I didn't live at Chang's apartment the first time I spent the night there. It was the beginning of my second year in the city and a snowstorm was on its way, ready to completely shut down Manhattan. Because ZG and I both knew from experience we were not equipped to handle a storm alone (the last time it happened, he'd had only two eggs and a container of mustard. I had chips and a bottle of bad wine), we left our homes on the Upper East Side to spend the storm stranded in Serria's Chelsea apartment.
It turns out changing locations did not make us any more prepared. Between the three of us, we ate all our provisions (one package of Pizza Rolls, one package of Bagel Bites) within the first two hours, leaving us with "only" six bottles of wine left for the 24-hour lockdown.
Needless to say, we were pretty drunk.
That day at Chang's could arguably be the most fun I ever had in the apartment. This is likely attributed to the wine and, also, seeing Zach get fully submerged in a snowbank on 9th Avenue, but partially because I didn't live there, so I didn't pay attention to any of the potential problems... at least, not yet. A few weeks earlier, Serria and I had discovered my lease ended around the same time her current roommate was planning on moving out. I was as eager to leave the Upper East Side as she was to not live with a stranger, so over drinks on a classic Barfly Sunday, we decided that — in a year — we'd live together at Chang's.
On the night of the snowstorm, I laid in bed in my future room, envisioning how I'd decorate it, where all my things could go. Looking out at what would eventually be my window, watching the snow fall peacefully down the quiet street, the calmness overtook me and I drifted easily to sleep.
When I finally moved in one year later, everything was different.
My first two years in NYC were spent on what has to be the safest street in Manhattan. I lived across from a small park on the UES in a studio with incredible natural light that made up for its location on the 6th floor with no elevator. While I loved my apartment, I didn't truly feel like I fit into the quaintness of the neighborhood, a neighborhood my brother had once rightfully referred to as "the vanilla ice cream of New York City." Chang's, on the other hand, was in Chelsea (though, to be fair, the very edge), a place which was far more my speed in almost every aspect.
But, my first night officially living at Chang's, I thought I'd made a huge mistake. Serria had already left for the holiday, so when my movers dropped literally every item I owned in unorganized piles in my new, poorly-lit living room, I was alone when I started to have a panic attack. The apartment had been so quiet and so cute on the day of the snowstorm — now, without the snow, I could hear cars barreling down the avenue, could hear voices of the drug deal I'd accidentally walked into outside my door being finished. Overwhelmed mostly by the thought of having to unpack as well as the realization that this was actually my new home, my new life, I ran out the door — once again, interrupting the deal — and calmed myself down by going to Anthropolgie to smell all the ridiculously large candles.
I have a minimal amount of self-control when it comes to that store, so I bought one which, incidentally, is how I discovered the first problem of living at Chang's.
Months later, I was reading in bed, the Anthropolgie candle burning next to me on my nightstand. Without warning, the entire thing burst into flames and shattered, setting my nightstand on fire. It was only after I'd hurriedly soaked a large towel in water and successfully put out the flames climbing up my wall that I realized it was odd that the fire alarms — none of them — had ever gone off.
Upon further inspection, Serria and I discovered this was because the fire alarms— none of them — had batteries.
Also, they all expired in 2007.
All that was left of my candle after the fire.
This was the beginning of the end.
Slowly, but surely, things started to fall apart. There was the day our bathroom ceiling started to leak, so Chang fixed it by applying a thick layer of paint. There was (literally the next) day, when the bathroom ceiling fell in because a thick layer of paint is not the most effective way to fix a leak. Our buzzer didn't work, so every time we had a visitor, we'd have to run down our stairs to let them in, stairs so uneven that saying they were tilted would be an underwhelming compliment. Friday was trash day, the day in which every tenant would pile their garbage from the week in the hallway early in the morning for Chang to take out late at night. Where? Who's to say? Once, I saw him put it in an unmarked truck. Once, I saw him literally shovel it into the basement below our building. Once, the Friday trash sweep included our entire trash can because we'd found a dead mouse had crawled in and been flattened beyond recognition.
Because of the general upkeep of the building, it took us three full weeks to discover THAT was where the terrible smell was coming from.
Still, not everything was bad about living at Chang's. I mean, like, yeah, most things were, but there were some redeeming factors, like the fact I could walk into the bodega on the corner at any time, day or night, and they'd immediately start making me a chicken parm sandwich, sometimes for free. Our apartment was significantly closer to TIME than my last, cutting my commute by more than half and, also, after two years of living alone, I liked having a roommate, having someone to come home to dissect my day with, rather than me just aimlessly talking to my pet fish, Yeezus, who was understandably unresponsive at best. (Full disclosure: she died ten days into living at Chang's. Take that as you will).
And, of course, we lived above BillyMark's West, a bar rightfully touted as "The Number One Dive Bar in Manhattan" and operated solely by two brothers, Billy and (you guessed it) Mark. It's easy to become a regular somewhere when you live upstairs (I see you, Citizens of Chelsea) and Serria and I took full advantage in the two years we lived above the bar together. We'd go constantly and for all occasions — more than once or even twice, I was asleep in bed and convincingly roused out down the uneven stairs in my sweatpants for "just one beer with Billy."
"Love This Bar" is BillyMark's motto and love this bar we do. In honesty, living above Billy's was my favorite part about living at Chang's. I'd never felt as intertwined with people who worked at a bar — and, this is coming from me, who has DATED multiple bartenders. When my entire family came to town, I obviously took them to Billy's and Dwayne, the bouncer who made sure I got home every night regardless of me being at the bar or not, already knew them all by name. When a relationship ended with someone I'd brought there frequently, I told Mark before I told close friends. (I think he was more upset than either of us).
Of course, living above a dive bar comes with its challenges, specifically in the fact that on the nights I was not galavanting around Billy's, I'd like to be in bed before 10 p.m. Sleeping was a feat, truly, considering many intoxicated patrons of the bar spilled out onto the sidewalk and our windows didn't fully close all the way. (Chang had Serria's window "closed" with a piece of notebook paper duct-taped between the AC and the glass. I am not joking).
Billy's shuts downs at 4 a.m. every night and opens at 8 a.m. every morning, so the foot traffic was both heavy and constant. Also, the other bar we lived above — because, yes, we lived between two — had karaoke until 2 a.m. on Wednesdays. In addition to that, there was the construction directly outside our door starting daily, without fail, just seconds before my alarm went off, as well as the giant trucks flying down 9th Avenue — their oversized tires rattling our windows, our floors, our beds (but, not our closets... we didn't have any of those). The first time a boy I was seeing spent the night, he woke me up, groaned, then rolled over to face the ceiling at 3 a.m.
"Congratulations," he told me, the lack of sleep evident in his voice. "You have the loudest apartment in all of Manhattan."
And, it would turn out, also the coldest.
On the first morning of 2018, I woke up freezing. Sometime between the years changing over, our heat had completely gone out. We texted Chang — he only ever texted, voice calls were unheard of — and he said he'd fix it, a promise I didn't have much faith in considering how he'd originally handled the bathroom ceiling leak.
I was right — it took a week.
This meant, for a week, our apartment didn't have hot water or heat. Every night, I got ready for bed by piling on all of the sweatshirts I owned plus my winter jacket, boots, hat and a scarf. It was so cold that my brother, who had the unfortunate luck of choosing that week to visit, got the flu, spending his time in NYC writhing with fever on our couch. The low temperature burrowed its way into my body — I shivered no matter where I was and my bones ached for the entire month of January, even once the heat had come back on.
It was bad, but it wasn't as bad as the door.
On Thanksgiving, a few months before our heat would shut off, Chang text us while we were both at home visiting our families. I was pretty sure it wasn't an "I'm-So-Thankful-To-Be-Your-Landlord" text and, again, I was correct. Instead, it just said "Lock second door while other door fixed."
Cryptic and confusing, it was classic Chang. We weren't concerned... not until Serria arrived back to NYC and discovered that we no longer had a door to our apartment.
This was around the time I started dreading coming home.
Our lease wasn't up until June, but neither of us were convinced we would survive — mentally, spiritually, physically — at Chang's until then. In what could only be described as a miracle, we were saved when Serria's good friend needed a sublet for her apartment, an apartment aesthetically pleasing in both the floor-to-ceiling windows in the corner unit and the attractive Australian waiters in our favorite coffee shop directly below.
I signed the lease before I even stepped foot in the building.
To say I was on an euphoric high would be an understatement. We still had a month or so before we could actually move in, but the day after we'd signed, all I could envision was my future home, my future life. As I was getting back to Chang's that night, I was so distracted by thoughts of what having a nice apartment again would actually be like, it didn't first register that my key was not letting me through the door.
From the other side, I could hear Serria asking what was wrong. (That was another thing — our walls were paper thin). I heard her get off the couch to open the door for me, but as soon as she tried to let me in, it became evident the problem wasn't my key. It was Chang's door. The lock, old like the rest of the apartment, had finally broken, locking me out and Serria, in.
Texts (and, for the first time, calls!) to Chang went unanswered. I borrowed a screwdriver from our neighbors to try to unscrew the front lock while Serria, essentially caged in (because, another thing! Our fire escape was less an escape and more of a certain, rusted death trap), clawed off the back with her nails. Neither of us were successful, so resignedly, I called a locksmith.
I also ordered Chinese food to my hallway.
When the locksmith arrived, he looked — for lack of a better word — terrifying. As I sat in the stairwell, eating my chicken, he wordlessly pulled out his massive set of tools, all of which looked as if they could easily be used to murder me (I’d been watching a lot of crime television), then began to break down our door. Even for him, a (hopefully) professionally trained locksmith, it took awhile, making mine and Serria’s previous attempts to pry off the lock with our nails seem childish. By the time I’d finished my chicken, the locksmith had succeeded breaking into our apartment and we praised him. At this point, we still hadn’t heard back from Chang and, in our eyes, the locksmith was our one true hero.
Until he charged us $1,300.
We were scammed — obviously. And, Chang refused to pay even a fraction of the bill, despite the fact we didn’t hear from him for over 12 hours after the initial “Hi-We-Are-Locked-Out-And-Also-In-The-Apartment” text. Neither Serria or I had the strength to argue with him, not when we were only weeks from finally leaving his place forever.
Instead, when we left, we took the old locks with us. They’re on display in our new apartment.
They are the most expensive items we own.
Moving out of Chang’s apartment was different than when I moved out of my Upper East Side studio. When I handed over my keys to the UES apartment, I cried. It had been the first place I'd lived as an adult, the first place that had ever truly been all mine, my first real home in New York City.
When I handed over my keys to Chang's, I did not cry. I did not cry until I walked out that door for the very last time and, immediately, a homeless man spit directly in my eye.
Then, the tears really started to come.