Saturday, August 16, 2008

Closet Fulla Cheap and New York City Sublets

How many pieces of clothes can you get in New York City for under $100? Normally, not much. But at Beacon's Closet, for $99 we bought a knee-length Theory wool blend coat, two one-of-a-kind jackets, and one wearable-in-all-seasons dress. All in mint condition. The coat in a Theory store would easily have cost couple hundred. Shopping in New York City can get very expensive. The options and prices are endless. I know girls who have opted to starve themselves in order to have enough money to shop. Stupid. Thankfully, for people who love food and their health more than clothes, there's shopping options like Beacon's Closet.

Yes, it's used clothing but if you're a saavy shopper, you can find a few good stuff at Beacon's for cheap. They carry both men's and women's clothes, a wide range of shirts, dresses, boots, scarves. Their bag and jewelry selection is minimal. They buy, sell, trade, and donate some proceeds to various charities. Most of their clothes are organized by color. But this store is huge, so you really need to take the time to dig in or else you might miss that needle. I almost missed the Theory coat had I not dug into the crevices. This photos only shows a small section of their store.

The Brooklyn Brewery is directly across from Beacon's Closet. You can literally jump, hop, or skip over. We planned to go here today for their brewery tour, which is every Saturday 1, 2, 3, and 4 pm but had to take a look at a temporary sublet instead until our Chelsea apartment is ready to go.

We'll be back here next Saturday for the tour. We definitely want to see the brewery at this original location since they'll be moving in the near future, and of course sample some of their summer ales. They also have happy hour at the brewery every Friday from 6 to 11 pm.

Just a random mural that caught our attention:


Back to our sublet situation. If you're not familiar with sublets in New York City, this is very common here. People sublet their apartments anywhere from just one weekend to one week while their on vacation to one year. It's a bit insane. We're not sure if we'd be willing to hand over our house keys to strangers we just met that day but it's done here everyday. A lot of people who just most to NYC go the sublet route while they find permanent housing or between housing issues (like us). Some people hop from one sublet to another to another.

We found a 13-day sublet in the heart of the East Village in a gorgeous apartment for $700. Cat-sitting is included with this cheap price tag, which we'll gladly do since most cheapo sublets usually run $150 to $200 per night. The owner posted it on Craigslist today and we got the keys to her apartment an hour after meeting her on the same day. Her sublet date range was near perfect to the dates we needed housing so it worked out perfectly. There's scams on Craigslist so both parties have to be careful, ask a lot of questions, trust their instincts. Reference letters are important. Luckily, we had our reference letters on hand from our Chelsea Co-op monster application, so the owner was pleased with us. Thanks to all of you who took the time to do those ref letters for us!

The street her apartment is on is unfortunately the Times Square of the East Village and the owner also called it "Little Tokyo" due to all of the sushi and Japanese restaurants in the area (next week we will share those restaurants reviews with you!).

Man, we cannot wait to unpack our suitcases hopefully in September. We've reached the point of just wearing clothes at the top of the suitcase. The Nomadic lifestyle is taxing us. But this is an adventure and we're eagerly living and learning in the school of New York City!