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Published: April 20th 2009
Opportunity abounds in this city. It seems to ooze it (ala Green Slime in Ghostbusters II). I've made a few extra contacts to which I've handed my resume and I can feel that my phone is going to run hot pretty soon.
Our other favourite past-time of apartment shopping has taken a back seat for a while as we decided our little tangerine shoebox was the best offer we have had. We put pen to paper and signed on for the month of May.
Most of the apartment websites over here require a fee (usually around $200) to sign up and unblock the restriction regarding contacting the landlords and viewing the exact address' of all the listings. So on a wet and miserable Wednesday, we did a little investigative work to check out a few open houses. Using the clues given to us by the website description, (two blocks from such and such supermarket, three blocks from the subway) and the photo of the outside of the building, we roamed the streets of the West Village and hunted down these open houses and felt quite proud of our detective skills. If only our efforts were rewarded by bargain, warehouse-sized
Obscure Bar Where We Drank Free Phone-Returning Cocktails
Tom Hanks was in here earlier that day. Damn, just missed him!apartments that accepted short-term leases. Quite the opposite actually!!
On the very same day, in between viewings, Penny stopped to take advantage of a Kodak moment. Attempting to amuse myself while Pen was happy-snapping I turned my eyes to the ground to find a Blackberry phone lying in the middle of the street. I picked it up and vowed to ring "MOM" or "DAD" once we had finished apartment shopping and start the process of giving the phone back to its owner. The phone rang a couple times but I didn't answer for the only reason of not knowing what to say when I answered it. After the same number rang 3-4 times in 15 minutes, I inferred that the person ringing the phone was either the owner of the phone or at least in the owner's presence.
"Hello, David speaking" was the best I could come up with.
"Did you just find this phone?", came the reply. (Geez, how'd you guess?)
We agreed to meet up at a bar close-by after our last open-house much to the enjoyment of the owner. Half an hour later, Pen and I found ourselves at a bar/restaurant literally right near where
I found the phone. The place was so quaint that we didn't even know it was there despite Penny spending a good five minutes photographing the intersection earlier.
We entered the bar and were asked by a waitress if we had a reservation or not. The first glimpse of the place oozed sophistication as all staff looked like penguins. I mumbled out something to the tune of,
"Me here - give phone".
A shortish woman come straight up to us and asked,
"Were you the ones who found my phone?"
Handing over the phone she reigned us with compliments and escorted us to the bar for a complimentary round. Thanking her for her generosity, she refused our thanks retorting that she was so glad 'out-of-towners' found her phone because no one else in New York would have done the same.
She left to return to her companions in the restaurant section whilst we took our first sips on our potent cocktails. Returning no more than three minutes later, she explained that she was again thankful for the return of her phone and thrusted a wad of cash into my palm.
"In New York you get a reward for returning
a person's phone."
Two $16 cocktails and $40 in cold hard cash - Not bad for just finding a phone.
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Sophie
non-member comment
Dave, what a cool story! In London you'd get a curt 'thanks' and they'd be on their way. Soph