Elmhurst

We went to look at this house yesterday. It is not in our targeted Landmarked Jackson Heights area but it's pretty close to the trains, and in the midst of a Chinatown in Elmhurst. It is less than half a mile from the express train Subway hub.

These are not the best pictures, but you can get the idea. It is registered as a two family that was converted from a one family. The street level has another family living in cramped quarters, and will definitely need a lot of work done to it. The owners duplex is immaculate.Here is the front of the building.

A view of the back with a nice concrete backyard ideal for a roller blade hockey game and 5 gallon bucket garden.

Bedroom

Front room with a faux fireplace.

Last name limbo continues....

In about 4 weeks I will be moving out of my apartment. The deed to the apartment is under the name Watanabe, but that's OK.
I will need to begin forwarding my mail to the new address, which is Chaim's cozy (real estate lingo for tiny) abode on the Upper East Side. Less than a week after I officially move, I will have to stop my mail for a month, when we go to Japan (using my old passport).

I have already begun changing my addresses for my bank statement and other bills, though the name is still Watanabe. The Post office will forward mail for Watanabe, but 50% of the mail will be for Spiller.

And on top of it all... The Upper East Side is changing their Zip Code and dividing it up into three different numbers!!!

Easter in Sunset Park

452 55th Street, Brooklyn NY

Back in Brooklyn the next day, we began our tour with dim sum in Sunset Park. We first went to this house and encountered a realtor with the phone headset in his ear standing next to the requisite balloons signaling the open house. It seemed like an OK property, nice and big, with no immigrants illegally living in the nooks and crannies. However, when we went to the first floor/sub basement duplex, and spoke to the tenants, they told us that it was freezing in the winter, and they never get enough heat. They also told us that in November they moved in and signed a 2 year lease. We asked Tomas, the Realtor about this and he claimed that the owner said there is no lease on any of the tenants. It felt like the owner wanted out of this property so he just ripped up the leases, therefore he "doesn't have the leases" is what it sounded like. Also when we went into the sub basement, I noticed that a major supporting I-beam had been cut out (about 6 feet) to make room for the staircase they had added to create a basement living space. Due to this, the upper floors were not level in some areas, creating the sea sick effect found in many parts of Windsor Terrace.




Here is the non-heat providing dinosaur of a furnace that we found in the basement.


















So we moved on and things began looking up. We even found great spring time blocks to cheer us up a bit. Did the Easter Bunny explode?






The next house was a winner.
421 42nd Street, Sunset Park

Last week, I called about this house and the Realtor named Leif gave me the lowdown BUT told me that he had to go out of town suddenly since they are adopting a baby from Russia, and so he would be out of town for 2 weeks. However, I could call the owner and set up an appointment with her. He called me on Saturday and again on Sunday from Russia to make sure all was as planed and if I had any questions to call him. This is a dedicated worker, which I liked very much.A view of the back "yard" it is mostly concrete so there is no lawn to be mowed. There are rose bushes and some type of Japanese bushes planted in the perimeter. Also a grape vine arbor for shade, and a little plot of dirt for the herb garden.

Two views of the kitchen. It is on the ground level/ subterranean, but huge. Maybe too huge but it has all the appliances and most of the time at parties, people congregate in the kitchen anyway. The only thing Chaim didn't like was that the stove did not vent outside.

The owner's bedroom

The main staircase to the upstairs rental apartment

Living room

This is the front of the house. It is stretched out in this photo, so it's not this wide but you can get the idea.


We are going back to it this coming weekend with a friend to look at it again.

the Snakehead Dorm

43-02 56th Street, Woodside Queens

From the outside, this 2 family brick semi-attached house looked ok. We had walked passed it a few weeks ago and wondered about it. We went to an open house last weekend and found out that it has been chopped up in to tiny rooms, so that in the basement there must have been at least 10-15 people living there. When you stepped into the dimly lit drab, filthy atmosphere of the basement, it was as though we had stepped into a third world country. A Chinese man sat in the midst of this filth smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. On the first floor, the owner's daughter was wearing pajama's (it was 3:30pm) eating cereal. That apartment was in a little better condition in that it had not been rented out to 10 people, but not by much.
Now mind you, this was an open house. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FIX UP, OR AT LEAST CLEAN YOUR HOUSE FOR AN OPEN HOUSE!!!!!!!! The house had not seen a drop of cleaning fluid in years. The realtor showing the property was from Mongolia with a Japanese name: Arashi Ayushin.
As he toured us around the place, he said- "The Indians split up this floor into 3 apartments and rent it for a lot of money." We told him: "Do we look Indian to you? and anyway we don't want to be slumlords!"
After we left the house, I started to cry. It was the most depressing thing I'd seen during the months of house hunting. I've read about the status of Chinese immigrants, but never had I come so close to the reality of their situation.

identity crisis- the new name plan

A friend of mine asked me today if I had officially changed my last name.

As of today I still have two identities:

The DMV never took my old license back when I applied for the new one.
The Social Security people now have my new name, so all of my paychecks made out to M. Watanabe are now collecting my pension under the name Spiller.
My passport and credit cards, school ID all still have my old name.
It is very difficult to change names in the middle of the school year, so my new name plan is to begin totally anew at the beginning of September.
Plus the deed to my apartment is still under Watanabe, and I don't want to add more paperwork to that whole process anymore than there needs to be.

I sold my first book art/ sculpture piece today. When I dropped it off at the collectors house this morning, one of his assistants introduced herself to me and said that she knows me from my name.

"really? Micki Spiller? or Micki Watanabe?, because I just changed my name."

"Spiller is the name think I know. I used to work at Granary Book Press and didn't you do a project with them?"

"no but I would love to do an edition with them...Before I decided to change my name, we Googled 'Micki Spiller' and it came up clean, so there can't be another Micki Spiller!"

She looks at the card on the table, a Franklin Furnace Benefit invitation that I've just brought over.

"Hey isn't there a Hillary Spiller who does the fund raising at the Furnace?"

"No, but there is a Harley Spiller, who I'm married to who works there."

"Does he write books on Matisse?"

"no I believe that's Hilary Spurling..."

Now, I'm more than ever confused, and no matter what name one has, a person will forever be confused with another who is known for doing something totally different from what they do. It doesn't matter whether its' Spiller or Watanabe, I shall be confused with another person at some time or another.

Hymie House update

Chaim found this add in the AM NY paper yesterday. Apparently Hector, the owner/seller for the house on 83rd street in Jackson Heights has already raised the price of his house $5500 since last week when he rejected our offer.

And after much thought and discussion, we decided that we don't want it anyway!

Our New Offer

We went back to the house on 83rd Street today with Joe Taco, to get an inspection, to make sure that there was no asbestos or mold or termites or water leaks or gas leaks or other leaks and clogs. He gave it a pretty good bill of health. Of course with a house that's 80 years old, there are always things to be done. New garage door, making a door from the house to the garage, installing the exhaust fan back into the kitchen, moving the dryer and the gas line...

Here's Chaim in front of the house with the realtor Jaime. (Hymie)

We spent an hour or so there and afterward went to Unidentified Flying Chicken for lunch to discuss our next move. It began to rain, and the place was BYOB, so we sat at the lone window table, looking out onto Roosevelt Avenue eating the most delicious Korean fried chicken and drinking our Negra Modelos as we hashed out the numbers.

After number crunching, going back and fourth between the different percentages, and a little bit of numerology, we came up with a number we both agreed on, and called Jaime. He said that the offer should be in writing, so we went back to his office on Northern Blvd. After another hour in his office signing papers, Jaime offered to drive us to the subway. On the way there we passed pio pio Michelle Beaudoin's favorite place, and Jaime couldn't stop saying how great the food is there. We decided that from now on, the good realtors love pio pio chicken.

So now we have an offer on the table. Let the games begin!


some more pictures of the house:

90% of the job is just showing up on time.

Real Estate Road Kill
We had an appointment to see a house on Ithaca Street in Elmhurst/Jackson Heights on Sunday. We were supposed to meet Ariel aka RERD (AndrewII) from Foxtons at 1pm in front of the house.
We walked up to the house, stepping over a dead cat in the road.
We were 10 minuted early. There was another realtor parked in front waiting for a client.
We called Ariel aka RERD to tell him we were there waiting for him.
He didn't pick up either numbers, we left two messages.
At 10 past 1:00pm he calls to say "what's up?"
"well, Ariel, we are waiting for you to show us the house, how long until you can get here?"
"oh, I can be there in 20 or so minutes."
"Well Ariel, there's another realtor here that can show us the house, so don't bother."
needless to say, if this were a first date, Ariel would not have a chance at a second.
We had the other realtor show us the house instead.

There is a parallel between real estate and romance. One looks for a prospective house just as one would scrutinize a prospective mate; we make lists of our wants, needs, likes and dislikes. Lessons learned in love should and most likely will apply to real estate. If you are going on your first date, you want' to make a good impression. You shower, shave, dress for the part, and you show up on time. If you are really serious about someone, you show up early to case the meeting place, and then casually stroll up to your date exactly at the minute you are expected. YOU DO NOT SHOW UP LATE!!!!! This should be the first thing realtors should learn. How hard is it to schedule your appointments so that you are not running late?????

But for some reason, 50% of the realtors have been late by at least 5 minutes. And they have cars. How long have they been doing this????? Shame on them, they should know better.

Real Estate: Secondary Cast of Characters

Realtors who have no business being in the business:

Schamo- from United Homes. Apparently this is a cult that has a home base in Hillside Queens. They prey on first time home buyers by getting them to go way to the butt-fuck queens and serve you a cup of grape kool-aid. They say they have properties all over the city, but when you get on their web site, the only thing they have listed is in ghetto areas, with pictures that are drawings rather than real properties. They apparently don't know how to update their websites, because you have to go out to their offices to see new listing.

Russian Stripper Mail-order bride's madam:
A short, bad wig-wearing Brazillian woman with a Greek name, showing or rather hardly showing slumy buildings in Astoria. We went to see a property and she only was able to show us 1/4th of the property, which was a redone apartment inhabited by the chain-smoking Russian stripper, mail order bride named Georgina, who was recently married to a "zhlub" named George. When asked to see the other apartment in the building, all she was able to tell us was that there is an old lady living there, and is never seen.

Real Estate: The Cast of Characters

Jackson Heights:

Realtor #1
Madam Beaudoin- She is fabulous. We've been seeing her since early last summer when we thought we were in contract on my place. She showed us the first house we LOVED, and nothing has compared to it ever since. She doesn't show us yucky property, like the urine house, or the overly crowded Chinese immigrant hideouts, or the house that's falling over and sloping to one side. She went to Pratt and also has an interior design business on the side. The first time we were in her office, her partner Daniel Karatzas, gave us a book he published on the garden district of Jackson Heights, with a forward by Robert Sterns.

Realtor #2
Scarfania. His name is actually Carfagnia, but we dislike him so of course we don't call him by his actual name. He showed us a house we actually liked enough to put a bid on, early on in the search when we didn't know any better. That house which we retracted the bid on is now called the Baby Jonah and the Asbestos Whale. He is a slimy character, and you could just tell that he was lying when his mouth was open. Also he's from Boston, which gave a bad taste in Harley's mouth from the get go.

Realtor #3
Peggi-incum: The Chinese realtor, she tries, and will show anything. She showed us the house that had so many people living in it, and thus we couldn't see the house for all the mattresses stacked up and leaning on the walls. Most of her property has high water and electricity bills due to much laundry being done on the premises at all times. But when something undesirable appears around the corner in any of the rooms, she just chants the mantra: In-cum, you can get in-cum (income).

Realtor #4
Toupee Joe: He showed us a ranch house in the heat of the summer when most of Astoria and Woodside lost power for over a week. The poor guy had been living in motels and out of his car. When we walked up the the door of the house, I saw a bald guy standing in the doorway, and so I waved. He quickly ducked inside, and came back out wearing a toupee as though we hadn't seen him. Needless to say, the house was very interesting.

Realtor #5
Belal the Indian: The guy who talks and talks and knows everything and still can't get the information right. He is still trying to sell us stuff in Forest Hills. He shows us other people's listings. "His people" have the corner market on Jackson Heights, and it will be easy to rent out anything that we buy.

Realtor #6
sFartacus aka-Farter the Greek: So Harley and I go to see a house that is co-brokered in Jackson Heights, which this woman can't stop saying how wonderful, and mint, mint, mint condition it's in. It is south of Roosevelt Ave., which is a location we have yet to discover. We have been holding off since most of the homes south of Roosevelt are frame and not brick. But what the hell, it's worth looking. So we trek out there, it's freezing outside, and when we get there, the woman is in the small foyer struggling with the keys to get in. We all three try for a good 20 minutes, jiggling the keys. Harley and I go to the back, where I jump the fence to see if the keys work on the back door, but no luck. We go back out front, and in the meanwhile, realtor #6 has made the foyer very stinky. We will probably try to see the house again... she was very very very sorry and gave us some Japanese Mochi, which she thought were Korean, since she bought them in a Korean store.

Realtor #7
Andrew Foxtons: Young cocky guy with slick back hair, always on the go with his blackberry, wheeler/dealer type who likes to party. Drives around in the Foxtons Mini.

Co-Habitation - Step One: The Real Estate Hunt

After almost 2 months of marriage, we are still commuting back and fourth on the Lexington Ave. line. One Hour door to door, calendering where we will both sleep every 3 or 4 days. And every weekend we are on the hunt. This weekend, we ventured out to Brooklyn, and Windsor Terrace, Kensington.....what some call the South Slope.

Harley suggests we should be doing a photo essay of all the dinosaurs that inhabit the basements of these prospective living quarters:

Here is an oil tank we found in the basement of a humongous house in Windsor Terrace, well actually Kensington. The hugeness of the house it got me so excited that I didn't stop to think about the yard... who's going to mow it??? And the lovely tree I first saw, became a nightmare, as we realized we would be responsible, as we pictured it falling down on the house next door. Plus, we are not staying in New York so we can live in a suburb-like setting.

Backing up a few weeks on the earlier days of house hunting...
This lovely two family in a picturesque Jackson Heights neighborhood: Of course I fell in love with it instantly.

But then I did a bit of research and found out that it is in a landmarked neighborhood. This may sound great at first, but then looking through pages and pages of all the violations this house and it's attached neighbors have due to not having work done to landmark status, and that the neighbor on the other side is an architect, who practices out of his home, (translation: a landmark snitch) and after Harley's friends Joe Taco and Paul came to check out the place, and found that all the windows need to be replaced, (which meant windows that are normally $200 would now run us in the tune of about $600 each since we would have to restore it back to 1910,) and with 27 windows... well we gave up doing the math.
As my excited and eager face fell, so did the mood of our real estate agent #1.

Happy Valentines Day!

On Valentines Day I got a delicious bag of dim sum from Harley's secret place in Chinatown.
And our official Marriage Certificate

The strange thing is that it came addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Migiwa Watanabe...
Next stop: DMV and social security.

Last Name Limbo

WATANABE: A name riddled with so many vowels, telephone solicitors often ask if I am Native American.

Now I know why women had no problem changing their names in the 1950's. Beaver Cleaver's mother didn't work out side of the home. She probably never applied for a social security card. There was no reason to. I, on the other hand am realizing what a pain it is to be traditional, and take my new husband's name. This is just 1/4th of the ID's that I will have to change-

My mother’s maiden name, Watanabe, is the 5th most common surname in Japan. I grew up in St. Louis in a time when there were very few Japanese families and yet there were four other Watanabes in the 2-inch thick Southwestern Bell White Pages; a dentist, a violinist, a conductor and one other that I never met. Watanabe is considered the “Smith” of Japan, and so common that my mother’s oldest sister married an unrelated man also named Watanabe. Everyone knows at least one Watanabe and thorough out my life, I have been asked if I have a brother, father, uncle, aunt, etc who is an actor (Ken- Last Samuri or Gedde- Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles) a fashion designer (Junya), a musician (Sadao- soprano saxophone), a Yakuza “Godfather” (Yoshinori), a Peruvian Poet (Jose), an artist (Mikio- who does mezzotints or Hiroshi- photographer of kabuki), a feminist activist (Mina- works with Amnesty International) or an architect (Jin, Hiroshi, or Makoto).

In most eastern cultures, the surname always proceeds the given name, placing more importance on the clan than on the individual, so when I moved to the US my identity as an individual became more pronounced the further I moved away from my roots, culture and the Watanabe family.


Migiwa, my given name, is a phrase lifted from Psalm 23, literally meaning “beside the sill waters”. In Japanese, it is written in hiragana, because the uncommon name was too complex for the government officials and clerks who worked at the town office in the small island farm community where I was born, and they could not figure out how to write it in the usual kanji, or Chinese characters. Apparently they first refused to register it as an official name. My mother’s explanations of the Song of David from the Bible fell on deaf ears in the room full of Buddhist and Shinto clerks. So they compromised and spelled it with the easier, and more poetic Japanese writing system.

The origin of my family name is related to a profession as are most, and means ‘one who crosses the ocean to carry people and products by boat.’ My mother’s mother’s maiden name- Murakami comes from a pirate that collected tax from ships which crossed the Seto Inland Sea. I will be visiting that same Seto Sea this year with a different surname.

I am anticipating this change, and run home every day to open up an empty mailbox, and every day I am dissapointed when the official envelope containing the documents which will enable me to be the next Mrs. Spiller doesn't appear.

When I send out e-mails from my new Mrs. Spiller address, I automatically go into my friends spam box. I tell my students I am currently between last names.

Fifteen years ago (or so) I changed my identity from this:


to this:


and now i'm waiting for the next incarnation...

Formal Portraits

We decided to take our formal portraits before the wedding.
This way we could begin celebrating and drinking straight after the ceremony.
Our friend Marty, the photographer, http://www.martyheitnerphotography.com/
made Harley turn around as I came into the photo shoot,
so that there could be a sense of surprise.
These pictures show the moment just before and after Harley sees me for the first time....
He couldn't believe the transformation -- beyond anything he had anticipated.

With Family

Me and the Kimono Ladies.
(L-R Hatsume, Mikako, Me, Okaasan (mother), & Toshiko.

With Parents.

The Spillers and Underwoods.

My personal bests.

Harley and his best men.

Our best men, women and friends

The whole wedding group

My new husband and his proud father- Mortimer aka "Mordecai".

Thank you to our fabulous friend Marty Heitner for our lovely photos!

Photos by our NY Times photographer: lora Spiller

Mort and Phillip toasting the couple.

The smiling kimono ladies:

(L-R) my proud mother, Toshiko-obachan, Hatsumi-obachan and Mikako-obachan, who flew on an airplane for the first time in her life to attend the celebration.

My best man getting a lesson:

tying a bow tie is harder than it looks.

lora Spiller and master Phillip Underwood, the best boy.

Japanese Translation of the Ceremony

本日このよき日に　ここに集まっていただきました皆様の立会いの下で、新郎Harley と新婦みぎわは、永遠の誓いをたて、結婚をいたします.

結婚とはお互いを愛し、信じ、末永くパートナーとして受け入れることです。
このことを皆様にお約束します。

人を愛する事は　人生この上ない喜びであり、私たちの人生に深みを与えてくれます。その時、夫婦愛は最高の喜びに変わり、思いやり、助け合いながらお互いを高めあうことになります。また、日々の生活を共にし、それぞれの出来事を報告し合う喜びは愛し合う夫婦にとってとても重要になります。

また、結婚とは価値観を共有し、喜びも悲しみもともに分かち合うことです。
それにより、結婚生活が充実しお互いへの理解が高まるとともに、夫婦それぞれも成長していかなければなりません。

人を深く知るということは短期間ではなされず、長い年月を経て築き上げられるものです。そしてその相手への理解は思いやりと変わり、相手を真から解ってあげようと努力するようになります。

そのことによって喜びや成功だけではなく、時には悲しみや失敗などの重みを荷なうこともあります。

相手の問題や心配事を理解し和らげられるという事は何事にも代えられぬすばらしいことです。

結婚とは相手を尊重し、また一方でお互いを認め合うことでなくてはいけません。
お互いに愛を与えていかなければなりませんが、それと同時にそれぞれの個性を失ってしまってはお互いの個性に引かれ合って一緒になった意味がありません。

バランスのとれた良い関係とは、一方的な自己主張をして相手を黙らせ、わがままを言い合うものであってはなりません。

自立した自分自身と、夫婦としの自分との交互の役割のなかで、強くかつデリケートな愛を育くんで行かねばなりません。
本日皆様に集まっていだだいたのは、みぎわとHarleyの永遠の誓いを承認し祝福していただくためです。この結婚という絆により、今二人は一緒に成ろうとしております。

みぎわとHarleyは全くちがった環境で育ち、それぞれに洗練されたプライドを持っております。２人のその違いが個性的で楽しい結婚生活を作り出すことと信じております。お互い独自の個性を生かし初めて強い絆が生まれると固く信じております。

そしてお互いよりいっそう努力し、よりよい家庭を築いて参ります。

これから皆様と一緒に新郎新婦の誓いの言葉を交わすのをお聞きして頂きます。

Bill of Fare

This is the cover of our "menu" for the evening

Ketuba

The traditional Jewish marriage certificate is called a ketuba. Arising out of 5th C b.c.e. Egyptian marriage deeds, ketubot (pl.) specify the obligations of a husband to his wife. The ketuba is a legal document originally formulated to protect a Jewish bride from financial hardship in troubled times. At 2000 years old, ketubot are among the first documents conferring legal status and financial rights to women.

In my art studio in Brooklyn’s “Dumbo” neighborhood (an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), I recently began a series of contemporary illuminated manuscripts. I made our ketuba by hand, incorporating ancient features that illustrate the different characteristics of the bride and groom (such as Ionic and Doric columns) and added modern touches like a bowl of popcorn, the our favorite snack. There are also hometown flags, and an illustrated map of places we’ve visited or dream of seeing together. The ketuba will be signed by the me, Harley, Rose Teitelbaum (my adopted Jewish Grandmother, and Mort Spiller (Harley's Father).

Wedding Fog

check out erik's video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftqjKaxs5KY