Request for specialist information

[EmilyMiller]

So - I’m thinking of writing a story, featuring one of my newer characters, Eden “the exhibitionist” Baker, in an NYC coop. Title: The Garden of Eden. I know, cheesy, right?

Sort of Rear Window crossed with [insert modern porn franchise here].

And it struck me that my knowledge of such a locale is solely Only Murders in the Building (I’m not plagiarizing them honest, well maybe just slightly).

Anyone here who knows more about the scenario, please feel free to reach out. Here or via PM. The ghost of John Lennon is welcome.

Thanks

Em

PS - just info - no sexting - just to be clear

PPS - not that this may be the most alluring of things to add, but full credit will be included in any resulting work.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I'd like to help, but I'd have to be a stand-in for Lennon's ghost, I guess, as I left the City some ten years before his assassination and have no familiarity with the current co-op scene.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I'd like to help, but I'd have to be a stand-in for Lennon's ghost, I guess, as I left the City some ten years before his assassination and have no familiarity with the current co-op scene.

Thanks for replying .

Em

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Can you say more about what kind of co-op you're looking for? How many units, how expensive, whether subletting is allowed?

I haven't seen any of the shows you mention, but I'll guess that if you want to set your story in a co-op and have that matter, you're looking for a small co-op where everyone's involved in the governance or a very expensive co-op where the residents have the power to make their wishes known.

I spent a few years in a big, cheap, outer-borough co-op, which felt just like any other kind of apartment building except you had to pass a perfunctory board interview before they let you sign the lease. Feel free to message me if you'd like to discuss that experience in more detail, though.

 

[onehitwanda]

PS - just info - no sexting - just to be clear

Aww.

 

[AchtungNight]

I once featured the ghost of John Lennon in my work. Check Counseling 2. Regarding what you are talking about, the majority of my stories take place in a near-utopian parallel universe version of our world connected to other worlds and dimensions via methods similar to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere stories. A place an MMC based on me can comfortably have brief trysts with parallel universe versions of celebrities such as Emily Blunt, Cat Osterman, & Keira Knightley while exercising godlike abilities to ship characters such as Kratos & Freya along with the heroes and deities of Pathfinder and other video games and comics. Perhaps something similar should be in play for you?

 

[Mastered_again]

Sent you a feedback message

 

[EmilyMiller]

Aww.

You could always try I suppose .

Em

 

[EmilyMiller]

Can you say more about what kind of co-op you're looking for? How many units, how expensive, whether subletting is allowed?

I haven't seen any of the shows you mention, but I'll guess that if you want to set your story in a co-op and have that matter, you're looking for a small co-op where everyone's involved in the governance or a very expensive co-op where the residents have the power to make their wishes known.

I spent a few years in a big, cheap, outer-borough co-op, which felt just like any other kind of apartment building except you had to pass a perfunctory board interview before they let you sign the lease. Feel free to message me if you'd like to discuss that experience in more detail, though.

The Arconia from Only Murders in the Building. Which is an expensive one - Sting lives in the penthouse in season 1, Amy Schumer in season 2, (the actual people in both cases), and a movie star played by Paul Rudd lives there in season 3.

Em

 

[Bamagan]

The Arconia from Only Murders in the Building. Which is an expensive one - Sting lives in the penthouse in season 1, Amy Schumer in season 2, (the actual people in both cases), and a movie star played by Paul Rudd lives there in season 3.

Em

It's funny that they'd get Paul Rudd to play a movie star, since I've seen a lot of movies where he's playing Paul Rudd but under an alias.

 

[AchtungNight]

The Arconia from Only Murders in the Building. Which is an expensive one - Sting lives in the penthouse in season 1, Amy Schumer in season 2, (the actual people in both cases), and a movie star played by Paul Rudd lives there in season 3.

Em

I need to watch this show.

 

[gunhilltrain]

So - I’m thinking of writing a story, featuring one of my newer characters, Eden “the exhibitionist” Baker, in an NYC coop. Title: The Garden of Eden. I know, cheesy, right?

Sort of Rear Window crossed with [insert modern porn franchise here].

And it struck me that my knowledge of such a locale is solely Only Murders in the Building (I’m not plagiarizing them honest, well maybe just slightly).

Anyone here who knows more about the scenario, please feel free to reach out. Here or via PM. The ghost of John Lennon is welcome.

Thanks

Em

PS - just info - no sexting - just to be clear

PPS - not that this may be the most alluring of things to add, but full credit will be included in any resulting work.

I assume you are trying to figure out the architecture and layout of the setting. It's been a while since I've seen Rear Window, but I have found some photos of the set Hitchcock built. It's supposed to be in Greenwich Village, and the set was based on some real buildings on Christopher Street. However, the are a lot of old neighborhoods in Manhattan (and probably Brooklyn too) that look like that.

The key thing to keep in mind is that Jimmy Stewart is looking out the back of his building at events visible in the back of another building across a courtyard. The fronts of the buildings face different, parallel streets. Whether the apartments are co-ops, condos, or rentals is not important. The main thing is that the older parts city were laid out on a grid with buildings lining parallel streets, with some kind of space - a courtyard - in back separating them. These structures can be rowhouses or larger (about six-story) apartment houses. Usually there will be a fence dividing the properties so one would have to go around the block to get to the other building. (I think that does happen in Rear Window at the end?)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.rog...-window-1954/EB20000220REVIEWS082200301AR.jpg

 

[gunhilltrain]

If I may continue this city planning lecture. In the Rear Window photo, it's possible to see over the top of the smaller building to the other buildings on the far side of that street. There is even a lamppost visible on the left.

It's harder to pull of this scenario with more modern (mid-20th Century onwards?) buildings because the buildings are much larger and often fill up an entire block front. There may be cases where two tall buildings face each other back-to-back. However, the interesting thing about Rear Window is how close the windows are and yet how relatively inaccessible they are to each other.

You might as well pick a neighborhood for this. The Grammercy Park neighborhood on the East Side is one such place (not far from Greenwich Village). Let me know if you need more info about this topic.

https://pixels.com/featured/james-s...-window-1954--album.html?product=canvas-print

https://dangerousminds.net/content/...uploads/images/03rrjutchreads_465_591_int.jpg

 

[gunhilltrain]

Emily: Here's some interesting stuff. This should give you a lot of ideas to work with.

https://www.intjournal.com/thinkpieces/project-rear-window-1954

 

[EmilyMiller]

Emily: Here's some interesting stuff. This should give you a lot of ideas to work with.

https://www.intjournal.com/thinkpieces/project-rear-window-1954

Thank you for the help, really appreciate it .

Em

 

[gunhilltrain]

Thank you for the help, really appreciate it .

Em

You're welcome. Sounds like a good concept. Now you need someone to look at Eden and figure out their reaction to her. Is that person merely a voyeur and simply likes to watch? Or is there some other reason holding them back from going over there?

 

[joy_of_cooking]

The Arconia from Only Murders in the Building. Which is an expensive one - Sting lives in the penthouse in season 1, Amy Schumer in season 2, (the actual people in both cases), and a movie star played by Paul Rudd lives there in season 3.

Em

Ah, not my kind of co-op, sorry. Sounds like gunhilltrain has lots for you, though. Good luck, and I look forward to reading the story.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Ah, not my kind of co-op, sorry. Sounds like gunhilltrain has lots for you, though. Good luck, and I look forward to reading the story.

Just mentioning this, I have ancestors on my dad's side in New York going back to about 1901 (same as Vito Corleone!) and on my mom's side to about 1850 or so (around the time of the Irish potato famine and the 1848 political upheaval in Germany - I'm taking a guess that those were the causes of immigration.) So I have some background here.

https://thinkimmigration.org/blog/2018/11/19/ellis-island-a-window-to-our-past-and-future/

 

[PandemicReader8]

And it struck me that my knowledge of such a locale is solely Only Murders in the Building (I’m not plagiarizing them honest, well maybe just slightly).

In porn/erotica it's never plagiarism, it's pastiche and homage.

 

[EmilyMiller]

In porn/erotica it's never plagiarism, it's pastiche and homage.

My FMC isn’t called Mabel .

Em

 

[MillieDynamite]

Manhatten Island has one, and only one, alley. So it can't be where it is something seen out the back window of one apartment into the back window of the one across the alley. Find a neighborhood. Then familiarize yourself with the surrounding area, parks, the things that have happened there, and try to find out a little about that part of NYC. Is the house a brownstone? How many floors? Is it an apartment? Are you writing in the here and now?

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Does it need to be New York? In LA there are some newer neighborhoods with side-by-side apartment/condo buildings where you can look out a window from your unit into a unit in the building next door. There's no alley between them--they're both just set 5' back from the property line.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Manhatten Island has one, and only one, alley. So it can't be where it is something seen out the back window of one apartment into the back window of the one across the alley. Find a neighborhood. Then familiarize yourself with the surrounding area, parks, the things that have happened there, and try to find out a little about that part of NYC. Is the house a brownstone? How many floors? Is it an apartment? Are you writing in the here and now?

Manhattan may have only one alley, but it has many courtyards - spaces between the backs of buildings on adjacent parallel streets. Sometimes these are paved with concrete, sometimes they have grassed surfaces. Usually there is a fence of same kind marking the property lines. The spaces in Brooklyn are usually wider, as in the first photo which is in Park Slope but is much like the back of my former apartment in Sunset Park.

https://amazingarchitecture.com/sto...house-park-slope-palette-architecture-01.jpeg

A lot of older cities have such arrangements, such as Hoboken, Jersey City, and Philadephia. This photo is in Washington, DC.

https://cdn.onekindesign.com/wp-con...DC-Teass-Warren-Architects-10-1-Kindesign.jpg

So Emily has almost innumerable locations where she could set this - places where it is possible to see into the windows of buildings in back - especially with binoculars! The Rear Window set, based on a real courtyard, has both a rowhouse/brownstone (which are usually three stories high) and a couple of apartment houses (which are usually five or six floors for the standard older city configuration). It could definitely be set in the present, but it could any time in the last century of more. (My Brooklyn rowhouse had been built in 1902.)

 

[EmilyMiller]

Does it need to be New York? In LA there are some newer neighborhoods with side-by-side apartment/condo buildings where you can look out a window from your unit into a unit in the building next door. There's no alley between them--they're both just set 5' back from the property line.

No it doesn’t. I might not even specify the city.

Em

 

[EmilyMiller]

Manhattan may have only one alley, but it has many courtyards - spaces between the backs of buildings on adjacent parallel streets. Sometimes these are paved with concrete, sometimes they have grassed surfaces. Usually there is a fence of same kind marking the property lines. The spaces in Brooklyn are usually wider, as in the first photo which is in Park Slope but is much like the back of my former apartment in Sunset Park.

https://amazingarchitecture.com/sto...house-park-slope-palette-architecture-01.jpeg

A lot of older cities have such arrangements, such as Hoboken, Jersey City, and Philadephia. This photo is in Washington, DC.

https://cdn.onekindesign.com/wp-con...DC-Teass-Warren-Architects-10-1-Kindesign.jpg

So Emily has almost innumerable locations where she could set this - places where it is possible to see into the windows of buildings in back - especially with binoculars! The Rear Window set, based on a real courtyard, has both a rowhouse/brownstone (which are usually three stories high) and a couple of apartment houses (which are usually five or six floors for the standard older city configuration). It could definitely be set in the present, but it could any time in the last century of more. (My Brooklyn rowhouse had been built in 1902.)

Given the title - The Garden of Eden - I was thinking of a central courtyard with grass sections and maybe a fountain in the middle.

Em