’t stick with it

David Conte
5 min readJun 6, 2024

--

Upper East Side of Manhattan — photo by author

The arrival there was like something out of a movie. We’d packed our lives into a few suitcases and flew business class from Frankfurt, Germany, to JFK Airport in NY. The taxi ride from the airport was a quasi-tour of all the neighborhoods in Manhattan, a slight rain engulfing the city at night.

It was cold, the beginning of winter.

When we arrived at the high-rise apartment building, with The Statue of Liberty partially visible in the distance, the doorman took our bags onto the sidewalk as the wind whipped against us. Paid for by Kathleen’s employer, we were then ushered up to the five thousand dollar-a-month temporary apartment, our future filled with promise and excitement.

But after two months of living the high life in Manhattan, I was unenviably tasked with having to look for a permanent apartment for us. Daddy Employer was only offering three months of paid accommodations. So it was time to get cracking, or else we’d be out on the streets like two city rats.

To achieve the impossible — a sandbox in the Chelsea neighborhood or that elusive shoebox in the Village — I had to make the real estate brokers think I was crazy. Why?

--

--