New York Dream: Are You Young & Talented? What it Takes to Crack the Big Apple

April 28, 2004

No matter how well Northern Michigan serves us growing up, some of us reach a point where home is just too small, too comfortable and too predictable. It happened to me. One week after graduating college, I moved from Traverse City to New York City without a job or an apartment to test Sinatra’s if-I-can-make-it-there theory. This spring, on the fifth anniversary of my great eastern migration, I look back on what it took, and continues to take, to survive in one of the greatest cities in the world.
I was born and raised in Traverse City. In fact, my roots in Northern Michigan stretch several generations back on both sides. I attended the area Catholic Schools (St. Francis) before heading to Saint Mary‘s College in Notre Dame, Indiana to study writing and art history. I‘m currently 26 years old and working as a full time freelance writer. I make it back “home“ at least twice a year to see my family and to play some golf. And in the fall of 2002 I dragged a group of New Yorkers and Bostonians to Traverse for my wedding. They were amazed that the Midwest could be so nice.

MAKING THE TRIP
I always planned to move to the heart of the publishing world to work for a big consumer magazine, but as in war and childbirth, no amount of planning prepares you for the real thing. I knew I couldn’t secure a job and an apartment in advance from a distance. Magazine editors didn’t fly across the country to attend college job fairs -- maybe accountants did, but not editors. And without a job, affording an apartment was out of the question.
Most people can’t make the leap to New York alone. They need a local contact -- someone who will let them crash on their couch for a few weeks. Luckily, I had some relatives who lived an hour outside the city. With $723 to my name I arrived at their door with my liberal arts degree in hand. The mattress in the corner of their living room became my base camp for Everest. The next step would be gaining financial and residential independence.
In a city like New York, where job advertisements can elicit thousands of resumes, it is who you know, not what you know that helps nab job offers. My Rolodex of job contacts sat practically empty. I knew a girl who knew a girl who worked at a magazine and my sister once sat next to an editor at a wedding reception. Beyond that, my own skills would have to get me in the door. I circulated my resume around town like the confetti that falls from a ticker-tape parade. But the competition was fierce. Apparently every English major in the country shared my plan, and those with magazine internships on their resumes were the ones being hired.

HUSTLING INTERVIEWS
Summer can be the best and worst time to look for a job in New York. That’s when many companies hold annual performance reviews, allowing employee promotions to create job openings elsewhere on the ladder. However, many top dogs work abbreviated schedules during July and August to spend long weekends at their “country” homes. During those months, they are slow to schedule interviews.
My inaugural job search ended after three months when I accepted a reporter position at a small medical trade publication. Headhunters often tell recent grads they can’t live in Manhattan for under $25,000 a year and luckily I came in a bit over that mark. It wasn’t the big magazine I had envisioned but it was a stepping-stone.
As hard as finding a job can be, finding an apartment can be even more stressful. Forget the NYC Marathon; there’s another race that unfolds every week when the rentals pages appear in the newspapers. Serious racers carry checkbooks. If they hesitate to use them, someone else in the pack will sweep in and take the prize. Racers lacking stamina can employ a realtor to find them an apartment, but the service costs 15% of one year’s rent.
The Big Apple is all about location. You can live in less expensive areas of Queens or Brooklyn, or even Hoboken and commute into Manhattan for work and entertainment. But I wasn’t moving from Michigan to commute. It was Manhattan or bust, and it was an opinion I shared with the other 1.5 million people who chose to live on that 11-mile by 2-mile island.

MAJOR RENT
At $1,000 a month, I couldn’t afford to live alone in a studio apartment, and I was nervous about living with a stranger I met through an ad. Ultimately, I moved in with a woman who worked at my sister’s company. Officially it was a 600 square-foot one-bedroom, but a temporary door on the living room converted the space into a two-bedroom apartment. We split the $1,632 rent down the middle. The lease required three month’s rent upfront: first, last and a security deposit. The amount swallowed my meager savings without even chewing.
People will tolerate the strangest living conditions to have the coveted New York City postmark. There are apartments where the shower is in a closet nowhere near the toilet. Others are configured in a “railroad style,” where each room opens into the next as if you’re passing through a four-car train. In my first apartment, my roommate took the actual bedroom, which was only large enough to fit a twin bed, but boasted a real door and closet. My room was twice as large, but I had to use the coat closet in the front hall. Our kitchen displayed a small futon and TV to function as an awkward common room.
In that third-floor, walk-up that was decorated with roaches, I began living the New York dream. I was a writer who finally had a room with a view. The view was 72nd Street and I lived on the margin of one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country. In the beginning I didn’t know that “the Bronx is up and the Battery is down,” as the song goes, but I learned the subway routes by no method other than trial and error. I got used to the noise and the crowds. Slowly, my pulse started keeping time with the rhythm of the city. I didn’t even miss my car. I craved the variety of everyday, the colorful people and places. It was different from Traverse City, not necessarily better, just different.

MONEY, MONEY...
The biggest difference was financial. The city seemed to function on a different currency from which I was accustomed. According to realtor.com, an adult in Traverse City making $40,000 a year would have to pull in $103,116 to maintain the same lifestyle in Manhattan. Of course, jobs in New York pay more, but everything also costs more. At the neighborhood bodega, a gallon of milk costs $3.84 and cereal costs $5.
After rent, utilities and student loans, there was little left to save that first year. Budgeting became my daily workout. For lunch I bought a banana for 25 cents and a bagel for 89 cents versus the $6 sandwich. I babysat, dog-sat and apartment-sat to make extra money. But I soon discovered that the big city was willing to award big pay hikes to people demonstrating what I could only describe as a Midwestern work ethic. In three years I nearly doubled my salary. I still had no closet in my bedroom but I was ascending Everest.
There’s nothing uncommon about my move. New York’s history is saturated with dreamers who arrived with far less than me. But for the rest of my life I’ll know Sinatra was right. I can make it anywhere. Maybe even back in Michigan.