No matter how rich and famous they become, newcomers generally suffer through the most absurd living conditions as a rite of passage to becoming New Yorkers.
It’s proven by the boldfaced contributors to “My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City,” a book compiled by the editors of New York magazine out next week.
* Nora Ephron arrived at 110 Sullivan St. in 1962 in the middle of the Feast of St. Anthony, where “there was no way to park — they were frying zeppole in front of my apartment.”
* Artist Chuck Close lived in a raw loft on Greene Street for $150 a month in 1967. “The loft had no heat. I painted for an entire year with gloves on and just my trigger finger sticking out to the button on the airbrush.”
* Graydon Carter lived in the Prince George Hotel in 1978 for $22 a night, a student rate. “The trouble was, I couldn’t go to work in a suit and tie and still get the student rate, so I had to dress like a student in the morning, go downstairs to settle the bill for the previous night in cash, and take my suit with me to work.”
* Sir Harold Evans and wife Tina Brown arrived in New York in 1983 and sublet a Third Avenue apartment for which they paid rent by putting dollar bills into a hat. Evans writes: “We were instructed to speak to the doorman with assumed names. One day I opened a cupboard and out fell tons of pornography.”
* “Saturday Night Live” star Andy Samberg and three friends converted a West Village two-bedroom into a four-bedroom by “putting up a lot of curtains” in 1998. They had mice because no one ever cleaned. “We got the sticky traps once, but when [a mouse] got stuck, we were all too scared to get it and throw it out or kill it. Literally, we were four college-age dudes curled up on the couch listening to it scream for three days.”
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