TheNextBigWriter Premium → Need help from New Yorkers
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Hey Ya'll,
Part of my novel is set in New York City. I've been there once but other than that really have no clue about the different areas and inner workings. What I need to know is...
1. Where would a modeling agency be? Part of the city? Specific building? Anything to give it a realistic flare.
2. The closest nearby area with the cheapest motel How cheap can we go?
Thanks! I'll probably have more questions later.
Bimmy
I would imagine that most modeling agencies would be in the Garment District. That's an area between 34th and 42nd Streets (N/S) and 5th and 10th Avenues (E/W). There are loads of cheap hotels clustered around West Village and Greenwich Village. I've been there a few times, but stayed with friends in the Upper West Side (110th and Riverside).
~Tom
There are cheap hotels and there are cesspits masquerading as fleabags.
Tom may be right about legitimate modelling agencies, but not all are legitimate. And businesses do tend to cluster. There's a half block in the upper 20's that's wall-to-wall florist. Of course, if you can't afford the prime space you take what you can pay for.
You may just have to do some research on this.
I need cesspits
And legitimate agency in prime real estate though my friend just said a lot of the fashion industry is moving to the meat packer district into old warehouses.
And this is my research. Lol!
Bimmy
A business can legitimate but not established, or legitimate but a maverick.
Well, Madison Avenue is where all the big retail and advertising agencies are. You've heard of the TV show Mad Men? Well, the *MAD* stands for Madison Avenue. So it figures the modeling outfits would be nearby, in midtown and below 42nd street, maybe Park Avenue.
But growing up me and my friends would always look for girls in bars on the upper east side. Above the seventies. We called it the GIRL BELT. I dunno why, but it worked. 
As far as really cheap motels... SRO stands for single-room-occupancy and it's a term that is used in New York (and nowhere else in my experience) for seedy/shady joints in close proximity to the business districts. You know, for wall street types to rendezvous with their mistresses and hookers. They were all over the place around Times Square and everywhere but that was twenty five years ago. Giuliani cleaned it all up, I think. NOTHING is cheap in NY anymore.
What about a motel across the Hudson within reach of a PATH station? If you're going to be in lower midtown, not too far east (Madison/40s is pushing it in summer or deep winter) the PATH might bring you close enough w/out an added subway fare.
As far as really cheap motels... SRO stands for single-room-occupancy and it's a term that is used in New York (and nowhere else in my experience) for seedy/shady joints in close proximity to the business districts. You know, for wall street types to rendezvous with their mistresses and hookers. They were all over the place around Times Square and everywhere but that was twenty five years ago. Giuliani cleaned it all up, I think. NOTHING is cheap in NY anymore.
diBlasio is determined to send it all to hell again, while raising everybody's costs, just on principle.
Lived in NY for twenty years. Modeling agencies are often in midtown, especially Park Ave vicinity. To find a fleabag hotel (literally) just go to hotels.com, try to book a room in Manhattan (or any borough) and sort by price. The cheapest are the dirtiest. Hotel 17 is pretty nasty, as is The Chelsea Hotel, but there are probably worse. Anything on the Bowery is truly inhuman, but such lodgings may still exist.
I did the hotels.Com thing. I think the places I'm looking for don't advertise on the Internet. Lol!
Bimmy
Ok...found some likely places. I'm going with my friend (who lives there now and is kind of into the fashion high life thing) who says the Meatpacking district is the place for fashion right now. Plus, I get to have a really cool old building to work with.
Anywho, my question is, would my character, who is trying to save every penny, walk from her hotel in the lower east side to the building at Little West 12th St and Washington. it's 2 miles, per google. Or is there a subway route that would get her there quicker. To me it seems walking would be quicker, but...I'm not a New Yorker. Of course, neither is she so she might just be as confused as me. LOL!
Thanks
Bimmy
Bimmy, contact NYnative1 for info. (Nidia Hernandez.)
The subway is almost always quicker, but it's not cheap (even though bridge tolls subsidize it). Fares are convoluted; check WikiP. Use the Transit setting on Google Maps to see the routes/services. (WikiP for the distinction.)
Walk around Midtown at lunch. Try to capture the conflict of human and vehicular traffic. Try to experience it, if you can, as a driver or front-seat passenger. Experience the rush hour on foot, on the subway, on the laconic buses, and in the back seat of a taxi. Go to a less-packed region (Broadway between Houston (House-ton, PLEASE!) and 14th, maybe--your friend will know) between 2:00 and 3:30. Get a feeling for the way New Yorkers jaywalk and adapt to the current state of the traffic lights, the different way they move at the lights and the crosswalks. How would someone who is hungry and maybe over-caffeinated fare in that cauldron?
Learn the New York way of ordering coffee: 'Regular' means with milk. Light, white, light and sweet, etc. Find where the city allows food carts and trucks to operate, and see which are popular at lunch. See the human and vehicular jams, if you can, when there is an event at MSG. Get disoriented by the lights at Times Square, and by the traffic crossing the sidewalk at parking garages. See the stupid tourist stuff (including women wearing nothing but body paint) that the city and the courts have conspired to allow near Times Square. (Is your protag desperate enough to consider this? She'll need an artist to do the work and share her take with.)
See Washington and Union Squares if your character might possibly go there.
Take the subways at the rush. Include trips in the financial district where the stairs to the street are one passenger wide. Especially take all the subways, at various hours, where your protag may go. Have her realize she chose the wrong (wastefully expensive) options on the MetroCard. Have her take the wrong train, or a train that's been re-routed; have her end up in Brooklyn or Queens (look for stations with the same street names--WkiP will help here). Include an elevated or street level run. Have her fall asleep and end up in Coney Island--or a bad neightborhood. Have her goggle at the subway map, and a map that shows the entire rail transit system.
Have her ask directions on the street and experience both kindness and rudeness.
Thank you!
A couple additional thoughts.
If you want to be truly sadistic, there is a pair of linked transfer stations in Brooklyn separated by about 80 vertical feet of stairs. (Correction on this item!)
On street naming and grids: Manhattan has an East 8th Street and a West 8th Street, as well as an Eighth Avenue.
Brooklyn has 8th Street, East 8th Street, West 8th Street, North 8th Street, South 8th Street, Bay 8th Street, Brighton 8th Street, Flatlands 8th Street and Paerdegat 8th Street. (Did I miss any?) Also 8th Avenue.
Queens has two different 1st Streets -- at opposite corners of the borough.
Probably more info than you can use. For more more info than you can use, try forgotten-ny.com . The big treasures are in the grey sidebar way down on the LHS. Happy trials [sic].
Thanks again!
Lost of good links. My character has been wandering around for a while when we meet her so I'm sure she's learned a few tricks. But we won't be in New York long. I just have get a ground base for this novel to start.
Thanks!
Bimmy
Anywho, my question is, would my character, who is trying to save every penny, walk from her hotel in the lower east side to the building at Little West 12th St and Washington. it's 2 miles, per google. Or is there a subway route that would get her there quicker. To me it seems walking would be quicker, but...I'm not a New Yorker. Of course, neither is she so she might just be as confused as me. LOL!
It will probably depend on the weather and her desperation. By subway: F train at East Broadway and Rutgers Street (will be PACKED during morning rush) to West 4th, up two flights of stairs, A train to the 14th St. station at 8th Avenue. She could also get the F further north at Delancey (more people off the train) or pick up the M at Essex (a block or so from the Delancey St. station) and take that to West 4th Street. Again, two flights up to the A train.
Once you're in the system, transfers are free so there's no point in getting off until you get to the optimal station.
The big problem is that during the morning rush any train she gets near there will have just entered Manhattan, and the windows will be bulging with commuters. She'll be lucky if four or five of the thousand or so people on the train get off. (You have GOT to ride the subways into Manhattan during the rush if you're going to be in town.)
If she's willing to walk south into the financial district, she could pick up the A at Fulton Street. She'll have to fight the crowds getting off, but those stations have just been rebuilt and will have more room for her to get in. (Subway practical etiquette: People waiting to get on stand to the side of the doors. People getting off walk out the center of the doors. Of course, if there are a lot of people getting off, they'll fill the doorway. As the stream tapers off, the people waiting to get on push in from the sides. It's a conflict that works.)
She could also pick up the 2 or 3 at one of the other (connected) Fulton Street stations and take it up to 14th street and Seventh Avenue. That's the SECOND station in Manhattan on that line, so a few more people may have left. That station also has been rehabbed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_Center ; note that this just finished, so if your story is set ten years ago, all these stations would be a mess to get into during the rush) so it shouldn't be too hard to get to the trains. But it's IRT, so the cars are narrower and the platforms will still be narrower. (It was quite an achievement to shoehorn the tracks and stations into the financial district.)
Hope this helps.
Edit: Also http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Station:_ … sit_Center
New Jersey, you're tying me in knots. I made a deal with my autistic son. If he rides the subway successfully in Cleveland for 5 times, he can go to Chicago for a subway ride. Five Chicagos = a trip to NYC. Bimmy, don't ever delete this thread. I'm going to need it someday.
Just don't promise that he can see the whole system! NYC has a transit museum in an old station.
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