nyc

Any New Yorker will tell you that one of the hardest parts of living in New York City is leaving New York City. Spending three months in Spain is a distant dream for most of us, because traditionally, a trip like that would entail abandoning your lease, moving all of your stuff to a storage facility, and finding a new job when you get back to the States. After you’ve spent a month hunting on Craigslist for the perfect apartment, the last thing you want to do is give it up.

Living in New York City is hard. The weather is drastic, the commute is brutal, and the pace never lets up. Succeeding here is all about endurance, and for those who are new to city living, it may seem impossible to deal with the challenges of NYC. That’s why we put together this urban survival guide. Here are some ‘life hacks’ for those of you residing in the big apple

It’s 2014; we live on our smartphones, our relationships are as textual as they are physical, and as impersonal as it sounds, people actually break up over gchat. At this point it’s pretty much a cliché to send a breakup text, and in New York City, where no one has a car and apartments are in short supply, dealing with a breakup is especially hard. Here at MakeSpace, we truly want everyone to find love, but we also know that sometimes it’s just not meant to be. That’s why we’re going to teach you how to transition through a breakup in 2014, using the luxuries afforded by modern technology.

When we heard that the first ever ‘cat cafe’ in North America was opening just a ten minute walk from our office, we had to go. These coffee shops full of playful kitties have long been popular in Tokyo, where strict renter laws prevent most citizens from keeping pets in their apartments, but these havens for cat-lovers are seemingly perfect for New York City where lots of animal lovers can’t keep a pet in their apartment for a different reason, because they just don’t have the space.

Seth is one of the funniest people we’ve ever met. The beloved NYC jokester is now the resident comedian and sketch performer at the new Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, but he’s been on everything from Chappelle’s Show to 30 Rock. Last month, Seth joined MakeSpace. We got to spend some time with him and his stuff when we helped move the comedian out of a storage unit and into the cloud.

You name it, Jimmy can build it. He’s the handiest handyman. On his popular YouTube channel, Jimmy shows off his almost superhuman ability to make pretty much anything. He’s built everything from a guitar shaped like a machine gun to a replica of a Star Wars Stormtrooper Helmet.

Chelsa is New York cool. The young fashionista got her start as a makeup artist before moving in-house at Estée Lauder. At this point, she’s worked for everyone from Calvin Klein to Bobbi Brown cosmetics. Recently, Chelsa began making plans to launch her own beauty brand, so stay tuned!

How is a 22 year old this good at design? Haley started working full-time as a Senior Designer at NYLON before she even finished undergrad at NYU, and is one of the youngest designers in the magazine’s history. Of course, for someone with as much talent and creative ambition as Haley, her work at NYLON is just the tip of the iceberg; in her spare time, she’s done everything from designing Mira Gonzalez’s poetry collection i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together to collaborating with the studio Actual Idea on Jared Leto’s photobook series Notes from the Outernet.