Yelp is a valuable app/website everywhere, but here its very, very helpful.( In case you don't know, Yelp is an app/site that gathers user reviews for stores, restaurants, services, etc...in any given neighborhood. You can read between the lines and see if you agree with the reviewer's point of view, and you can avoid anything that only gets 1 or 2 of a maximum of 5 stars across the board*.)
Since almost of my travel into Manhattan consists of me walking or taking a bus to a subterranean hole, hopping on a train, and then popping back out to the surface 3 - 12 miles away, it is very difficult for me to orient myself to a new area. Plus, I am no good at reading maps, so I just get all turned around...I do OK by myself, but shamefully, when I am with Josh, I just follow his lead and trust he knows where we're headed.
So - we attend an event, go to a movie, end up in a new part of Manhattan, we look to Yelp, which helps us find decent places to eat based (roughly) on our current location. I have few problems with Yelp itself.
But people! PEOPLE! They love to review the most mundane things as well as the little indy businesses that are all over NYC. Inevitably, they review things like each McDonald's location, or each Walgreen's. Inevitably, these reviews are universally horrible:
Walgreen's on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn:
"After going nuts looking for the perfect gift for my baby niece,(a
pillow pet btw),I went around in circles trying to find someone to help
me, but no one was avilable. I would've gave them a single star, but
they get two stars because my little niece received a nice Christmas
gift, a ladybug Pillow Pet,but this place is definitely, messy, wrecked,
disorganized,poor customer service. The cashier that assisted me was
flirty I mean, more friendly than usual.;D!"
You searched for the perfect gift for your niece, and the first place you thought of was Walgreen's? I can say with certainty that the staff is not used to personal shopping as an offered service. Also - did you like the flirty-ness? Seems so - give them 3 stars for that, baby!
"don't ever go to the pharmacy at this walgreens on atlantic avenue.
going to this pharmacy could be a risk
the staff is rude and ignorant about medication
the pharmacy does not know what is going on
the pharmacy is unprofessional
the pharmacy is confused
the pharmacy should be shut down
the pharmacy treats people badly
i will never go this pharmacy ever again
this pharmacy lies about medication
the pharmacy is run poorly.
the pharmacy is dangerous"
Wow! Call the Health Department, don't just review it on Yelp, people! Must have been the same staff that transferred my prescription the same day I dropped it off, and called me twice to double check my insurance and the spelling of my name to make sure everything would go through smoothly. I hate customer service!
"This place is terrible. You can never make it out of here in less than
30 minutes because 1) there are not enough people working the registers,
or 2) the employees don't understand someone's coupon/request/language,
or 3) 90% of the products are locked behind plexiglas -- always the
sign of a class establishment -- so you must find someone willing/able
to unlock your purchases, or 4) some ungodly combination of these
factors."
It's not shocking that they lock stuff up. This is Brooklyn, people. The liquor store on our block doesn't really even let you in the store - you have to look at everything behind plexiglass - this is a result of the bad old days, peeps.
All of the employees at this Walgreen's were nice-to-super nice, it was just crazy-busy like all places here, since one Walgreen's serves about 500,000 people, unlike FL Walgreen's - one or two on each corner, every mile or so.
But why spend time reviewing Walgreen's? I know, I'm spending time reviewing reviews, but it just seems weird that people take their time to spew random reviews about chains on the interwebs when everyone has run into a grumpy cashier or two everywhere.
*Josh and I did find Yelp very useful on an evening when we were about to go on an evening cruise on the" Queen of Hearts" party boat to see the band one of his co-worker's is in. It looked old and creaky, and it had hardly any outdoor deck, so I looked it up on Yelp. 2 stars average - and mostly 1 star reviews. They said it was stinky, hot, horrible, leaky, had horrible food,you couldn't see any sights from inside the 500 passenger boat, and that it twas generally all around miserable. The crowd waiting to get on the boat looked miserable - a mix of retirees, couples who didn't make the upper age cut off to star on "Jersey Shore", barely legal girls in prom dresses (why?), and us. We bailed on that experience. Thanks, Yelp!
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
United States Postal.....Service?
The mail here is kind of crazy...we have a small vestibule that contains the standard apartment mailboxes - about 6 x 18, and they lock with individual keys. The postal worker, of course, has a key that opens a row at a time so they flip open from the top.
OK - none of that is crazy. The crazy part, to me, is that we have no outgoing mail service. I placed an outgoing letter in our box - it was still there when I checked the next day. I left it again, and again, not picked up.
I went online and googled "outgoing mail nyc apartments". The common opinion was that you would be insane to expect the mail carrier to take the outgoing mail out of your box. Some apartments have an extra one of these boxes for outgoing mail, but we don't. In some buildings, they have a top-lid box where you can leave mail, but we don't, and many people don't like these because they're not locked. I asked my dear friend, Nabin, my neighbor, about it. She told me to just drop my mail in a blue box down the block, and that they would never take my outgoing mail.
Arrrrgh! Why? With all of the problems facing the USPS (deficits, a plethora of little used locations, the 90's Tour de France team) would they reject business by bypassing the pick-up of my mail? We pay bills online, but I do like to send snail mail to friends and family, and I only send a few pieces a week. I know they have a tough walking delivery, but I would hope to be helping the USPS by sending mail - just a few letters a week.
Josh and I tried sending mail from our box one more time - this time I attached a kind post-it note telling them it was outgoing mail with a "Thanks! :)" salutation. He also placed the mail so that when the box was opened from the top, the mail was wedged horizontally into the box at the top so it couldn't be overlooked - it was the first thing the mail carrier would see when they flipped our row of boxes open.
And they took it! They took my outgoing mail! So excited!
But there are other problems - one tenant has a box that doesn't lock, and his mail is constantly spilling onto the floor. Is he out of town? Does he even live here any more? No one is looking into that...
Then - we came home on Monday night and the boxes looked like this:
Hell-O! Josh is unlocking our box at the top left, but the bottom row wasn't even locked - we could have grabbed all their mail - we tipped it shut and it stayed while we were in the vestibule, but who knows when it could flip open again that night?
I think I'll call the Postmaster! Delivering mail and packages here has to be a big pain, but surely their routes are shorter? Yikes!
OK - none of that is crazy. The crazy part, to me, is that we have no outgoing mail service. I placed an outgoing letter in our box - it was still there when I checked the next day. I left it again, and again, not picked up.
I went online and googled "outgoing mail nyc apartments". The common opinion was that you would be insane to expect the mail carrier to take the outgoing mail out of your box. Some apartments have an extra one of these boxes for outgoing mail, but we don't. In some buildings, they have a top-lid box where you can leave mail, but we don't, and many people don't like these because they're not locked. I asked my dear friend, Nabin, my neighbor, about it. She told me to just drop my mail in a blue box down the block, and that they would never take my outgoing mail.
Arrrrgh! Why? With all of the problems facing the USPS (deficits, a plethora of little used locations, the 90's Tour de France team) would they reject business by bypassing the pick-up of my mail? We pay bills online, but I do like to send snail mail to friends and family, and I only send a few pieces a week. I know they have a tough walking delivery, but I would hope to be helping the USPS by sending mail - just a few letters a week.
Josh and I tried sending mail from our box one more time - this time I attached a kind post-it note telling them it was outgoing mail with a "Thanks! :)" salutation. He also placed the mail so that when the box was opened from the top, the mail was wedged horizontally into the box at the top so it couldn't be overlooked - it was the first thing the mail carrier would see when they flipped our row of boxes open.
And they took it! They took my outgoing mail! So excited!
But there are other problems - one tenant has a box that doesn't lock, and his mail is constantly spilling onto the floor. Is he out of town? Does he even live here any more? No one is looking into that...
Then - we came home on Monday night and the boxes looked like this:
I think I'll call the Postmaster! Delivering mail and packages here has to be a big pain, but surely their routes are shorter? Yikes!
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Apartment Compartments
OK, friends - its been forever since I posted to this blog, but I
hope to get better about it! The road to hell is paved with intentions
to write one's blog regularly, too, I guess...Various topics I will be
covering soon (and this is to remind myself, as well) are: outgoing
mail, women + pants = sin, silly Yelp reviews (this city runs on Yelp),
Peanut's dog issues, nice deli men, cars honking horns, Peanut's toy
travels, temps, and getting around for the directionally challenged.
ALSO - my settings are fixed so you don't have to belong to Blogger or Google to comment! Yay! I am still new to this...
Having moved from a 1,500 sf house to a 400 sf apt hasn't been easy (I know - wah-wah-wah!), even though we REALLY did our best to fling more than half of our FL stuff to the wind. It took until last weekend to really arrange this place so it was liveable for 1 dog, 2 people, and 3 cats.
We had our bed upstairs initially because it was so hot when we moved in, and the window unit was there...but its cooling down, and we had no living room, because our subterranean level was too crowded with junk to imagine hanging with anyone else down here. Now our bedroom and kitchen are downstairs, and the bath and living room are up. Now, some pics!
ALSO - my settings are fixed so you don't have to belong to Blogger or Google to comment! Yay! I am still new to this...
Having moved from a 1,500 sf house to a 400 sf apt hasn't been easy (I know - wah-wah-wah!), even though we REALLY did our best to fling more than half of our FL stuff to the wind. It took until last weekend to really arrange this place so it was liveable for 1 dog, 2 people, and 3 cats.
We had our bed upstairs initially because it was so hot when we moved in, and the window unit was there...but its cooling down, and we had no living room, because our subterranean level was too crowded with junk to imagine hanging with anyone else down here. Now our bedroom and kitchen are downstairs, and the bath and living room are up. Now, some pics!
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| This is our closest corner - Washington and Bergen, in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. It looks a little rough, but it's undergoing improvement. Every block is different! |
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| Just in front of our building. When you turn the corner, here you are! |
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| This is the living room/office facing the door to the hallway - we're on the 1st floor, and just a left out the door gets us out of the building! Poang! |
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| Here, we are approaching the bathroom - door on the left. I would say front door - but its the only door out upstairs. Closet to the right, bath straight ahead. |
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| Bathroom - exciting, I know. The black and green boxes are plastic storage bins that open by flipping open from the top. We had no storage before we got these at Ikea, the apartment dweller's friend! |
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| The upstairs door opens conveniently onto the narrow stairs...this is the first set of stairs before the right turn. Storage space for DVDs! |
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| The second part of the stairs down to the bedroom |
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| Cozy! This takes up the whole space, but we both have room to get out, and I love the window sills behind us! |
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| Essential wire shelf and COFFEE CENTER in narrow hallway between the kitchen and the bed! |
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| Josh cooking breakfast for dinner in the kitchen. It takes 10+ minutes to get hot water to come out of the kitchen faucet = worst thing about this apartment. |
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| Photo of the living room, facing the two windows. It gets good natural light during the day. |
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| See, we do have room to unfold the futon! Who's coming to visit first?! |
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