There's Noise, and Then There's Noise
By JOYCE COHEN
Published: February 20, 2005
URE, a nightclub was on
the ground floor of her building, but Laura DiMeo, in all her out-of-town
naïveté, was only dimly aware what she was getting into - until, around 10 p.m.
on her first night there, the opening chord struck.
"I used to
be the kind of person who could sleep through anything," Ms. DiMeo said.
"I finally met my match."
At the Bitter
End, the club below her new home, live music played almost every night, not
stopping until 4 a.m. on weekends. Acoustic folk music was the softest, hard
rock the loudest. With the city's new law banning smoking in bars, people hung
around on the sidewalk beneath her window, smoking, laughing, talking.
"It was
unbearable," said Ms. DiMeo, 39. "It was totally compromising my
health." She grew clumsy and cranky. She gained weight. "I tried
earplugs, a white noise machine and stuffing a pillow over my head," she
said. "I tried denial." Finally, she tried the high-tech Bose
QuietComfort noise-canceling headphones, the only way she could sleep. How did
Ms. DiMeo, a graphic designer, get herself into this mess? She moved to New
York from her native Boston a little over two years ago, first renting a room
near Union Square for $1,050 while looking for a place to set up a combination
design studio and home.
"I was
going to create a budget of $2,000 a month," she said. "In Boston,
that is a realistic number."
She designed an
introductory flier that explained she was apartment-hunting and dropped it off
at 330 buildings in the West Village, which reminded her of Boston. Friends
praised her inventiveness, but her efforts yielded just two possibilities: a
one-bedroom for $2,950 and one for $3,600. "I realized $2,000 didn't get
you anything in that part of town," she said.
The
do-it-yourself approach failed, so she went the broker route. She was struck by
the many "bowling-alley layouts" they showed her - long, thin spaces,
with rear windows facing an airshaft - and the dingy, depressing hallways.
"I have never seen so much ugly, inadequate real estate anywhere,"
she said.
Finally, one
afternoon, a broker showed her a gorgeous apartment on Bleecker Street, atop
the legendary nightclub the Bitter End. It was a spacious 600 square feet, with
high ceilings, huge closets and a chef's kitchen. At $2,200, it was nicer than
anything she'd seen in her price range.
She paid the
nearly $4,000 fee and signed a one-year lease. "Because of where the front
door was, it didn't register that it was directly over a bar, which I didn't
know was a bar," she said. "I never thought to ask about noise, and
the broker never offered."
Later, while
picking up the keys, she ran into one of the Bitter End's owners, Paul Rizzo,
who said, cryptically, "Don't worry, everyone gets used to the
noise." She wasn't sure what he meant. "I was thinking it was traffic
noise or something."
After that first
sleepless night, Ms. DiMeo said, "I called the broker and screamed at her
and said, 'How could you not tell me?' She said, 'I wouldn't have guessed you
would be able to hear noise in the apartment.' The company initially offered to
find her a different apartment but showed her just a handful of places she
didn't like and then stopped responding to her calls and letters.
"If I run
into people who are considering renting, I tell them to come by at night so
they know what they're getting into," said Mr. Rizzo, who himself rents an
apartment in the building. "I was shocked to hear she wasn't told."
Ms. DiMeo,
whose apartment was two floors above the stage, said she didn't feel right
about breaking the lease. And "I was so intimidated by the whole process of
getting approved, I didn't know I had any rights," she said. She couldn't
wait to get out.
This time, she
was determined to get a place with no secrets. Her requirements included high
ceilings, good light, a spacious kitchen, big closets, hardwood floors, a home
office where she could see clients, a guest room - and quiet. She hoped to
spend less than $2,200.
She answered an
ad from Anne Chang, a broker at Citi Habitats, who was equally determined to
help. "She wanted something sunny, airy and open," Ms. Chang said.
"I said, 'Laura, this is almost impossible.' You need to raise the price
or change the location. Sometimes it is not about what you want but about what
the market has to offer."
Ms. DiMeo said
she was willing to see "if going up a few hundred dollars would get me a
different result." It didn't. "The spaces were bigger but just as
ugly," she said.
But when she
strayed from the Village, she found that interiors were nicer. She considered
Battery Park City, but $2,500 rentals were "small and cookie-cutter."
She liked a $2,400 apartment on Gramercy Park, but the tiny kitchen had
half-size appliances and "I couldn't see cooking for dinner parties
there."
At a
ground-floor apartment on Front Street, she unsuccessfully tried to negotiate
the rent from $2,700 to $2,500. Later, she was glad - a bar opened next door,
and construction started on a nearby lot.
But Ms. Chang
was hopeful about the South Street Seaport area. She showed Ms. DiMeo a
900-square-foot apartment with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a view of the
Brooklyn Bridge.
"I cringed
because it was in such bad shape," Ms. DiMeo said.
There was
wall-to-wall carpeting that the previous tenants "had used as an
ashtray," she said. "It looked like a crack house." The walls
were navy blue; the place reeked of smoke and alcohol. "I obsessed over it
because I didn't want to make another bad choice."
But this time,
she said, "I asked all the questions." She visited at different times
of day and grilled the doorman, the superintendent and the landlord's painter
about noise. "The apartment cleaned up really nicely," she said. And
the rent, $2,100, was lower than before.
Inhabiting a
place where there's nothing but usual street noise feels "blissful, like
somebody sent me to a spa," she said. "I no longer have to schedule
my sleep around the music. If I want to go to bed at 11 p.m., I can. You really
appreciate the normalcy. I never knew sleep deprivation could be that
bad."
Still a heavy
sleeper, she's surprised that out-of-town guests tell her they have trouble
sleeping - because her apartment is so noisy.
E-mail: thehunt@nytimes.com
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