I’m watching Woody Allen’s Manhattan from a hunkered down perch on my mother’s sofa, out in Connecticut, miles from New York City. The town I love has exhausted me, first with its bedbugs, then the apartment search. All day long I’ve been funky, mulling over my impending lease signing, the audacity of our realtor, the price of my realtor, and most of all, the magnitude of Manhattan’s monthly rent. Last week, I looked at apartment after apartment, from the Upper East Side to Alphabet city, none of which fit my price limitations in anything but a disappointing way. 2, 600 dollars a month for this!? A dirty matchbox, blocks and blocks from public transportation, 20 flights up and full of roaches? What is more, they might not accept me! I roll my eyes as my agent disapprovingly runs her eyes over my mother’s bank statement…if this is par for the course, what is to become of my Manhattan? If we fast-forward twenty years into the future, will the great cities of the world be owned only by the rich and famous? What will New York be like without its crazy kids, its starving artists, its students, its starlets?

Well, I guess there's always Brooklyn...