New Digs?

The time has finally come for Katherine and I to decide what to do about our lease. To extend or not to extend? We're supposed to notify our landlord about our decision twenty-eight days before the contract expires. That would mean today.

Leading up to this moment––when we were not dilly-dallying in London––Katherine and I have been researching other potential flats in the city. We have learned a couple of lessons: the good apartments are listed for about 3.7 seconds until someone snatches them up; rent prices, inexplicably, seem to have gone up since we arrived two months ago; and finding a landlord willing to do short (three-month) leases is about as easy as finding a warm sandy beach in Ulster. We did find an apartment in Shandon, a neighborhood in the North Side, that was reasonably priced and has no minimum lease, so yesterday we went and had a look.

Let me tell you, it's not an easy sell when you find this about a block from the apartment:


Burnt-out cars aside, this place wasn't for us. It's in an old house, has old paint and old windows, and the only source of heat are portable electric-oil heaters. We tried all of that in Williamsburg and, frankly, it sucked.

Shandon also has a reputation, at least among the Irish. It's an "ethnic" neighborhood, and the Irish folks I have talked to are convinced it is the bastion of Cork crime. Keep in mind that Cork's definition of a "crime problem" is a little different than an American definition. According to an article I found, 2007 saw a record high in Irish violent crime. How many? Seventy murders in the entire country. Since that high- (or low-)water mark, violent crime has dropped off by two-thirds. In short, by an American definition violent crime is nearly non-existent in the Republic of Ireland.

Regardless of these facts, no matter how safe a country is many of the residents are going to be convinced that crime is a problem. And so it is with Ireland. What is striking about the murder statistics is that a disproportionate number of the victims and murderers are not Irish: a "vast majority [are] natives of Russian or former Russian states." The same is true of the population as a whole of Shandon and other "ethnic" enclaves in Cork and in Ireland overall.

In the minds of the Irish––even though they would deny it––large numbers of Eastern Europeans equals crime. It's similar to the common (white) American perception of places that are majority African-American or Hispanic. The current population distribution of Cork even follows what we would call "white flight" in the States. The City Centre and the North Side is where you find most of the Eastern Europeans; most of the tenants in our building (including us) are not Irish. And most of the middle-class Irish people we know live in the South Side suburbs, where you find recently built housing developments and shopping centers.

But since everyone we're talking about is white, we'll have to call it Gaelic Flight.

Putting such analysis behind us, the good news is I talked to our current landlord, and he has agreed to buy new furniture for our current place. New mattress, couch, and chairs. This development has it looking like we will be staying put.

As for work, I'm still on the prowl. There is a small store that sells baby clothes and toys that is looking for part-time help next door to Katherine's golf shop, and Katherine even knows the manager. Sounds promising but, as you could probably predict, the owner prefers to hire women. 'Tis a shame, because a young handsome male employee would probably help sales at such a store.