Tasteful Friends: Joy every day': New Yorkers reveal their fabulous apartments – in pictures

I wouldn't live in any of those abodes, but I am thrilled to learn that these spaces exist behind the facades of different buildings in the city.

Open a door and voila! some crazy space, lived in by some "eccentric" character.

Warms the heart...

AKA, trying really hard to be different and "cool." Ugh!

I don't think they're 'trying.' They are. Laurie Anderson's place is the least cluttered, and she's been 'cool' for decades.

They probably think they are too fabulous for the rest of us who don’t squat in a 250 sqft walk up stuffed full of junk.

I doubt they think of you at all.

I love it. Thanks, OP.

BTW, we’re allowed to keep ourselves entertained in an urban setting; Tasteful Friends isn’t nearly as interesting as a wall O’ dicks.

Fabulous shoeboxes!

Only one person in that photo series looks happy. What the fuck is whith modern photojournalism's preoccupation with presenting everyone as miserable?

A lot of these apartments, not all, just have junk masquerading as character and eccentricity. Laurie Anderson seems the least neurotic with what she surrounds herself with.

I cannot even imagine what sex is like in Kaston's apartment. So much clutter.

Why is the world supposed to be constantly in awe and/or interest of people who live in New York and their apartments? This is such a trope and I don't get it. Is it just lazy reporting? Some magazine or newspaper reporter is in need of a feature piece. So instead of getting on a plane or in a car or Googleing various trends or unique social traits in other parts of the country, here we go with the 'edgy' and 'quirky' New Yorkers and their apartments and penthouses. (I used to be one of those myself). Oh, look! It's so shabby-chic! My how those New Yorkers make a cheap living space appear academically or fashionable elegant! WHAT?!!? You mean to tell me people live in apartments in big cities?! And they have these routines?!!? And decorate in quirky ways?! Oh my dear! This is truly enlightening! I've never seen anything like it before!! *eye roll*

[quote] (I used to be one of those myself).

I never would have guessed.

Love their personal style. Eccentric and expressive. Reminds me of Berkeley and Haight Street SF apartment living circa 1971. May be a bit of mental illness involved but to each his own.

I think it’s wonderful - the accumulation of a lifetime.

How in the hell do they clean any of those places (except for Laurie Anderson's more airy-seeming place)? God, those apartments must reek.

The guy in OPs pic is what I picture most Dataloungers to be like.

More than one have dead animals on the walls. How many living rats are hiding behind all that junk?

This was lovely, haunting, melancholy, and bittersweet.

R3 Her autobiographical documentary “Heart of a Dog,” which I created a thread for last year, is sublime.

I really love Liz Duffy Adams' tenement apartment. That's something that's been left alone architecturally for probably over 100 years, and it's amazing to see. Gerald DeCock sounds gaga. He twists himself in knots to simultaneously apologize for and defend the way he's able to live.

R9 Laurie Anderson has eleventymillion dollars and probably has 10 times the space as any of the others in the article.

I don't know what I hate more-- "deep dive" or "joy." Both are pretentious and make me want to vomit.

The aging bohos. The developed their aesthetic in the late 70s and early 80s. I live in those East Village dumps when I was a young arty person. I'm glad these marginal types could hold on so long thanks to their rent control.

One time in the early 90s I was in SF and met aging bohos who had worked up their aesthetic in the 60s.

People frozen in time. Very melancholy.

Plastic dead animal heads were the statement piece in 2005, but I can’t imagine anyone using dead animals in their homes in 2021.

It’s something that turns me away from Zillow porn immediately.

Too much clutter, outwards signs of inability to let go of the past. A bunch of collected stuff over the years does not equate with good home decor. My late brother’s apartment had elements of all of the apartments profiled. I can relate.

I feel that some of these decor chaoices are the culmination of 20-30 years of illegal substance abuse !!! Also , what is the fixation with animal heads ?

I believe there's more than one DLer featured.

I worked with Danny Fields on the neighborhood newsletter. Curious what happened to him. His building was converted into $10-$20 million apartments. Wonder if he got to stay. I agree with the Chelsea guy - the city changes and you can either be grateful for how blessed you are to be part of it or live in a state of constant sentimentality. Yes I miss many of the functional aspects of pre-gentrification Village - more and cheaper delis, Chinese restaurants, DIY laundries. But I’m just grateful that I am able to still be part of it. If you aren’t, then just move on to someplace else - like many of my friends who have moved to LA in the past 10 years. Yes, gentrification isn’t fun nor is the pandemic lockdown - but feel very lucky to be here and happy to die in my little apartment after a full life.

I love these homes. It's amazing what people can do with small spaces, to make it "home"....and each one reflects the inhabitant's soul and interests. These are so much more interesting to me than the glitzy, millions of dollars homes, that are sterile. Charming in an old NYC way.

I wouldn't want to live in ANY of these places. But, why all the rage about even presenting them? They're fun to look at and discuss, just like other tasteful friends posts with big beautiful old homes or modern, airy high rise condos.

That guy in the photo is my friend Jimmy, I've known him for decades and he is a really lovely guy. He's a true New Yorker and is kind and funny and weird to all, and he'd do anything for you. I haven't seen him all year, but for real, you'd like him. He's not some jerk although I'm sure they painted him that way.

Do Meta Hillmann and Michael McMahon go hunting together?

Examples of the real people still left in NYC. Primarily due to rent control. Cuomo deserves props for ensuring rent stabilization/control remains - the laws they passed are the best thing to happen to NYC in 30 years. The reality is no one is building affordable housing for charity. Best we can do is keep the affordable apartments affordable - even after these people die.

They all give me claustrophobia except for Laurie Anderson's place.

The trailer park trash of Manhattan. The similarities are astounding.

Well I for one always enjoy a photo of a 70 year old man with a Bieber hairdo.

"I'm glad these marginal types could hold on so long thanks to their rent control." You sound like an asshole, R22. You type douche.

One of the people profiled is a friend of mine, so I've been to their place, and I was invited to a party thrown by Laurie Anderson, so I was in her apartment as well. It amuses me to read some of you queens saying "Oh, I wouldn't want to live in ANY of those apartments!" Well, bitches, you'd want to live in Laurie's place--not that you could afford it. It's a duplex with high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling massive windows with a view of the Hudson.

I am the “I want all this shit picked up and put away now” troll, but still enjoyed these images and stories. Rent stabilization was designed to ensure artists and educators could live in the City, and it looks to have worked well.

I think animals, or possibly cats, are nonnegotiable in these cramped little shitholes. I sometimes wonder what landlords do about apartments that are “under water”, where the tenant’s rent is less than the maintenance fees for the unit. We have several tenants in our co-op who pay only a fraction of the maintenance fee as rent because they moved in so long ago. When one passes away, their apartment is usually completely resurfaced and renovated, often unrecognizable, and rent out at market value.

R34's palatial abode is somewhere in there....

I bet these people could tell some great stories...living there for years, about the older, grittier NY and the changes.

R38 lives in a rent controlled hellhole. No wonder the drugged up, blind drunk tricks you lure back to your tiny shithole either end up dead or scared for life.

This apartment (beads, etc.) was different from the rest. I hated this apartment the most.

The apartments were interesting to look at, but to actually live in, no way. There is no way to keep any of those places clean. Add a cat or a dog and it's a nightmare, IMO.

I used to know Danny Fields. We used to do drugs and party in 1977-78. Great drugs, great sex. He lived in...not the West Village then. Maybe SoHo, maybe Tribeca. I didn't go above 14th Street much those days, nor below Canal. Then I moved to LA and I never saw him again. It's so much easier to stay in touch these days.

"There is no way to keep any of those places clean. " You're really an idiot, R41. Laurie Anderson's place is not some dive. No doubt it's nicer than where you live.

More content on the Chelsea Hotel apartment of Gerald DaCock. In the video he seems like a neat guy. He knows his situation is unique and says he feels like a king, and that on a gray cloudy day, he enjoys the bright colors around him. The space looks kaleidoscopic, but actually well-tended, not dusty. Things aren’t stacked up in heaving piles, but instead surfaces are finished with paints and metallic coatings. But, yes, it’s like a carnival up there.

If the roaches and rats all creeped out from their hiding places- couldn't they devour everyone?

It's not like bitter, angry R40 couldn't hack NYC and now lives in a shack without a toilet... Oh, wait; he does!

[quote] I recently moved out of NYC to a rural area. The cabin I bought has a non functional toilet. So I’ve been squatting in the woods and doing it the good old way. I’ve never felt better guys!

Now we know what's up with those Never Leavers. No one wants their apartment, and it's too much to fix.

The technical term is Shitholes.

I kept expecting to find ALT with each swipe. Some little walk-up studio with his muu muus draped on the walls, windows, and doors, having to sleep propped-up against his pile of LV cases.

Poison Ivey shows up in every damn article about interesting apartments. He must have a lot of dirt on a lot of people.

[quote]More content on the Chelsea Hotel apartment

I thought they cleared everyone out of the Chelsea Hotel. Do people still live there?

When you live in a small space I think you need to make it unique in some way so that it is a refuge from city living and strife, they're like little desert islands.

I live in Yoko Ono's broom closet.

Did none of these misfits try to better themselves?

^. They live in NY in extremely low rent controlled apartment. What more do they want?

That's QUITE the penis collection Sur Rodney has on his shelf!

[quote] ‘Shortly after moving in I discovered the person before me paid one-fourth of what I paid and I spent the next two years in court. Afterwards, my rent was lowered to an insanely low amount. This has given me the ability to live the life of a starving artist. I live a very sober life, and I enjoy cooking and baking, and watching old movies with my boyfriend.’ [Flloyd NYC. Photographed at his home in the East Village on 26 October 2019.]

If you got your rent lowered to an insanely low amount, why do you have to live like a starving artist? Maybe he just meant he could pursue art and not have to worry so much about a 9 to 5.

Good lord - with the exception of Laurie Anderson those spaces are embarrassing and depressing.

I wouldn't want to live in those apartments, including Laurie Anderson's - don't know why people here single it out so much. Sure, it's not as cluttered and claustrophobic as the others, but it looks dark, a bit cold and in general not very pleasant or cosy to me.

But can someone explain to me the American habit to cover everything in a heavy layer of accent paint? The brick wall, normal walls, the bathtub, wooden floors, in Flloyd's case the whole apartment basically. I also see it so often with vintage furniture and such. Why take a perfectly fine piece of furniture for example, that just needs to be brushed up a bit, and absolutely cake it in some loud colour?

R59, when I lived / rented apartments in SF, one of my apts. (Edwardian bldg.) had multiple layers of paint on the walls and built-in cabinets. Someone told me it was because there was a rule or law about painting a unit every ____ years. However, seems like the ppl in the article lived in their units for decades.

I'm not a Vulture subscriber, so can't view the video at R44, so if anyone else can't either, try this one:

[quote]If you got your rent lowered to an insanely low amount, why do you have to live like a starving artist? Maybe he just meant he could pursue art and not have to worry so much about a 9 to 5.

I've always wondered how people who call themselves "starving artists" are actually able to survive in a city as expensive as Manhattan. Even in a rent-controlled apartment paying an "insanely low" amount, I would imagine it still has to be at least somewhere in the $500 range at the very least. If so, how do they come up with the money every month if they have no job? And how do they pay their light bill? And buy groceries? If you're an artist who may not sell that much of your art on a steady basis and you have no job (or a trust fund), how do they get by?

Believe me, I think it's great and say more power to them, I just don't know how so many of these people who call themselves "starving artists" live the way that they do.

By the way, there's a great show that comes on every week here in NYC called "Neighborhood Slice" that spends 30 minutes each week in a different neighborhood around the city. (It was in the episode about life in Chelsea that I first discovered Gerald DeCock.) The only thing is they stopped producing new episodes years ago, so they just show the same ones over and over and over again. Still, I always find them interesting to watch.

They are able to live as non capitalists in an increasingly rabid, all consuming capitalist society. Kudos. It’s not what you have it’s what you do and how you live. So many Americans have been convinced they need a 3,000 square foot house to be happy. 500 square feet is completely adequate to live life. Sacrificing your life and happiness to a miserable job so you can live in a “nice” place rarely brings happiness.

I adore every one of these apartments and don't understand the space-haters.

All of those apartments look like fire hazards ready to explode in flames and kill all the neighbors!

Hope the electric doesn't fail, esp. in summer. Those cubby holes would be suffocating in no time.

Ugh, that guy’s apartment at R61 is a cheap-looking nightmare.

EV Grieve had a similar series while back.

Some of those featured sound down right miserable, especially the last one, James Kaston.

Given their ages and length of tenancy am going with one or more if not all are tenants in rent regulated apartments.

There are scores if not hundreds of middle-aged to seniors along with elderly that are pretty much trapped in those rent controlled or stabilized apartments. They likely couldn't afford a broom closet in Manhattan south of Harlem (or lately there or north into Inwood/Washington Heights).

Living in these small studio, one bedroom or if lucky railroad flats for twenty or more years people do what they must in terms of decorating to make the place home like. Their landlords probably haven't done squat to the apartment other than fix what law requires.

"I wouldn't want to live in those apartments, including Laurie Anderson's - don't know why people here single it out so much. Sure, it's not as cluttered and claustrophobic as the others, but it looks dark, a bit cold and in general not very pleasant or cosy to me."

Wrong, idiot R59.

Laurie Anderson's place looks "dark," R59? It has floor-to-ceiling windows with a sunny river view.

Laurie’s PR team are working overtime on this thread!

R62

Allow me to explain how "starving artists" or anyone else who isn't wealthy manages to live in Manhattan, NYC.

First and foremost if living in a rent controlled or stabilized apartment you cannot be touched, really. Rent may be due on 1st of month, but long as you pay before the 30th there isn't anything a LL can do. Even if you don't pay until say after the 10th and get a three day notice because now owe two months rent, long as you pay total due before heading to court, there's nothing a LL can do. Even better you still must be offered a renewal lease.....

When people say they are "starving" many are just living paycheck to paycheck or gig to gig, ..... Like that NYC editor says to Patsy Stone... "This is New York baby, we move with the dollar". If your one job doesn't pay enough to cover bills, then you have to get a side hustle, second job, whatever it takes to bring in extra money. Why do you think so many young or even middle aged NYC guys were on RentBoy, or now OnlyFans?

It is a given in the art or performing arts world that people have a second income. This unless maybe they are performing artists with union and are with a show, dance company (like ABT), or whatever that brings in steady money for good part of year.

Yes, NYC especially Manhattan is expensive, but there are all sorts of ways to live well and cut down expenses.

So many people "dumpster dive" nowadays. In front of every supermarket, bakery, gourmet food shop, etc... you see people with shopping bags, backpacks, whatever all going through whatever has been thrown out in bags. Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Maison Kayser (when it was open), the lot.

Living in such close proximity to well off to wealthy persons means plenty of things are discarded that are perfectly acceptable. Everything from high end appliances to clothing, furniture... There are even a few apps now that tell people where to find things discarded on curbs.

Would say for most finding home/apartment they can afford is about 90% of the battle. Once you have that buttoned up everything else begins to fall into place.

If Dominick Dunne had been a hipster twenty-five years ago, he'd have looked like the guy in OP'S photo.

Most of those sofas double as beds, don't they?

Is that guy in the OP LARPing every Wes Anderson movie?

Thanks, R74. That's good information.

In the House of Mirth, does the decayed silvering of this mirror that reflects a shell encrusted chandelier make my ass look fat?

But I agree with R1. I think living in a city where, no matter how much one has, there is always someone very near whose wealth makes you appear poor, it's nice to see people revolt in a different vein of taste and/or a turned inside out budget of next to nothing that steps off the aspirational track.

"The best defense against dust, Mr. Kaston has found, is a tight glass case. And so he has staged vignettes out of his “curiosities,” like a taxidermied turtle and a monkey skull, in 10 different antique cabinets. Yet to show these objects to the best effect, the “glass needs to be a little sparkly and shiny,” he said. And that means more dusting."

This fellow Jimmy Kaston certainly gets himself talked about.

NEVER trust a bedspread over a couch. It practically screams pee stain.

R82

Not really.

In small apartments here in NYC and elsewhere those sofas, daybeds, or whatever often see heavy use. Our grandmothers would have used plastic slip covers, today a bedspread or something similar serves same purpose. This is especially true of those that have pets including breeds of dogs or cats that shed heavily.

Far easier to launder or have bedspread dry cleaned than dealing with attempting to clean upholstery. The covering also takes brunt of wear and is far more easily (and cheaply) replaced than upholstery.

Will give you however that using a bedspread can hide a multitude of sins. A sofa that long since should have been reupholstered or replaced will do if you keep it under wraps.

I agree, too much junk in most of these apts, how do they even clean it? Looks very dusty.

And that apt with bath tub in the kitchen, looks like it could be infested with roaches and rats.

R84 RIGHT! I didn't see an air purifier in any of those dust trap apartments. Yuck.