incognito7nyc/Flickr & Canva Photos
A woman ruffled some feathers with a tour of her $650 NYC micro apartment.
They say New York City is the City of Dreams. Young people all over the world flock to the city when they're ready to start chasing after their biggest ambitions. If you have a passion for theater, television, or the arts, there's no better place to be. Want to become a successful and prestigious stock broker, lawyer, or investment banker? It's all New York, baby. It's a city of immense opportunity and tough competition, but that's what makes it full of life and culture for those who choose to live there.
But all of that doesn't come cheap. The average rent in New York for even just a small, studio apartment is $3,264 per month. That buys you less than 500 square feet. And, even though it seems like you're really pinching pennies by living somewhere so cramped, that price tag is enormous! Even if you account for the higher-than-average salaries in New York.
Most young people just getting started in their careers can't afford that. Not to mention, the competition for good-quality apartments in New York is cutthroat. Still, people are desperate to live there by any means necessary, which has given rise to some really fascinating (and, in some cases, slightly horrifying) micro apartments.
In 2023, one woman went viral for showing off her New York micro apartment. It clocks in at just 80 square feet and cost her, at the time, a meager $650 per month.
If you like spending all your money on rent, New York is awesome! Giphy
YouTuber Caleb Simpson interviewed the woman, Alaina, for his channel that specializes in featuring interesting and unique living spaces. Alaina's apartment definitely qualifies, though technically the square footage is 80x150, because she's including the vertical space. Every square inch counts!
"So really it just feels like a walk-in closet," Simpson remarks upon entering through the front door.
Alaina shows Simpson around the apartment, which includes a tiny living room slash kitchen area with a mini-fridge, a small sink, and a small stove and microwave. In the main living area, she's placed a fold-out sofa of sorts. Alaina's makeup and pantry foods are all crammed into one small cabinet.
From there...well, there's not much left to see. But Alaina and Simpson check out the loft, which holds Alaina's bed and a little extra storage in the form of hooks where she hangs her bags and purses.
The apartment has no windows. There is a storage cupboard under the stairs, but it's hard to access.
"Every time I want to get something out, something else has to move," Alaina says.
As far as a bathroom, Alaina is lucky enough to have her very own private bathroom complete with shower! Many New York micro apartments feature communal or shared bathrooms, so the private bath is a plus for this tiny space. However, hers is located separate from her apartment, down the hall. And, you might be surprised to hear, it's extremely tiny.
Alaina admits she previously lived in a "luxury" apartment that cost over $3,000 per month, but she wanted to free up money to travel, which prompted her to downgrade.
Watch the whole tour here:
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Alaina says her tiny apartment was a "hot commodity" when she signed the lease, beating out tons of other prospective renters.
Commenters on the video, which has a staggering 24 million views, were more or less horrified at the conditions that New Yorkers were competing over:
"Firetrap . No exits , no windows with fresh air . Cooking with no air flow . Crazy this is even happening"
"I can't even breathe looking at this tiny apartment"
"'In a van, down by the river' has never sounded better."
"NYC should be ashamed and embarrassed to relegate people to live in this kind of space. Not only does it look uncomfortable / unhealty but It looks extremely dangerous. NYC should do better in providing affordable housing with decent square footage."
It's cool and scrappy that Alaina makes the pint-sized apartment work for her as she pursues her dream of living in New York City. We might find it claustrophobic, but the fact that multiple renters were fighting over this space really says a lot about the way our culture is moving.
Younger millennials and Gen Z are sick of chasing after the American Dream of the single-family home with a white picket fence and a golden retriever.
The City That Never Sleeps Giphy
It's hopelessly out of reach for many of them anyway due to skyrocketing housing prices and stagnant wages. So, they can work their fingers to the bone with multiple jobs and maybe afford a slightly better apartment, but still not be able to save enough for the future—or they could actually enjoy their life with the money they do have.
NBC News writes, "Several years out of Covid lockdowns, younger Americans’ outlays on things like travel, recreation and dining out have been outpacing their older peers’ even as the economy slows. As of last summer, the average Gen Zer or millennial was dropping over $400 a month on nonessentials, compared to about $250 for Gen Xers and less than $200 for baby boomers."
In another YouTube interview, Alaina admits to spending big money on her monthly gym membership: over $300 per month, to be exact. Commenters chastised her for having her priorities mixed up, but honestly, there's nothing backwards at all about wanting to relax at your gym's spa after a long day of work, or travel to the far ends of the world, versus spending all of your money on an OK-but-still-crappy apartment.
In an update in the YouTube video's caption, Simpson writes that Alaina chose not to renew her lease in the micro apartment after filming. But that doesn't mean she regrets her stay.
"It's an adventure," Alaina says. "People need a lot less than they think they need."
@racheleehiggins/TikTok
Want out of a relationship rut? The Three hour night might be the perfect solution.
Almost every long term relationship suffers from a rut eventually. That goes especially for married partners who become parents and have the added responsibility of raising kids. Maintaining a connection is hard enough in this busy, fast-paced world. Top it off with making sure kids are awake, dressed, entertained, well fed, oh yeah, and alive…and you best believe all you have energy for at the end of the day is sitting on the couch barely making it through one episode of your favorite show on Netflix.
And yet, we know how important it is to maintain a connection with our spouses. Many of us just don’t know how to make that happen while juggling a million other things. According to one mom, a “three-hour night” could be just the thing to tick off multiple boxes on the to-do list while rekindling romance at the same time. Talk about the ultimate marriage hack.
A couple that has lost their spark.via Canva/Photos
What is the 3-Hour Night marriage hack?
The three-hour night was something that Rachel Higgins and her husband began incorporating into their lives at the beginning of 2024. And so far, “it's been so fun and such...a game changer for how our evenings go,” she says in a clip posted to TikTok.
Before using the three-hour night, the evening would look a bit like this: their daughter would go to bed, they would lounge on the couch, scroll through social media, then fall asleep. Sound familiar?
But with a three-hour night, Higgins and her husband divvy up the time before bed into three sections, each for a different focus.In the first hour, starting around 7 p.m., is what Higgins calls “productive time,” during which the couple sees to any household chores that might need to be done.
“So, start with like a quick cleanup of the kitchen or just like things that accumulated throughout the day, and then we try to do something that either ... has been being put off or cleaning the bathroom or like organizing the pantry or hall closet or something like, super random like sharpening the knives. Anything that's productive for the household,” she explains.
@rachelleehiggins if you’re stuck in a rut with your evenings try this! i saw someone do something similar to this a while ago but can’t remember who! #marriage #1sttimeparents #newyearsgoals
Next, the second hour is geared towards re-establishing a physical or emotional connection in their marriage. The phones go away, and they focus only on enjoying one another.
“So, that could be things like showering together or ‘having fun’ together, playing a game together, or just like anything that's gonna get you guys talking and connecting or like debriefing from the day or just like talking about what you're doing and like the plans for tomorrow or like how work's going or whatever. So, anything that's gonna connect and strengthen and build your marriage,” Higgins says.
Lastly, the final hour of the night is dedicated to anything Higgins and her husband individually want to do, any sort of personal recharge activity. Since this is a judgment-free time, Higgins states that “If you just want to lie on the couch and scroll your phone and watch TikToks or whatever, like watch YouTube videos,” it’s totally acceptable.
A happy couple in bed.via Canva/Photos
Higgins’ novel approach definitely interested viewers, who chimed in with their own questions. One major concern was how the heck this could be done every night. But even Higgins admits that she and her husband don’t succeed at having a three-hour night every night—they usually try for about 3-4 times a week. And honestly, even once a week could still probably be beneficial in building intimacy.
"Such a good idea. Good for us empty nesters too! The phone scrolling is outta control!"one commenter wrote. "This is really cool. The housework is equal. The emotional connection is equal and the self care is equal. No room for resentment," another added. "We don’t have kids yet but I love this and want to do it because the nights slip away so fast!!" a commenter added.
Others wondered how to have a three-hour night when things randomly popped up in their schedule, like when kids won’t magically go to sleep promptly at 7pm. Higgins shares that in these cases, they tend to just shorten each phase. The point being: these can and probably should be customizable, even fun, rather than yet another rigid chore.
Plus, a three-hour night (or whatever your version of a three-hour night may be) is a great way to remind yourself just how high a priority your relationship has in your life, no matter what else is going on at the time. Odds are you'll probably find you do have more time for it than you previously thought.
This article originally appeared last year.
Canva
A jar of sugar. Bubblegum pop.
Hindsight is most definitely 20/20, but in the Sliding Doors of life, you can't help but wonder, what if? That question may have run through a few people’s minds back in the late 60s as the choice of just one tiny "Yes" over a "No" could have completely changed the course of their careers.
Don Kirshner was a music manager known as the Man with the Golden Ear. This meant he had a knack for finding hit songs and promising musicians. He just had a way of pairing tunes with the perfect artists.
The Monkees was a popular show in the 60s. Giphy
He was hired by producers of the hit show The Monkees, which centered around a made-for-TV band, to do what he did best. For example, having been one of the first to discover singer-songwriter Neil Diamond, he brought his penned song "I'm a Believer" to the Monkees, who made it a hit.
But Kirshner, as savvy as he was, also had a reputation for being a bit controlling and pushy. When he presented the song "Sugar, Sugar" (written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim) to the Monkees, Mike Nesmith used it as an opportunity to fight for more control of the band's music. In an interview with Music Radar, former Monkees drummer Micky Dolenz told Joe Bosso: "As you know, Don Kirshner presented that as the next Monkee tune. I was going to record it. That's when Mike Nesmith led the palace revolt and we fought for the right to have at least some sort of control over the music. I didn't go to the session—I’d gone to England, and that's when I met The Beatles."
Enter The Archies. As noted in Kirshner's 2011 obituary in The Washington Post, they were a completely fictional band, first spotted in the comic book Life with Archie." The cartoon series (The Archie Show) aired on CBS, and (Kirshner) supervised production of 'Sugar, Sugar,' which sold more than 10 million copies and was the No. 1 song of 1969."
Dolenz continues, "Don Kirshner got fired (from The Monkees), but then he recorded the song with The Archies. He said, 'That way, nobody can talk back to me.'" (He was laughing at the idea that a cartoon band couldn't make demands.)
The Monkees TV show was cancelled, and while the band continued to tour and many of their songs are still pop music favorites, they most definitely lost their momentum. Had they recorded the song, perhaps the show would have had another decade. Would anything have changed? NPR reports, “‘Sugar, Sugar’ became the most successful song on the Billboard charts in 1969. In addition, it was a No. 1 hit in Belgium, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Had the Prefab Four recorded it, it would have been precisely the sort of smash they needed to keep them commercially relevant."
Micky Dolenz did wind up recording a super cool, jazzy version of the song.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
This would be far from the last time a manufactured band would have a hit song. Rolling Stone compiled a "Top 50" list for a piece called "Fake Bands, Real Songs: The 50 Best Tunes by Made-Up Musicians." Ironically, The Archies’ "Sugar, Sugar" makes the list at number 18—but the Monkees’ "Daydream Believer" does not. They write, "We also had a long debate about what to do with the Monkees, before it was decided that at a certain point, they Pinocchio’ed their way into being a real band, and thus didn’t qualify. (Otherwise, ‘Daydream Believer’ would have been very highly ranked.)"
Number one on their list? "That Thing You Do" by the fake band The Oneders. "What else could the number-one song on this list be other than the irresistible power-pop tune by a band that first called itself the Oneders? Tom Hanks’ directorial debut about an early-Sixties group that has one big hit before disbanding would not work at all if the title song was not wholly convincing. But the late Adam Schlesinger proved his bona fides as the unquestioned master of the fake-pop-song form with the tight harmonies and catchy riffs he wrote for these one-hit wonders."
-The fictional band The Oneders perform "That Thing You Do." www.youtube.com, 20th Century Fox
How could Mouse Heaven go so terribly wrong?
In 1968 John Calhoun, a scientist and animal behavioralist, decided to create a "utopia" for mice. It would have unlimited food and water, with beautiful nesting spaces and plenty of materials for the mice to make cozy homes with. Sweet experiment! the mice were probably thinking. Much better than the Maybelline trials we're used to.
However, there was a catch, of course. There was one thing the utopia would be lacking, and that would be physical space. As the mouse population grew, overcrowding would become an issue, and Calhoun wanted to study the problems this would potentially cause. That sound you hear is the collective sigh of the disappointed mice who were stoked about the 24/7 all-you-can-eat buffet.
The experiment, dubbed Universe 25, began when Calhoun introduced four mouse "couples" into the utopian complex. A year or so later, it was overrun and the conditions had turned hellish, even though the mice had not run out of food or water.
"The conditions had turned WHAT?" Giphy
Initially, for just the eight original mice, the square box Calhoun built included 256 nesting boxes (or apartments) stacked on top of one another. Water bottles and food dispensers were located all along the nesting spots, and mice could travel throughout the complex at will via mesh tunnels. The starter mice were also screened for diseases and the population was obviously protected from predators. The climate was controlled and comfortable. Conditions were perfect.
The first mouse pups showed up a little over three months later, with the population of the colony doubling every 55 days. Nineteen months later, there were 2,200 mice living inside the box. With such perfect surroundings, the infant mortality rate was practically zero, leading to the rapid rise in numbers.
John Calhoun poses with his rodents inside the mouse utopia. Yoichi R Okamoto, Public Domain
By month 19, this rodent utopia had become an overcrowded hellscape. Calhoun noticed three alarming trends, in particular.
In short, everything was devolving into chaos and the very society of the mice began to collapse at a rapid rate.
The "Beautiful Ones" and the "Dropouts": Mice have a complex social hierarchy ruled by dominant alpha males. Sam Kean of Science History Institute Museum & Library notes that, in the wild, non-dominant males (the ones who lose macho showdowns) can skip town and start over somewhere else. But in the close quarters of Calhoun's experiment, with nowhere to hide, they were forced to hang around and viciously battle with each other over scraps. Eventually, non-dominant male mice, which Calhoun called the "Beautiful Ones," withdrew from society completely and only ate, slept, and groomed themselves.
Though resources were unlimited, certain aggressive males hoarded them anyway: The alpha males ruled over everything in the once-utopian mouse society. They kept harems of females in the apartments to mate with and fought fiercely to defend their territory. But new waves of hungry young male mice kept coming and coming, and eventually even the most dominant alphas abandoned their posts. This led to more attacks on nursing females, which in turn led to more mothers kicking their pups out of the nest early.
Birth rate declined dramatically: With the non-dominant males giving up completely and focusing on #SelfCare, dominant males too exhausted from endless battles, and females sick and tired of it all (many became asexual hermits by the end), stopped mating and giving birth entirely. Once this happened, the society was doomed. Even with plenty of food still available, cannibalism was rampant.
Calhoun was not shy about drawing parallels between his research and humanity. "I shall largely speak of mice, but my thoughts are on man, on healing, on life and its evolution," he once wrote.
Alpha male mice, anyone? Photo by Kanashi on Unsplash
There are aspects of his wild experiment that certainly sound familiar.
We live in a world with plenty of resources for everyone, but a few select people hoard more than their fair share. When you think of the rodent "apartments," it's hard not to picture densely packed urban environments where people are stacked on top of each other at every turn. Maybe on some level some of us can relate to the “Beautiful Ones” and their urge to not participate in all the ugliness and just sequester and groom themselves. You can make an argument that when the mice stopped having to worry about food and shelter, it removed the element of challenge from their lives and left them lost. Similarly, many of us are lucky enough to not have to wonder where our next meal comes from, and maybe that has something to do with our never-ending search for meaning. Some even go so far as to link more people choosing to delay having children, or not have children at all, with the collapsing society of the mice.
But Calhoun's work has also been heavily scrutinized, with some claiming it's based on shaky science. And in the end, there’s the small matter that humans are not mice. We are infinitely more complicated, and so much better suited to adapting to our environments. Kean writes, "Ultimately Calhoun’s work functions like a Rorschach blot—people see what they want to see."
It's fascinating and thought-provoking nonetheless. Watch this breakdown of the experiment shared by the National Library of Medicine in the early 1970s.
- YouTube youtu.be
This article originally appeared in April. It has been updated.