There were some television sets back in the '50s, but they were expensive. People would gather at the rich guy's apartment down the hall to watch Milton Berle on his 10-inch black-and-white screen.
When I was 12, I forgot the keys to my parent's apartment. So I simply climbed up seven floors to get in.
My apartment is full of antique pieces, but I put everything together like a modern installation.
There was this sausage factory a block away from my childhood apartment. It didn't smell nice, like chorizo or something; it was pretty foul. Just nasty. But that smell reminds me so much of my childhood because every morning when I was going to school, I would smell that.
When I was little, I got to pick my hair ribbon from my mother's collection that hung over her dressing-table mirror. I have an entire room of ribbons in my New York apartment.
My dad grew up with straight-up no running water. He slept in a twin bed with his two sisters and his mom, like 'Charlie And The Chocolate Factory' style: like, feet at the head, feet at the head alternating. And then I think his dad slept on, like, a bed of newspapers on a floor in their apartment.
I lived with my mom in a really small apartment. My bedroom was like in the living room. That's why I still love to sleep on couches now.
One of my favorite things to do is to play music really loud and dance my butt off in the morning. I'll do it alone in my apartment. You can't have a bad day after that.
No one in New York hangs out in their apartments.
By August of 2003, I had graduated from Rutgers, gone through a stretch of living at my parents' house, and wound up sharing an apartment with a college friend of mine in Montclair, New Jersey.
