Where Would I Live? Part One: Ohio City

So I've been giving some thought to where I'm going to live when I move back to Cleveland. It's not happening yet, but eventually paying $975 a month for paper-thin walls and the kind of bathroom where you can hear the people above and below you peeing will strike a fatal blow to my peace of mind, and I will uproot myself in the night, never to be glimpsed by the 212-set again.

Naturally, my sense of what's a good price and what's not has gotten a bit warped, so it seems that paying $825 a month for a 4th floor loft at the Merrell Building might actually be a pretty good deal. I'm not entirely sure I'd like to live in a loft apartment. But I'm so tired of living in overpriced crapshacks that living in something so luxurious and, by East Coast standards, so cheap, would be my way of proving that New Jersey sucks. (At least in New York, you get something for your money.) Not that I'd have much trouble convincing most people of New Jersey's suckitude, but I'm still obviously feeling dirty and wounded by the whole exurban experience.

Let's look at it in terms of what I require:

Walking distance to groceries? The West Side Market is across the street. So...check.
Where's my bank? Oh, look, it's on the first floor!
Direct public transit to downtown? Check.
Public transit available to my parents' house? Wow, check. Wouldn't even need a transfer.
Microbrew and coffee in walking distance? This might be the only place in Cleveland where I could check those both off....

But. OK. Who lives in these lofts? Would my quiet weekend evenings be thwarted by hordes of pretentious cocktailers who crank up the trance music and pretend they're in SoHo? Would the walls be solid enough to muffle this?

Anyway. If you or someone you know lives at the Merrell Building, or in any other Ohio City loft for that matter, please let me know what the noise culture is like.

You Can Take the Girl Out of New York, But...

Painkillers must be addictive because they make your whole body relax into this glorious, imperturbable languor. Unfortunately, they also seem to make your mind loosen up enough so that, if taken before bed, they cause you to dream about your worst fear, the one you're desperately squelching.

Last night, after a losing battle with a sinus headache, I took some Aleve and dreamed that my boyfriend made us move to Jones City, a mythical, antiurban no man's land, where our driveway backed onto a 2-lane collector road near a freeway (you can imagine what rush hour was like). I asked Jim how I was going to get to work, since there was no public transportation, and I didn't have a car. He shrugged unhelpfully and said, "ride your bike? I don't know." My first interaction with the redneck neighbors was to ask them to shut their drapes, as I could see everything but the afterglow -- a request which prompted the delightful young man who answered the door to spit at me. Later on we found ourselves hanging out with a greasy-looking woman in fuzzy pig slippers. She asked us if we wanted some "pop." At this point I ran out of the room crying, begging Jim to take me back to New York. He said no. So I ran off and married George Costanza.

Is it possible that I've become a snob?