The Illuminated Donkey

I’m working on a piece about the complicated relationship between New Jersey and New York (here’s a quick teaser: Frank Sinatra is invoked!), but in the meantime I thought I’d post the strange little item that started me thinking about the subject.

My aforementioned sweetie Rachel is currently looking into renting a room or an apartment, and as part of that search is using the same online roommate service that helped me find my current, quite excellent, apartment. In the course of her search she found the following, which definitely has to rank up there on a list of most misleading, or inadvertently hilarious, or misguided apartment listings ever:

Residence Location: Manhattan, NY US
Region of city: Central
Cross streets: 4oth & 9th
Additional Info: This is West New York and in NJ after crossing the tunnel it is 20-25 mins to Manhattan and with buses from door step at all times. Awesome place with amazing view in minutes drive. Its a very clean, safe and within mins you can practically see the whole manhattan view with the river.

Now, for those of you who might be unfamiliar with the Manhattan layout, 40th Street and 9th Avenue is the location of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, meaning that this mope is trying to pass off the bus station you will need to use to get into the city as the apartment’s location (and trust me, you wouldn't want to live at 40th and 9th).

Not to mention the amazing Manhattan skyline views that you’ll need to drive someplace else to actually see. Hell, I’m currently overlooking the Pulaski Skyway and an endless expanse of refineries, but if I hop in my car and drive for a while my apartment will have amazing views, too! Sheesh. I haven’t even gotten to the fact that he’s “offering a living room which is bigger than the bedroom. It has a table in it. If you want to take the bedroom then we could talk about it (rent more).” Hmmm…sleeping under a table in the living room of an apartment that’s for all practical purposes both in Manhattan and has a great skyline view? Sign me up!