#180: Real Estack!
Apartments. Houses. The places in which we kvetch and shower. Real Eastate cartoons are the order of the day today.
Hello! It’s me, , your editor for this week’s edition of
After four years of living in the polished theme park known as Hudson Yards, I've finally moved to what real estate agents reverently whisper is 'the authentic New York experience': Hell's Kitchen.
‘The Avalon’ (my old building) had a squeaky clean refuse room with a garbage chute – the kind that invokes pure catharsis every time you pad down the hallway in your socks to dispose of week-old salmon. My junk mail went from Keyfood Coupon Catalogues to the latest matte laminated postcards from Sweetgreen and Hermés. (Don’t worry, I still shopped at Keyfood).
The new building, a co-op tennement building held together by gaffer tape and positive manifestations, requires a PhD in waste management to take out the trash each week. Get the wrong colour recycling bag, and you face the collective scorn of everyone else in the co-op, not to mention the NYC Dept of Sanitation’s overzealous fine guy.
His name is Trent.
The new digs have what brokers call "character," which means the floors slope at angles that would make M.C. Escher reach for his Dramamine. But it has windows—actual windows, not just holes in the wall where the rats have chewed through—and in Hell’s Kitchen, that's what we call "luxury living." Which brings me to this collection of cartoons about dwelling spaces, assembled while sitting on my "vintage" (structurally uncertain) hardwood floors, listening to what I hope is just my upstairs neighbor practicing tap dance and not, as I suspect, the boiler slowly grinding to its final clank during a polar vortex.
KENDRA ALLENBY
Here's one from the first few weeks of the NYC covid lockdown. Luckily, my apartment had roof access and the roof usually had a puddle, so I went for "walks around the lake" many times a day.
SARAH MORRISETTE
I’ve never been able to shame my friends by having a much nicer place to live. Imaging inviting people over for dinner and saying, “Chandler, could you dim the lights? Everyone's blinded by the crystal chandeliers. And sorry for the echo, guys, we didn’t realise that a cavernous dining room isn’t ideal for conversation.
Oh, and I hope you all remembered bathing suits because later we're having floating Baked Alaska Flambe.”
AMY KURZWEIL
When I left my favorite apartment in Brooklyn, the one in which I'd been living for seven years and in which all the important things happen to me, my three roommates and I left a veritable Edenic feast of furniture and discarded treasures on the sidewalk behind us.
Indeed, we had miscalculated exactly how much sidewalk real estate our unwanted bookshelves and dressers and couches and chairs and lamps and apples-filled-with-knowledge were going to occupy, and needless to say our landlord (who was a cruel God) was not happy. So he kept a portion of our security deposit, which maybe isn't actually legal (we had not damaged the apartment, merely littered the city sidewalk) – but, alas! – sinner though I am, my mortal knowledge at the time did not include any information about renters rights.
JASON CHATFIELD
I’m in a fifth-floor walk up and my buzzer is broken. As a result, so are my knees.
HILARY FITZGERALD CAMPBELL
I’m waiting for this show to come out.
COLIN TOM
Real estate in the remote wilderness sounds nice: space, tranquility, peace, and some cool trees/leaves. But what if I get a hankering for a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll, while I’m reading my various texts by lantern in yonder shed? Can I really ride my ox for a fortnight to get my breakfast sandwich on a whim? Alas, I must stay in this horrible New York real estate market, close to the bodegas.
But wait, there’s more!
Hilary releases
every Friday!- l teaches cartoon classes on Patreon! Sign up now to get the recording of every past class!
- has a new Substack about making art called Process Junkie! And Subscribe to Jason’s regular weekly Substack at NewYorkCartoons.com
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