“It was a very lax process.”
That is not something you usually hear in stories about finding the perfect apartment. But for Amanda Paulsen and her partner, Peter Zusman, it’s what happened — one viewing with a brief conversation, and the next day everything was settled.
“At first, it felt like it was too good to be true,” Ms. Paulsen said. “We were calling it our ‘Covid deal,’ but then we discovered the guy before the pandemic had the same rent.”
They knew there had to be something else going on when they signed the lease to pay $3,200 a month for a sunny, 1,000-square-foot loft on Avenue C in the East Village, complete with a backyard and a basement. “When we first saw it, we were trying to conceal our reactions, trying to poker-face it,” Mr. Zusman said.
They were wearing masks, which helped, but it was still hard because the deal just kept getting better. “First it was, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s a basement,’” Ms. Paulsen said. “Then it was, ‘Oh, by the way, utilities are included’ — she just kept adding these nuggets of information.”
McDermott & McGough, the performance artist duo presented as two dandies who had concluded that World War I ruined the world by ushering in modernity, and therefore insisted on living as though it were the end of the 19th century.
When Mr. Borges bought the building from the men in the 1990s, the only electricity was a legally required light bulb in the hallway; there were no outlets. Mr. McDermott and Mr. McGough, who were fixtures in the 1980s art scene, used an icebox as a refrigerator and the fireplace for heat. Mr. McGough wrote a memoir about his life in the building during those years, “I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going.”
Fortunately for Ms. Paulsen and Mr. Zusman, traces of that vintage New York survive.