That’s what I want. I care not what brand. I care not what expense. Hit me.
At the first store, they sent me to two other stores. One of those failed on knobs: touchscreen only. The other has a weird, custom, modular setup that could work.
Leaving Fischer Paykill, my fifth stop in New York’s Architecture & Design building, one must use a touchscreen to call the elevator. I pressed “lobby” four times before giving up and walking over to the other touchscreen.
Tomorrow I plan to swing by the Manhattan Department of Buildings for their walk-in office hours. They’re open from 4-7pm at 280 Broadway. I will ask them about ADA accessibility and exceptions.
There exist only two induction cooktops with knobs and downdrafts. One is massive and ugly and only ships to the EU. The other has three showrooms in New York City, one of which is at… 280 Broadway!
Not only did a question occur to me today, and tomorrow I get it answered. But a second question occurred to me (“what’s the cooktop like?”) and I get to answer that, too! At the same address.
—
Today’s follow-up:
Goddamnit, why won’t you let me make my own bathroom the way I want? Don’t tell me that I want an ADA-compliant bathroom. Don’t tell me that one day I might want one. Don’t paternalize me about my own preferences of how I want to organize my own fucking home. This isn’t about wet over dry. This has no impact on anyone else’s safety.
Even if I had a child who ended up in a wheelchair, I wouldn’t want an ADA-compliant bathroom. ADA compliance requires 32” doors. A child-size wheelchair is 22.5in wide. Adult wheelchairs max out at 26” wide. I want to build one bathroom with a 28”-wide door. If I need grab handles, I will install them later. This is not a commercial establishment. This is my own home. If I want a 7’ long by 3’ wide bathtub, you should let me do that in my own goddamn space, not force me to have a 5’ long tub in order to allow for wheelchair rotation clearance. The bathroom is only 40 square feet, and you want to dedicate 10% of it to some theoretical future person who can’t even fit in my front door?
“What’s that,” you ask? “Why won’t they be entering the front door?”
My concrete-surrounded front door is only 27” wide. (29” with the door removed). Last I checked, 27” is narrower than 32”. It’s even narrower than 29”, and that’s assuming you want the handicapped visitor to remove the door and reattach it every time they enter. Why would you want to do that to them? Talk about inaccessible!
One of the worst lessons of the past hundred years is the advice, “Don’t talk to strangers.”
A friend once told me a story. A young woman at a bar in Texas spotted a guy she found attractive. She positioned herself near him. He didn’t approach. His friends left the bar. He left with them. She gathered her friends. Her friends followed his friends to the next bar. At the next bar, he didn’t approach her. Eventually, his friends left that bar for a third. She and her friends followed. At this third bar, he approached her. The pair went home together. Happily ever after.
–
The woman from Mexico City likes very green bananas. Her husband, also 5’3”, also in his mid 60s, likes talking to strangers. She takes the stairs; he takes the elevator. They live in 5C. They’re moving tomorrow. Back to Mexico City, for retirement.
“5C?” I ask him. “Did you guys do renovations?”
“How’d you know?”
“I’m also on the 5 line. 5F. I heard about yours.” (In my building, 5 refers to the vertical line while F refers to the floor. All the 5s have the same basic floor structure.)
“You wanna see?”
Raúl walks me around his apartment. The place smells faintly of cat urine. I don’t notice. I grew up with cat urine. Raúl’s two cats skitter. Raúl says they are confused and afraid, considering the move. I think they can’t get purchase on the hardwood floor.
Raúl’s ceilings are high. Very high. Like 12 feet. Mine could be high too, Raúl says. I could expose the oak beams, only because I’m on the top floor. Otherwise the exposure breaks fire code.
I text my partner, “Come to 5C immediately”. She doesn’t answer. I call. She’s in the shower. Four minutes later, she joins the tour.
Raúl renovated the apartment around 20 years ago. The pair sold their apartment in Brooklyn 5 days before the housing bubble popped. They moved into this place a day later. Renovations were cheap since all the construction workers were out of work.
Raúl likes his windows and AC unit. He spent $35,000 on new windows 8 years ago. He hates his floor-to-ceiling doors. $2,700 per door. He likes the bold colors and exposed brick. He hates the darkness. He says I’ll have much better light since I’m on the top floor. He says that the co-op board is easy: they’ll approve anything that’s up to code. “The guy on 5D put a bathroom above our kitchen! Can you imagine that?”
They expect to visit New York; they have family here. They’ll let me know, stop by for dinner.
“Take your time on the renovations,” Raúl advises. “Be sure you eat well.” “Julian doesn’t eat enough vegetables,” Partner tells him. “During this next year, you should.”
—
Ten minutes later, I open my door to head to a show to find Raúl in front of it with another man. “This is my guy Jaime. He does floors, he does windows; anything you need”. I shake Jaime’s hand. Raúl texts me Jaime’s number.
—
Three hours later, Partner and I leave a very green banana outside 5C door with a note: “Thank you for the tour. Have an excellent retirement!”
–
Shortly before we part ways, Raúl tells me his wife spotted me back in the lobby due to the bunch of very green bananas I was carrying. That’s the way she likes to eat them. Very green bananas can be hard to find. He jokes that she wants to buy one off of me. I offer one but she declines.
In retrospect, I wonder who befriended whom.
—
Three hours later, Partner and I leave a very green banana outside 5C door with a note: “Thank you for the tour. Have an excellent retirement!”
Pity they’re leaving. But if they weren’t, would we even have met? Tomorrow, I will knock on 5D. I want to learn more about this bathroom.
At 8:32am, my doorbell rings three times in quick succession. I groggily roll over and tell Partner I got it. I walk to the door and flick the peephole to open. “POLICE!” says the voice on the other side. The peephole is dark as though covered by something. The something moves. I now see 3 bodies. “One sec.” I reply. The voice on the other side grunts something noncommittal. Naked, I go to the bathroom and pee for what feels like a very long time. I then toss on yesterday’s shirt and pants. I tell Partner, “What do we tell cops?” She replies something like, “The truth?” “Nothing,” I reply. “We tell cops nothing.” On the way to the door, I grab my hat. Just before opening the door, I turn on voice memo mode on my phone.
I open the door. It’s a man in front, two women standing one on either side behind him. The following is a direct transcript.
Me: Hey, good morning.
Cop: Good morning, how are you doing? My name is Austin, from the New York City Police Department. Sorry to bother you.
Me: No worries.
Cop: What’s your name?
Me: Julian.
Cop: Julian, are you the only one that lives here?
Me: Yeah.
Cop: You just moved in here?
Me: Yeah.
Cop: How long ago?
Me: End of January.
Cop: End of January. Do you know who used to live here before you?
Me: No.
Cop: Oh, okay. Do you get any, is it just you that lives here?
Me: My partner is here at the moment, but I’m the only one who lives here.
Cop: Who’s your partner then?
Me: Nikki.
Cop: Nikki. Do you get any mail, or used to, for this name?
[He holds out a piece of paper. It’s a mug shot with statistics.]
Me: [Mispronunciation of the mug shot person’s name]?
Cop: Yes.
Me: I’m not familiar with that person.
Cop: No mail?
Me: No.
Cop: She look familiar to you?
Me: No.
Cop: No.
Me: I received, maybe like two weeks ago, a letter or two in the mailbox that was not addressed to me, and clearly wasn’t for me, and so what people usually do is they put it on the thing next to it, and then when the guy comes by to deliver the mail, he’ll take it back. [I promise English is my first language.]
Cop: Do you know if it was for her?
Me: I don’t remember.
Cop: Don’t remember, yeah. Okay. All right. I’m sorry about everything.
Me: No worries.
Cop: All right.
Me: Cheers.
I close the door and return to Partner. She says in a deep voice, “NYPD, open up!”. We laugh about how cops are only mildly inconvenient in their normal duties (ringing aggressively at 8:30am, the way a child would ding-dong three times), but when they really want to get you, they’re incredibly inconvenient (like busting down your door at 5am).
Here’s what I’ve heard about the previous owner:
A mother lived here with her son. The mother owned the apartment. She died. The son didn’t make the maintenance fee payments. He kept sneaking into the apartment: breaking through the front door or climbing up the fire escape to break in. This explains the one-inch diameter deadbolt on the fire escape.
Last time the management company stopped by, the previous tenants had a big pool table in the middle of the living room. Compared to that previous state, our current state of disheveled (Amazon boxes strewn about) is what the management company describes as “very clean”.
The previous owner was foreclosed on. The court case took ~3 years.
Since this morning, here’s what I’ve since learned about [correct pronunciation of the mug shot person’s name]:
She was born in the Bronx, had a hard childhood, suffered from medical and mental health issues, was arrested multiple times for misdemeanors, and then was charged with felony robbery.
She participated in “Alternative to Incarceration” court with the Fortune Society, which provided her with therapy and an arts program. She had an art exhibition in 2022 and graduated from the program in fall of 2023.
In February 2024, she shared her success story at the State of the Judiciary program in Albany and has been featured in multiple materials since. She was proud to hold a job, have her own apartment, and was expecting her first child that spring.
She had an eviction filed against her in March of 2025 for not-my-address and is due in court next week.
It’s not clear to me why NYPD was looking for her.
I stopped by the bank earlier today. The banker talked for twenty minutes about the cruise she wants to go on. I told her the story of my morning, being awaken by NYPD. She began singing the Taylor Swift Song:
In which our hero brings a negotiation to a key fight.
After trying and failing to close my bank account at Wells Fargo, I strutted into the hardware store ready for a fight.
“Three of the big keys; four of the small. How much?” The older of the two cashiers replies, “Thees wun ees twenny. Thees wun ees fore.” $20 is standard, but I know I can get the small for $3.50. “I’ll give you $70 for all of them.” “Huh?” The older man asks his younger compatriot. The younger one says to me, “Set prices, no negotiating”. “Ok, then just three big ones.” They discuss my request in Spanish. They assume I don’t speak Spanish. They’re correct. But I do know my numbers.
The younger fellow cuts the three big keys. When he’s done, the older fellow says, “Udder wun?” I show him the small key. (I have 8 keys currently on my ring.) He takes it. I say, “I don’t know the price.” He ignores me. I think to myself: “After they’re cut, I have the leverage anyway” and look around the cash register ot see if there’s a fee for credit card.
The older fellow finishes the small keys and rings it up: $68.99 for the seven keys. I pull out my phone to pay with tap. “Ahhh, card?” The older man says. I suspected he would respond this way. But there’s no sign up-charging me for card usage.
I pay and he gives me the receipt. I feel like a winner. Then I look. $15 each for the big ones. $4 each for the small.
Did I school him, saving $7.01 over retail price? Or did he hoodwink me into thinking the $15 keys are $20 each?
At home, I tried all three of the big keys. Success. And then all five of the small keys. Also success. Wait. Five? Did they copy me five keys instead of three? Ha.
[Note: Last time Partner visited this store, they charged her $30 for a copy of the big key.
In the spirit of my yesterday writing, here are relatively trivial items I’m happy with:
Frolicking in the snow with Partner at 10pm yesterday in Central Park.
I acquired a stick. A great stick. A passerby said, “That’s a great stick, man.” Some sticks are great.
Partner and I scaled the steps atop the ice rink. We passed two late-20s men who smelled like weed and soap. “Stay safe,” one of them told us. “Make sure you get out.”
Partner & I both remarked how similar New York City is to Burning Man.
At the ice rink, a worker used a snowblower to shift snow from atop the ice to another place atop the ice. Then he used the snowblower to shift the snow back to its original location. I’m still not sure what he’s trying to accomplish. I suspect he either is failing or paid hourly.
I awoke at 6:30am thinking about all the quotidian aspects I’ve been enjoying.
The review of 8 contracts for home renovators.
The simple pleasure of being able to host.
The comedy of being awoken by a THUNK-THUNK-THUNK at 6:30am and immediately fearing it’s someone banging on the door of your van, then recalling you haven’t lived in a van for almost a year.
It’s still not clear what caused the THUNK-THUNK-THUNK. Snow falling? Radiators clanging? Someone actually knocking on our door? My hypothesis: GREMLINS!
The sadness + regret for leaving your bedding with the man who bought your van, him promising to deliver it to you in New York when you closed on the house. He delivered it well enough. But he also washed one of the blankets, a dry-clean-only item that had been a gift from dear friends in Texas, and which will now never be as soft as it once was.
The memory of accidentally doing a similar thing to another friend’s blanket. I borrowed it for a picnic; it acquired burrs, and I began picking them out by hand. Wanting to avoid me the trouble of picking them all out, he washed it and it developed piles. I don’t really blame yourself for the actual ruining of it: I would have picked it back to pristine. But the spirit is similar. 😔
Partner: “Can you squish…” and points downward. I start squeezing her right foot. She laughs. “Can you squish the ottoman toward me? I like the default to the footrub, though. I do usually request that as, ‘Could you squish my feet?’”
In Central Park, Partner said, “What’s that?” And pointed at the ground. I inspected. She clarified: “No, that!”. I looked closer. She grabbed a hunk of snow with her arms and shoveled it in my face.
On 105th street, between Columbus and Amsterdam, Partner & I walked by some strangers. They had been throwing snowballs at each other. One of them asked, “Snowball fight?” as he walked past. Partner & I kept walking. Then three steps later, I wheeled around and whipped a snowball at him. We attacked back and forth for a while, until a man approached our makeshift war and said, “please don’t hit me with one of those.” We paused the thirty seconds for him to pass, then threw more snowballs at each other.
An hour later, Partner happened upon these same strangers while walking down the street. One of them yelled “That’s our enemy!” and the fight reprised.
Ahh. Are these not the joys of life?
(I also completed 4 financial administrative tasks of necessity: opening a credit card; moving a bank account; creating an LLC; closing an LLC. But those, dear reader, are the mere mechanics that allow life’s joys to whir.)
The worst theatrical performance I’ve ever observed occurred in an off-broadway theater this afternoon from 2pm to 4pm.
Experiential quality is the delta between expectation and outcome.
This play, which retails for $55 per seat, but which my partner and I observed for a steep discount, prompted my partner to say, “We spent more money getting to and from the show, which is appropriate.” (We took the subway.)
Issues included:
An actor flubbing her line, saying “first anniversary” instead of “fiftieth anniversary” in a very-obvious-to-everyone manner.
Plot point problems being invented only to be immediately resolved. It’s like Chekhov always said: “If a gun appears on stage in act 1, it better be fired within 5 seconds, lest any theatrical tension develop.” (That’s not the real meaning, duh.)
A lead actor who had no light in his eyes. No joy on his face. No radiance whatsoever. When he sang about the weather – about his love for the wonders of the natural world – I received no awe. Only cringe. He hit his notes, his lines were clear and well inflected, he simply had no pleasure to share.
A year or two ago, I watched my partner’s brother-in-law perform in a small town musical. He played Linus in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I left that performance appreciating the heart that the performers shared with us that day. I left with a new, darker view of the character of Charlie Brown. I left disillusioned with the influential characters I had formerly seen as simplistic. I asked questions like, “How have the archetypes of that generation’s comics/cartoons shifted and morphed as the American experience has changed over generations?”
This play ended with the explicit moral “The real success was the friends we made along the way”.
I’m not kidding.
It wasn’t even tongue-in-cheek, self-aware. The writers seemed to actually think that was an acceptable moral. Or else the whole play is an over-the-top self-mocking farce that the director and actors failed to recognize. And then, why were the characters lit in purple for that one scene? Some avant-garde nod to Grimace? (Per my ex-professional-lighting-designer partner, “The lighting designer was incapable of changing the mood through anything but LED color washes and the colored lights weren’t powerful enough to properly light the scene and be visible.”)
Around 3/4ths of the way through the first act, when the characters on stage mention they’re about to go to intermission (they were performing in a TV program), I thought, “Ah, a fun meta-joke: Their intermission will be exactly the same time as ours.” Then, when their intermission struck, ours wasn’t for another 15 minutes! Another man in the audience clearly thought the same thing, as he stood up and then confusedly sat back down.
Woof.
My favorite part was before the show started, when a woman behind me narrated everything she was doing. “I like standing up so I don’t have to get up when people need to pass me. I hate shuffling by people and I am thoughtful and don’t want to make people shuffle by me. Oh, the row is now full, I will now sit,” she said to no one in particular. “It’s very stuffy in here. Very stuffy with all these people,” she said wearing a kn95 mask, her row full, but the theater only one-third full.
As my partner put it, “It was fun to sit near the woman who had to narrate everything out loud. I wonder what her IQ is.”
As that woman narrated just before the show started: “I do hope it’s a good performance.”
Some days are not our own. This is equally true for my partner (who has a cold, and therefore feels lacking in her control of day) and for me (who spent today sweeping up loose detritus, most of which weren’t created by me).
Here’s what I did:
Called the bank attorney who has now messed up my apartment closing 3x. She promises she now has a fix. She thinks it will work. Their mistakes have cost me $100. I have very little recourse that is likely to succeed, and none that are worth the cost in time.
Answered my mortgage bank’s “How likely would you be to recommend us?” survey with a 2/10. The survey included a box asking whether there had been issues, and if so, whether they had been resolved. Considering I am currently owed just north of $3k, I said there are issues that had not been resolved. I also left my phone number and email in case someone there wants to get in touch with me. I would very much enjoy ranting about stories of being sent on wild goose chases at midnight in rural France or the $50,000+ in escrow checks left at my attorney’s office after closing thanks to incompetent bankers.
I met a fellow resident in the elevator. She said, “Are you the new jehovah’s on floor 6?”, to which I said, “I’m sorry?” and she repeated, “Are you the new shareholders on floor 6?”
I successfully acquired a new credit card for my partner. With renovations impending, now is the time to hit signup bonuses. Let’s get ‘dem points.
After much harranguing, Peloton gave me a free month. I completed my first Peloton ride today. Big fan of their product.
A contractor stopped by for a walkthrough. This brings the total number of contractors I’ve interviewed to ~12. Of those, three are in the final running. One is most likely. It is no coincidence that this one is the one with the most detailed scope document and is the only one who offers a timeline guarantee.
Somehow it is now 9:44pm and I feel like I have only been completing others’ activities.
Two days ago I acquired a free fridge. My partner and I wheeled it home: 6 short blocks and 1 long block. Arriving home, we spent 1.5 hours removing fridge doors and apartment doors just to learn it’s slightly too large.
No bother: another person in the Facebook free group can take it. We text yesterday and she offers to pick it up today between 2 and 3pm. I confirm.
Today I tell her 2:45pm is ideal.
She says fine.
At 2:30pm, I say I’m around and ready. She says she’s delayed: would 3pm work?
I say that timing is worse for me, but we could do it if it’s exactly that time.
At 3, she tells me 3:30. She gives me the phone number of “her uncle”, who is coming to pick it up. I call. He says he’s 15 minutes away.
They finally arrive at 4:15. It’s not her uncle: it’s a moving company that she paid $350 to move the fridge for her.
This entire time I’m pissed. Sure, I’m doing work from home that I would just be doing across town with my partner. It’s not the impact on my productivity: it’s the disrespect. I’m giving you a free fridge.
I glance at her Facebook page. She is a single mother of two.
It’s a hard spot: on the one hand, I’d like to help someone in need. On the other, she made my day worse.
And, like, never even said thank you.
What did I learn?
Especially when being kind/helpful/generous, establish what I can do and when. Let others fit it.
Use the time better. The angry/annoyed time could have been better spent.
I’m considering messaging her to say “Hey, just an FYI: your misestimating of timing by 1.5hrs made my day much worse. If you had given a more accurate window, or even told me it was a wide window, I would have been able to plan better.”
Would I feel better? Yeah. Would she do better? Unlikely to do worse!
There is probably no justice to be had here. We’re talking about a free fridge handoff, after all.
But even without justice, perhaps we can inject some humanity.
Julian Wise 