They've Got it!

Phone call from The Great PD this morning, on his way with Isabella to the airport in Stiletto City, to say that he had just heard from The Great 5H, on the Long Island RR on her way to the airport in The Big Shmapple, both of them planning to meet up in Chicago this afternoon. "We've got it," she said and then the phone call was obliterated by static.

This appears to mean that the landlord has accepted their humble application to pay gobs of rent for a nice apartment in Brooklyn for approximately one year. Although Plotnik has not been able to talk with poor FiveHead yet, who is certain to have had a roller-coaster week trying to make sense of the looniness that is the Big Shmapple Apartment Rental world (however, BZWZ reports she and 5Head did manage to get in some shoe shopping), it sounds like she has found them a terrific place with several bonuses.

1) The Great BZWZ's old friend Simoney lives right across the street! This means Plottie and Duck AND BZ can descend on Brooklyn at the same time and BZ can stay with Mo-knee right across the street. Very nice.

2) Terrific subway connections for all subway lines. In the Shmapple, it appears that closeness to many subways is the prime consideration when looking for a place to live.

3) A yard for Mr. Mischief and a ten minute walk to Prospect Park, which is Brooklyn's large urban green space a la Central Park in Manhattan.

4) Yoga and coffee in the next block.

5) Extra bonus: 5H just got hired for a job during their last week in Stiletto City, which will pay enough to offset some of the extra rent they will pay to have three bedrooms, two floors, a yard and a safe neighborhood with yoga and coffee.



Brooklyn! When Plottie drove a cab in the Shmapple the cab dispatchers always warned drivers to never go to Brooklyn. It was illegal not to take someone wherever they wanted to go, but drivers in Manhattan then, and perhaps still now, consistently kept their doors locked, and if a passenger said he wanted to go to Brooklyn, the driver would speed away, calling back "I don't go to Brooklyn." The reason was he could pick up ten fares in Manhattan in the same time it took to drive to Brooklyn.

This led to a great old taxi joke. A man hails a cab at Rockefeller Center and tells the driver to take him to London. The cabbie says: "OK, but it'll cost you $100,000." The man forks over $100,000 in cash, and the cabbie drives to the airport, pays for the cab to be put aboard an airplane and when they land in London, the cabbie and the passenger, still in the back seat of the cab, drive off the plane and over to the man's address in Trafalgar Square.

The passenger gets out of the cab and thanks the driver, but before the driver can speed away, another man runs up to the cab and cries out! "Fantastic! An American taxicab! What excellent luck! Please, my good man, take me to Brooklyn."

"I don't go to Brooklyn," says the cabbie.