Category: home

apartment, business, entrepreneurship, Examiner, home, New York City, rent, technology

NY Business Strategies Examiner – Interview with Lee Lin, co-founder of RentHop

Christa Avampato

It’s moving time again! I’ve been thinking a lot about the moving process and the hunt for apartment lately. I’ll move into my new digs next month and the movers arrive this Thursday. I can be a stressful undertaking, especially Around August 1st when the rush of students and new college graduates is hard to miss!

Looking for a little sanity in your apartment search? Enter RentHop – an innovative new service that allows would-be renters to browse free, no -fee listings in the New York City area. I had the opportunity to speak with Lee Lin, co-founder of RentHop.

For the full story, click here.

home, memory, moving

My Year of Hopefulness – The doors we close

Christa Avampato

Today I started packing up my apartment. I’m moving blocks down the street to a large, renovated apartment for less than I pay now. Go figure – one of the positive side effects of the recession. Rents are dropping in New York City like never before.

Packing up for a move is a curious activity. It begs the question, “what things do I really want to keep.” I packed up a few big bags this morning and hauled them off to the Salvation Army. Even though I do my best to combat clutter of any kind, things still accumulate. For me it’s mostly papers, magazines, and materials that relate to my writing that clutters up my apartment the most.

As many times as I’ve moved, I still get a little sentimental about leaving an apartment. Though my new space is much better than the apartment I currently live in, this apartment in particular has really meant something to me. I started my post-business school life here. I went through a job search, found my voice as a writer, and began my path to entrepreneurship right from this couch I’m sitting on. I watched President Obama’s acceptance speech and his inauguration here. I mended a broken heart and fell in love with New York again inside this tiny studio. The stock market crashed and the economy was driven to the brink as I watched CNN. Friends and family came to visit. My little niece, Lorelei, took her very first Manhattan step over the threshold of this apartment. It kept me safe, sane, and calm in the midst of a very busy city.

Any home is a lot more than just four walls and a roof. It’s a place where memories are built. Where great moments, big and small, take place. Everything in our lives stems from where we lay our heads at night so it’s only natural that there would be a little emotion in saying good-bye. After all, when we move, we are passing through a door that will close behind us for good. It’s a place to which we will never return and the only choice is to move forward.

So while I’m looking forward to being totally packed up and moved into my new four walls, I want to make sure I take the time to look back, just for a moment, and count the blessings that my current four walls housed. As Stephen Sondheim said, “This is where I began, being what I can.”

death, environment, family, home, love, nature

My Year of Hopefulness – Love is all around us

Christa Avampato

Yesterday my friend, Ken, called me with an incredible story that’s too good to keep to myself. Last Fall he lost his mom to a terminal respiratory disease that she had managed for a number of years. Ken was very close to his mom and he’s a rough go of it for the past 6 months. One of his friends gave him a gift certificate to a nearby greenhouse and nursery so he could buy a tree in honor of his mom to plant in his yard.

When Ken was a teenager, Evita had just opened on Broadway and the song “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” was the mot popular song around. Ken’s mom used to crack herself up by changing up the words to “Don’t cry for me Sargent Tina…” She’d sing that all the time, making everyone around her laugh.

Ken was at the nursery yesterday with a friend, choosing a tree to honor his mom. They were specifically looking for a crabapple tree because of their beautiful flowers and found one they really liked. Variety: the Sargent Tina Crabapple. Maybe a coincidence…

Ken and his friend, Linda, get back to Ken’s house and plant the tree in the yard. They place the last shovelful of dirt around the tree and head back inside the house. Just as they get into the house, the song Hold Me Kiss Me Thrill Me was on the radio. That song was the only song Ken’s mother requested for her memorial service when she and Ken were choosing the music while his mom was in hospice. Coincidence, I think not…

Losing people is hard, though experiences like Ken’s remind me that we don’t ever lose the ones we love. They just cross over, and they’ll be there when we cross over, too. We’ll be with them again, and while it’s hard to accept that they don’t exist in the form in which we knew them and loved them, their love is still very much a part of our lives, always. Their love is truly all around us.

The photo above depicts the blossoms of a Sargent Tina Crabapple and is from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2072/3534629428_bef4ba6e37.jpg?v=0.

health, healthcare, home, movie, news, newspapers, social change, television

My Year of Hopefulness – Mr. Ayers and Mr. Lopez

Christa Avampato

I’ve been developing a habit of reading and listening to inspirational stories. I need to keep my courage and strength up in these tough times. We all do. On Sunday, I watched 60 Minutes because President Obama was speaking. I planned to shut off the TV and go through some of my weekly reading that had piled up as soon as President Obama’s interview was complete. Instead, I spent the remainder of the hour glued to the TV, getting to know Mr. Ayers and Mr. Lopez. 


Meet Mr. Lopez, a columnist for the LA Times. A good guy whom you imagine might be your neighbor, a fellow parent at your child’s school, if you’re lucky he’d be your boss or colleague. Now meet Mr. Ayers, a homeless man in LA. He suffers from the disease of paranoid schizophrenia. And he is a brilliantly gifted musician. Cello, violin, and trumpet. Gift enough to be admitted to Julliard. Gifted enough still to keep up with the LA Philharmonic whose members now rehearse with and provide lessons to him when he visits them at the concert hall. 

After his first year at Julliard, Mr. Ayers went home and began showing signs of his illness which was rearing its ugly head inside his wonderfully gifted mind. As a last ditch desperation move, Mr. Ayers followed the advice of psychiatrists and subjected her son to electric shock treatments. It is a barbaric treatment that was at one time, not all that long ago, accepted as a viable tool to manage the disease. Instead, it sent Mr. Ayers into a downward spiral from which he has never returned. 

Mr. Lopez and Mr. Ayers met three years ago. Mr. Ayers was playing his cello in a park as Mr. Lopez roamed the streets trying to come up with a story for his looming deadline. What struck Mr. Lopez in addition to Mr. Ayers’s virtuosity, was that he wasn’t playing in the park for money. He was just playing his cello for himself. Mr. Lopez would learn that Mr. Ayers played to forget, to chase away the frightening effects of his schizophrenia. He needed to, wanted to drown out his deepest, darkest concerns. Thus began a 3 year friendship that continues and flourishes so much that it caught the attention of Universal Pictures and has been turned into a movie, The Soloist, featuring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. The movie will open in theatres on April 24, 2009.  

My father was a clinical psychologist so I know a bit about diseases like paranoid schizophrenia. I can tell you that it is a heartbreaking disease to see and experience up close, and it is even harder to see the strain the disease places on families and loved ones of the person who has the disease. To hear the story of Mr. Ayers, to hear his incredible musical gifts mixed with his equally incredible demons, we have to believe that in all people, regardless of circumstances, there is good and not-so-good. 

It was a reminder to me that too often we cast aside the mentally ill in this country as if they have nothing to offer society. They are hidden away, forgotten, ignored. Their basic needs like healthcare and shelter too often go unfulfilled. In our society, they have very few vehicles to raise their voice, to come together, to stand up, and to be counted. Let’s hope that The Soloist is not just another feel good story at the box office but that it actually raises awareness that inspires action. On the movie’s website, there are links to help you get involved in the efforts to end homelessness and help those with mental illnesses.   

To read the 5-part series written by Mr. Lopez about Mr. Ayers, click here.

The above photo depicts Mr. Nathaniel Ayers playing the violin. I found the image at: https://christaavampato.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/1865563850_9f4c68c464.jpg?w=300
family, friendship, home, peace, visitors

The Irony of Company

Christa Avampato

I love company – so much so that I sometimes I think I am running a small hotel in my studio apartment. My sister, brother-in-law, and baby niece just left after a four-day stay with me. I loved showing them around, taking photos of them in places familiar to me but new to them, and seeing NYC through their fresh and appreciative eyes.


The irony is that I have worked hard to create a very peaceful life. Odd that we should have to work at peace, but I must admit that it is a daily process rather than a destination. And sometimes I wonder if my desire for peace is causing me to create a world where change is something I resist. 

This is strange ground for me — I am used to actively seeking and embracing change. Now it seems the challenge for me is how to have my peace and maintain it too, while also staying flexible and open to the world and the opportunities it presents. 
family, friendship, home, love, New York, relationships

A Year in the Making

Christa Avampato

I walked around all day yesterday trying to figure out what was so special about  June 11th. And finally, in Columbus Circle, it hit me – I moved back to NYC exactly one year ago. I drove up to NYC with my car full of worldly possessions – very little in fact since I had sold nearly everything I owned before leaving school. I had a relatively clean slate, save for my friends and family. It felt freeing to completely release the life I had known in Virginia just 24 hours earlier, to return to a place that felt like home and yet had so many new experiences to offer. 


One year later I am gainfully employed, spending time with my friends, many of whom have known me for a number of years during different phases of my life, writing every day, and living in my favorite neighborhood in New York. My family is an hour and a half away – an easy train ride. I have a new niece. There’s a rhythm to my days, and to my life. I kind of feel like June 11th is my adopted birthday – it’s the day I became more of who I am. On June 11th, I felt like I became an artist, a writer, again.


My first year back in NYC isn’t what I expected. It’s filled with many people whom I didn’t know when I arrived, and those who I saw only a few times a year for many years. Now I take my mom to brunch in the city, I go to dinner with Lisa and Dan and Steve and Brooke and Rob. Friends like Amy and Trevin and Anne and Alex and Kelly come to visit. I go to see Ken during a free weekend. And many friends have moved back after being away for so long, just like me. Somehow, by magic I think, a life came together for me that I never even knew was here. And all the while, I think it was waiting for me to get back home.


In this next year back in NY, I’m working to get my writing out to the world a bit more and I’m trying to find my professional niche. I’m working on meeting Mr. Wonderful, and I’m getting back into shape with my yoga, running, and weight training. (I’ve fallen off the wagon in both regards lately.) I’m taking a comedy writing class to improve my writing as much as to increase the amount of laughter in my life. And I’m recommitting to make sure that I honor my time as my most valuable asset. 


It feels good to be home.   

creativity, finance, gifts, hand-made, holiday, home, homeade

Madonna had it right

Christa Avampato

How many times have we heard that giving of ourselves is much more in the holiday spirit than stopping off at a retailer to participate in the never-ending American consumerism. Great sentiment though what’s a company based on selling “stuff” supposed to do with it?

Enter the HP Activity Center.
http://expressioncenter.wetpaint.com/page/Holiday+Gifts+in+Under+One+Hour
By creating the WetPaint Wiki (http://www.wetpaint.com/), HP provides easy templates and instructions to create unique items from ornaments to cookbooks to toys to calendars to gift wrap. This is the Make It Yourself trend to the extreme and allows all of us to tap our inner artist. Additionally, you can share your creations and creativity tips with the WetPaint community, allowing you to not only make your own wares but show them off as well.

“Express yourself” never had more meaning…

home, New York

Speaking of Home

Christa Avampato

“When I speak of home, I speak of the place where — in default of a better — those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy’s tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding.” ~Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

I was thinking about this quote over the weekend when my friend, Trevin, and I were at our favorite cheapie lunch spot – the cafe at the Edison Hotel. Trevin and I moved to the city (Trevin for the first time, me for the third time) around the same time and I have no doubt in about 50 years we will become two of those crusty old folks that you hear in the streets of New York saying things like “I remember back when I first moved here….” We will be relics of a time gone by after living out our lives in this fabulous city of ours with tall tales to tell anyone who may be interested in listening.

After wolfing down cheeseburgers and fries, we went over to the Gershwin Theatre for the laying of the wreath at Noël Coward’s statue inside the theatre hall of fame. Trevin was invited as he is a member of the Noël Coward Society – http://www.noelcoward.net/home.html. I had never been there before though Trevin has. Actually, he is a walking theatre archive himself. (Finally he is going to create his own blog to record all the inane pieces of theatre trivia he knows. I will be publicizing it hardily once it is up and running.)

Trevin and I were the youngest people in the ceremony group by about 3+ decades. Mr. Coward was an English playwright and actor who wrote a litany of fantastic works including Private Lives, Present Laughter, and Waiting in the Wings. He thought he was a man who would be forgotten, but to this small society and to the theatre community at-large, he is very well-remembered and loved.

I was giving Trevin a hard time about his membership, mostly because Trevin and I give one another a hard time about everything the same way siblings do. We do laugh at one another though we do this at the same time so it all evens out. Though as I looked around at this collection of people in the Gershwin, I could see myself in them. They, at one time, were all young and fabulous in New York City, and were all too happy to tell us about it. I listened with interest, hoping that someday people may do the same for me, too.

At that moment, I realized what I love best about New York. Among its many wonderful attributes, its greatest may be that this city is a home for everyone, with a group for everyone. All you really have to do is find what it is you love, and you will undoubtedly find people who love the same thing. And they all have a story; they all arrived to this same spot by very different routes and we have much to learn from their journeys. New York is a gypsy tent and a barn that Dickens would be proud of.