My NYC Apartment Tour | What $6,000 gets you in the East Village

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

hello hello welcome to my apartment for once um my name is Elena if you are unfamiliar and we are at My two-bedroom one and a half bath in the East Village where I PID $66,000 and I have roommates we split it so come on in let me show you around so welcome to my apartment um to enter you kind of like walk up this set of stairs from the street level and you enter the main space so this is like a duplex which is really nice it's kind of rare for New York and as you walk in you just have your kitchen living room dining room immediately upon entry we have our first bathroom so we have a little half bath which has been so nice we love to host and it's just perfect when guests come to be able to use and I have all my like favorite candles and lotions like my Maison Marella candle and then as you walk out of course I have to make use of every inch of space as one does in New York a coat closet coat rack here of all my favorite coats for the winter season so right here we have this huge bookshelf which I really love honestly and it's nice cuz the landlord actually left it behind which is clutch cuz like I would not want to have to deal with this and it just has become kind of like a catch all like a place to throw your keys random cards lots of books which you'll see a lot of throughout the apartment because I love to read like this is a very New York thing or maybe it's like an urban thing where restaurants give you matches I at like the host stand so I've just collected some from some different restaurants over time the nines or SE house just a reminder of good night's out welcome to the kitchen this has become a favorite space I used to like honestly not really like cooking before I moved into this apartment but I feel like having such a big kitchen that like looks out onto the living space has changed the game and is really got me to enjoy cooking cuz for one I can like look out and look out the window as I'm like making a meal or watch TV host quite a lot and I feel like friends always end up like congregating around this area as like someone's cooking or making drinks it's just become a very like fun social space and the fridge is fun too because I've like collected a few magnets while traveling so we have Zion Brazil niece this is from the ABA Museum in Sweden and then just like little photo of my family just to keep them in mind so now we have kind of like the living room area what's nice is this couch was also left by my landlord don't worry we got it professionally cleaned but it is so clutch it's this like massive CB2 couch and like I'm 61 and even when I'm hanging on here like I can get my little feet like it's so deep and I feel like you can fit like seven people on this couch and I also really love this Casserly rug it's super soft back over here we have this bar cabinet of Just Like A random assortment of drinks if I want to make some cocktails and this mirror which I got off Facebook Marketplace you can't go wrong Facebook Marketplace has got you covered I also have quite a few coffee table books I have several from asine which is a company I've worked with a couple times and I think they just make beautiful books you've probably seen them if you've gone into any artsy bookstore I feel like they have very recognizable covers with like the block text and like the vibrant colors they're just like these photo books of all these different beautiful parts of the world this one's fun it's called bon voyage and my friend Wesley got this for me it's about boutique hotels for like sustainable travel I love traveling it's a big part of my job and I try to incorporate sustainability I also have like a David Bowie book A book on La and then this is fun as well my godmother got this for me she's really into estate sales which is a great place to find cool books and decor and she got me this and it's a photo book on Iran what's cool too if you're unfamiliar is that in a lot of different places in this like region of the world people actually read the opposite of us so instead of going from like right to left like as we do in the states and they read the opposite and I remember whenever my Grandpa would visit from Iran he'd always like read opposite to what I was used to and like always blew my mind as a kid I have to talk about my plants I have quite a few plants throughout this apartment and this one I am particularly proud of because I bought her on like the side of the street for $20 when she was like this big and she's grown to be this big beautiful plant like I love my plants they're my little babies I whisper sweet nothings to them and like brush the dust off their leaves have a lots of green throughout I feel like it just provides for water pop of color and also just like a sense of like freshness and life and so I love my plants over here we have um a couple big pieces of art this is just like a reprint of a b house exhibition but I really love like black and white prints and designs and art as you'll kind of see scatter throughout the apartment and then this is cool too because there is a online company called drool that essentially partners with graphic designers to help them print their work this lamp is fun I feel like people are always like where the hell is this lamp from um you think maybe it's from some like design store it's actually from Ikea which we love a deal and I'm huge on like ambient lighting I always have like different lighting points kind of scattered throughout any of my living spaces and I always get the like Philip Hughes changeable lights so pretty much every single lamp in here I can change the color which is really nice there's a lot of warm oranges and yellows and reds especially in the evening it's like always so cozy every single night on the topic of lighting we also have this little like orb light this originally was hanging on the wall and it fell off and it's the perfect fit and so now I'm kind of obsessed with having this cowboy hat on this lamp I got it from like a Boot Barn event in the city where I went with one of my best friends and we both ended up getting cowboy hats and then we ended up going out that night and we like went to so many different bars we kind of embraced the look the whole night and just rocked the cowboy hat all over downtown Manhattan I think it's found its proper home right here I feel like we've gotten lucky to have enough space to be able to have a dining table in New York I keep saying this but like I really love hosting and I love being able to have people come over the space has just been so special for that you can fit like eight or nine people around this easily so we have so many dinner parties and my art is kind of honestly just like a random assortment again I really like like these black and white designs kind of like I was saying earlier and okay don't come for me but I don't actually watch Sakira which is Japanese anime but I just loved the design I really appreciated just like the use of color and the font so like I said this is a two-story apartment so now we will head on upstairs and I'll show you the other bedrooms we have so you head up the set of stairs and you get to the second level obviously and what's nice over here is like we have this Skylight which has just been a great extra source of light to have in the apartment and it leads up to the roof and we're not technically supposed to go up there I do occasionally to go tan but don't tell don't tell my landlord we have this massive like God I don't even know 10 11t mirror that's built into the wall so if you like taking an outfit of the day photo this is your dream and I feel like whenever our friends come over we always end up like taking selfies together in this so this is where I do all my little outfit checks as you walk in you kind of come to this like intersection of all the different rooms so we have my room which is kind of like the biggest room my roommates room extra closet space which is very nice so all of our luggage and extra coats and blankets and sheets are all in here and then we have the bathroom I love this bathroom for one we have a wash and dryer like every new yorker's dream like I'm so grateful for this and then we have um like the main bathroom I love this bathroom it's like my little Spa I honestly spend so much time in here getting ready taking long showers doing my like makeup and hair and I love how it's been kind of bottled into this like darker kind of luxurious look so as you enter my room immediately we have my dresser I'm a New York girl I need extra storage also just have lots of fun candles a labo candle and aceline candle I actually painted this myself because I really wanted a large piece of art and art is so expensive and so I just found this design on like Pinterest used my projector and projected it on to this canvas and then just kind of stencil it out and painted it in and then over here we have some books I've read recently so we have like on Earth We're briefly gorgeous some marami short history in the Middle East Leonard Con in the saai and of course some of my favorite perfumes I've been loving the own maral beachwalk as you can see it's like almost out like get myself an extra little sprits plastic labo SEL 33 which I'm also getting a little low on I'm making use of like every nook and cranny in my room as you do and I basically have like made my own jewelry store I love my jewelry I think it's so fun to accessorize and add a little flare to an outfit I travel a lot and it's really hard to bring back different souvenirs that are any bigger than jewelry so I usually end up bringing jewelry back as a souvenir over on this side we obviously have my bed and I love my hanging plants I've actually had this plant for probably 4 years and she has grown down to the floor so many times and I like have to give her a little haircut I love this plant it's honestly like been through a lot of life with me and like I said I have a lot of stack of books just kind of scattered throughout because I basically run out of storage in my apartment for them otherwise so if you ever need any book wrecks I got you so on my mirror is like the only other place in my apartment where I've kind of just included different photos there's just like a lot of fun little Polaroids or different photo strips that I've gotten from like different events I have my Brooklyn half marathon because like any single girl in her mid to late 20s in New York of course I had to run my first half marathon and honestly I'm proud of myself it was not easy I love my bed I have tried to make my bed as comfy and dreamlike as possible I literally have six pillows and probably like two different like mattress toppers which I highly recommend the ones from parachute if you want just like a dreamlike bed I feel like whenever I have friends visit it always gets R reviews so I was trying to figure out what to put over top of my bed I Tim decide on these like four fun prints so we have a DAV Bowie print another piece from drool and then this is fun too it's like like a poster from like a surf film essentially and I'm from Southern California so it's just like a nice little reminder of home and I feel like this is like the world I grew up in and it's funny cuz again in California you really don't hang anything above your bed because of earthquakes and so I was like oh am I'm in New York it's fine but we just had an earthquake a week ago so maybe I need to move these after all in this corner we have my desk it's nice to have like a designated space to work from from home like with my big Monitor and a good view out onto like Streets of New York and I like to keep it pretty clean so I can focus if you're ever looking for a good comfy office chair this is from Laura Davidson I can just like very comfortably work in this all day and I feel like it's a kind of like cool chic design I have this assortment of cassette tapes so I used to drive a like 1999 Honda CRV there was no ox cord available like you either had to use cassettes or CDs to play music and so at the time I collected a lot of different cassettes so I could play music in the car and when I moved here I actually had a friend who GI me a cassette tape player like in honor of my car and of course I really didn't end up using it to listen to these cassettes but they're just like a fun little reminder from home and they've definitely probably just gone to here in the sun under this AC just a fun little memory and just some artists that I love before I moved in there was like nothing here and again it was just kind of this weird awkward space so I ended up putting in these bookshelves and obviously put in a bunch of different books and I've kind of used it to store my cameras as well like I love my vintage cameras I have a bunch of like automatic film cameras manual film cameras the classic dad handy Cam that everybody loves but I think my favorite favorite is my super eight camera it just creates such a cool nostalgic feeling every time you use it it's definitely an expensive hobby so I very rarely actually am filming on this but I'll pull it out for like special projects it's very heavy it's like there's nothing about it is convenient but it's worth it I also love journaling and I've journaled for like God probably like 12 years at this point and so I actually when I moved here I brought all of my different journals from home again what was I thinking when I moved I brought cassettes and journals I have all these different journals like literally starting from like age 14 it's cool to kind of look back and see the way that I like processed things over time or how different anxieties and concerns kind of worked themselves out or how things have just changed in ways I didn't expect if you ever want access to my deep dark secrets just you know you can break into my apartment and that's where they are but like please please don't actually do that this I feel like is a really good use of storage if you're looking for just a little extra space in your apartment it has this Clothing Rack in the back here so this is where I hang all my like super long dresses that don't really fit into my closet and now we will go check out my roommate's room so this is my roommate's room and it's the smaller of the two but it does have a balcony which is so so clutch so let me show you guys this has been such a nice addition to have this this little balcony space for just when you need like a little bit of fresh air or like sunshine on your skin but you don't want to deal with actually having to go out into the craziness of New York a lot of nice coffee mornings up here with the book or like you kind of see the sunset hello okay classic New York lot of nice little like evenings like just having a glass of wine and watching the S set up here so that's our apartment well well well the tables have turned um and now I'm talking about my own apartment I live in the East Village with roommate and we pay $6,000 so what's interesting about this apartment is that it's a CO deal that is no longer a deal when I moved in actually with another roommate it was a net effective of like 4300 and it's gone up quite a bit in the last 3 years but I really love this apartment I think it's such a special space and it's been so fun to have like this larger apartment that has allowed me to like host and create content and it's just been an amazing place to live I really love the East Village I've been here for over for four years I've seen it go through a lot of different phases even in that time alone um I think it's a really interesting neighborhood it's very young there's a lot of students and artists and you know the the local figures that have been here for decades it has a lot of really interesting history in like the art and the music scene and tons of incredible restaurants and like great cocktail bars and places to go out from Tomkins Park to thrifting to running along the east side River to going to amazing amazing restaurants so I've really loved living here New York is incredible it's chaotic and intense and it's so much but it's unbeatable no city in the world that I've ever been to even comes close in comparison it's this beautiful mix of every kind of like person and Industry and interest you could ever want to kind of discover or Explore More of go to the Opera one night and like a techno show one night and then a comedy show the next night and then like a drag show the next night like anything you want is literally at your fingertips and there's just this crazy magnetic intense Creative Energy when you walk out side that it's like you can't you can't leave if you ever get a chance to live in New York I highly recommend baby I'm bleeding and I wonder if you really plan this all along