transient culture

I remember being fourteen. I was sitting in Spanish class reading the New York Times. I opened up an article in the "arts" section, and read a detailed account of some "hip" art opening. The photos alone were enough to impress a young girl living in the middle of nowhere America. I had a brief encounter with "art" when my family moved outside of DC the year prior when my dad took a six month job with the USDA. Since returning to Iowa, I found myself hating the place. I remember saying out loud to my friends, "I am going to move to New York City." I said this weekly until I actually did move to New York. In fact, everyone said something to a similar degree - whether it was NYC, LA, Portland - wherever. Everyone wanted to get out.

My ideal city was fairly typical for the average "oh-so-repressed" kid in middle America. I wanted culture, freedom, art, music - I wanted a place with what kids who don't know anything call "urban culture." I remember moving to New York City with the idea that I would stay for one year, and continue to move around...maybe San Francisco, Portland...wherever. I didn't know I would get there, and never want to leave. I didn't know that five years into living in New York City, all I would want to do is find ways temporarily out - but ways out where I could still say I was "from Brooklyn." Because in New York, I am "from the midwest", but as soon I as set foot overseas, I have the right to say I am from quite possibly the best city in the entire world.

So I started traveling. Taipei was too foreign and removed to stay in forever, London was a super expensive rip off of New York, Germany is too quiet, Paris is currently a nightmare work wise, Hong Kong wasn't conducive to my career, LA didn't charm me enough, and my Barcelona agency is only for direct bookings. I find myself not impressed with anything. So here I am five months into Milan, and technically - I am kind of here indefinitely. I have kind of decided to base myself here. Part of this is obviously due to the amount of work I get here. It makes sense career wise. However, if the same would have happened in London, I don't know if I would have stayed. Milan is different. It isn't vibrant. In fact, it is all gray. The city is full of the two things I hate most - banker culture, and high fashion industry people...oh, and models, and did I mention euro trash? Euro trash -- everywhere. Lets make that the four things I hate most. People actually don't speak English, and I am not picking up Italian anywhere near quick enough. Nothing makes sense here. Nothing is easy here. This city is one chaotic mess. Everyone is quite possibly a criminal, and everyone will try to rip you off. Sports mean something here that I can't even comprehend. Good music isn't even an option, it just doesn't exist. Art is okay, but not great. Being vegetarian is hard, and I have found one - yes, one - boutique I like to shop at. Yoga is in Italian, and the yoga that is primarily my practice isn't even offered in the damn city. Italian men are parasites. Absolutely disgusting. Biggest turn off of, ever. I have very few people I consider friends, and most of them - if not all - are people I wouldn't be friends with outside of this city.

But I guess I kind of identify with this city. It is spastic, crazy, and disorganized. A little bit sketchy, but relatively safe. But underneath all of that -- it is quite charming.

Finding an apartment in New York City is an absolute nightmare. I have been saying for years that someone needs to do a documentary on some midwest kid who has three days to find a place in middle of nowhere East Brooklyn. Craigslist is your only option -- besides maybe friends, and the deposit situation is nothing but horrendous. You have to settle for conditions you never imagined yourself in, and still - you are paying triple what your parents pay back home for their house with a yard, and tons of windows - water pressure in the shower. A couple of weeks ago, when my apartment went from four models to eight models in about three days, I decided I had enough. I just had to move out. And how hard could it be? It couldn't possibly cost more then NYC, and craigslist seems like a universal option that works the same everywhere - language issues, aside.

And again, Milan wins in just completely blowing my mind away. Finding an apartment is actually impossible. Not NYC impossible, where you want to jump out a window for a few days, but you do find something, and everything does work out - actually impossible. I contacted a friend who had lived in Milan for years. She gave me three websites to check out that she said were legit for apartment searching. I also used craigslist. The first twenty, and I am not exaggerating here, TWENTY places I contacted responded to me very quickly. Oh yes, they responded. They would hold my interest for a few emails, until email number four or five. That is when they would tell me they live in China, and can't show me the apartment. That if I want the place, I need to western union them the cash, and they will MAIL me the key to the apartment. All twenty. Every single damn one had some story, most of them claiming to live in China.

I can only imagine that so many people would be trying to pull this scam off -- only if they had previously succeeded in getting money out of people this way. It is like douche-bags with lame pick up lines, those pick up lines have to work on someone, or they would have given up awhile ago. So the question is - who are these people that fall for this kind of stuff? So I do some Google searches and find TONS of people who claim to be victims of Western Union scams. But I still couldn't figure out who these people were. I mean who actually falls for this bullshit? And then one of my roommates who was also looking for an apartment shows me a few emails she had received, and wanted to know if I thought they were legit or not. It was the same bullshit I had received, but when I told her -- absolutely not legit, she didn't believe me! She then showed me an email from someone claiming to be in a wheelchair, and using it as an excuse as to why he couldn't show her the apartment (and why she had to send him money using WU). She said, "but come on - this guy is in a wheelchair - he can't be lying!" So there was my answer. People who don't know anything. Young girls who are traveling and desperate. People who are uneducated, who don't read the news, who believe anything they read....basically, my world - the people I am surrounded by, these are the people who fall for these scams. My roommate said to me, "but won't you have a receipt for sending the money, that is like proof, right?" Whether or not the exchange of money was legit, it hadn't even crossed her mind that none of these apartments even exist. After days of arguing about it, she finally believed me. And a couple weeks later, we both still haven't found an apartment. I finally did receive one email from a real estate agent - but they were asking for three months deposit, not counting first month rent, and considering I am taking the month of August off, it seemed too ridiculous.

Milan is crazy. Italians are crazy.