The Craigslist Ad for a 'Tiny Studio' Could Not Have Been More Literal

150 square feet

Studio Flat // Rental Apartment // Upper West Side, Manhattan

Fresh off a breakup, actor Anthony Triolo found the only cheap apartment on Craigslist that wasn’t a hoax. However, it was approximately the same size as the Yankees dugout. In fact, it was so tiny he thought it would just be temporary. That was seven years ago.

“I had been living with a boyfriend for two years. It ended, and I moved back home for three days, and I was just like, ‘I cannot do this.’ So I started looking for apartments. I kept reading the same scams over and over on Craigslist: ‘We're going to South Africa. Just send a security deposit, and you can take care of our luxury apartment rent-free.’

“This was the first apartment that wasn't a scam. It was listed as ‘Tiny Studio.’ My friends had tiny studios, so I thought I knew what a tiny studio was. But I didn’t. I walked in, and I could not even imagine it furnished and done. How could you envision that you could fit a chair, ottoman—everything—in here? It was just so small. I was like, ‘Can I do this?’

“I felt like I didn't really have a choice. My budget was so small. It was cheap for a studio apartment. I would say price per square foot is in line with market rate, but it's only so many little square feet. I looked at it on Black Friday, and I moved in December 1st. This was the only place I looked at. I mean, basically I'm poor at this point. I'm getting over a major breakup. I’m trying to get my life together.

“The first day was really rough. My parents brought their old mattress down here—a queen-size. It was strapped to the roof of the car with all my stuff. My dad and my brother are moving in this queen-size mattress into a shoebox, and my mother's like, ‘Can I help? Can I help?’ I'm just like, ‘Oh my God.’ They got everything in, and I'm like, ‘Everybody out! Bye! I'll deal with you another time.’

“In the beginning, I was buying the cheapest things possible just to function. I didn't have a TV, and I needed one. I walked down the steps, and outside on the street was one of those TVs with a VCR in the thing. I was like, ‘This is a gift from God.’ People throw stuff away all the time in Manhattan. In the Bronx, where I grew up, if you have space, you have one Christmas tree stand. You use it for twenty years. Here, every tree thrown out on the street after the holidays has a stand attached to it. You can reuse that. That doesn't go bad.

“Little by little, I started to invest in the apartment. I’m an actor; you never know how much money you're going to make. I never buy anything on credit. I did the floors, made some built-ins, and put in a marble countertop. People think I’m crazy because I am only renting the place. I tell people you have to invest in your space. I know people who have been in their apartments since 1984, and it’s like, ‘What? Are you never going to paint?’ You live there.’

“When I moved in there was a stove, but who needs a stove, honestly? It takes up too much room. I got rid of it. I don't really enjoy cooking, so I eat out. Coffee I do at McDonald's everyday. It's a dollar.

“With socializing in my apartment, people will be like, ‘Oh my God. Let's go out to the city. We'll get ready in Anthony's apartment.’ I'm like, ‘No, we won't.’ Two people maybe can come in here at a time, and that’s it.

“I watch TV on a love seat, but it’s not even a standard-size love seat. It’s really an oversized chair, but two people can fit in it if they’re both in shape. But, if we were just friends, it's too tight. It’s serves as a couch, but it’s not really a couch. It’s couch-ish.

“I have a queen-size mattress up in the loft. I needed to get a really thin one because otherwise I hit my head when I sit up in bed. The one annoying thing is that you can't see the TV from bed, but I'm not about to have two TVs in a 150-square-foot apartment.

“I go to Central Park a lot. Sometimes I'm just walking around, and people will be texting me like, ‘Where are you? What are you doing?’ I'm like, ‘Oh, I'm walking around.’ They'll tell me I'm weird. I'm like, ‘Do you see the size of my place? I can't sit in here all day. I want to go outside.’” 

-Anthony Triolo

The Owner of NYC's Smallest Privately Owned Lot is the Best Landlord in NYC

25 Square Feet

Balla Triangle // Privately Owned Lot // West Village, Manhattan

The spit of land at the corner of Seventh Avenue South and West 10th Street qualifies as the smallest occupied private lot in the New York City. For almost half his life, a Senegalese immigrant named Balla Niang has been the occupant of this tiny triangle. He sells his colorful African wares there from a stall, rain or shine. He mans the place under an umbrella, in an office chair on wheels.

“I’m fifty-seven, and I’m from Senegal. I’ve been here for twenty-five years selling African stuff, and sunglasses and socks and other little things.

I go home to Senegal, and I bring it all back. It’s all cotton and traditional prints. Everything is designed and made in Senegal. The prints are the same as in Senegal, but we make some of it in Western styles. Short pants and stuff like that.

It’s just me here at the stall. Every day I work. Every day. I love to work because my family taught me that you have to work. Work is good. 

The heat? I don't care about that. The cold I don’t like as much. Sometimes I go home to Senegal in the winter to see my family because I have no family here. I go home for sometimes up to three months a year.

And this is why I’m telling you I have the best landlord in the world, Dr. Awan. He is a doctor in Brooklyn. He’s in Bensonhurst. He bought it in the eighties, I think for thirty thousand dollars. This is my best landlord because he lets me go home, come back, and then pay rent. Because some landlords, they don't do that, especially not in New York City. I always pay everything, but sometimes I pay after the rent is due, and he let’s me.

Business is not too bad, in a way. African clothing is popular now. Men and women wear it. Most of it is unisex, so anyone can wear it. The colorful stuff is the most popular. 

These pants are twenty dollars. If you want to go home and try them on, and, if it doesn't fit right, bring them back here to me. That's what I do for everybody. I don't have room to try clothes on. 

“This place has an actual address. It’s 169 West 10th Street. The space is about five feet by five feet, maybe a little bigger. I do want a bigger place, but later. I have no money for that. I can't afford a big rent right now. If I had money I would move, though, because I’d be able to sell more.”

-Balla Niang

Missing Gritty Dirty Old NYC? Meet the Artist Who Resurrects it in Miniature

½ inch = 1 foot scale

Alan Wolfson  // Miniature Urban Sculptures  // Hollis Taggart Galleries, Chelsea

Artist Alan Wolfson takes one of the world’s most massive cities, empties it of its people and condenses it down to its grittiest core. His pieces are astonishingly realistic but fictionalized dioramas of a bygone New York whose meaning must be construed by the viewer. Just make sure to look closely or risk missing a tiny clue that unlocks the real story.

“I want the viewer to get involved in what they’re looking into. I want them to come up with a scenario of what happened here: Why is that sandwich on the counter only half-eaten? Is there a tip on the table? What’s with those stomped-out cigarette butts by the subway entrance?

I try to tell a story with these minute details. My work is not about how small everything is but the stories these small things tell. I don’t put in people because three-inch tall people remind you you’re looking at a miniature. I want you to be thinking about the narrative. One-foot in real life is one-half inch in my pieces so the environments are intricate. And, because the scale it so small, it’s intimate.

For many years, hardly any artists were working in miniature and I felt my work wasn’t being taken seriously as an artist. Only painting and sculpting were considered real art. I consider myself to be a sculptor. My work is considered hyperrealism. Now, with more people working in miniature, it’s taken more seriously. For me, it’s always been the way of doing my work.

I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s. My father worked as a commercial artist as a letterer and sign painter. In school, we had to build a diorama in a shoebox as for homework. I loved that. I made scenes of what I saw on my walk to school – butcher shop, police station, that kind of thing. That’s essentially what I’m still doing. I just kind of got carried away with it.

I was a pretty rebellious kid. Then Vietnam came and I was one of those hippies that got drafted. I saw so many lives get ruined. To cope, I started thinking about the New York City I grew up in and longed for. It removed me from the reality I was in. I said to myself: ‘When I get out of this situation, I’m going to build a diorama of a subway station.’

I make every element by hand in my pieces. All the lighting, the props and the architecture. I’ll think about the piece for a long time, visualizing, problem-solving. By the time I start, I’ve thought about it for months – years maybe. I make a rough sketch to refresh my memory. I do research and pull photographs. Then I build a cardboard mock-up mainly to figure out sightlines. Then I replace the cardboard pieces with acrylic plastic. Some of these locations never actually existed. I make them up. I also make up 75 percent of the narrative as I go along and build the appropriate things to tell the story.

People ask me why I always do environments with graffiti. It tells part of the story. When I went away in 1968, there was no such thing as graffiti. The first time I saw it when I came back from the service I thought, ‘Well, it’s kind of a mess and I kind of like it.’ I want it known that graffiti was part of the character of New York at that time.

I live in California. When I go back to New York it’s changed so drastically I don’t even feel like I’m in New York. I have fond memories of walking around 42nd Street when I was a teenager. Maybe it wasn’t the nicest place in the world but it was my place and I felt comfortable there.

I had meeting a few years ago with the Times Square Alliance about doing a commission: I said to the guy: ‘I have a question. ‘Why the fuck did you screw up Times Square?’  His eyes got big and his mouth dropped open. He said: ‘We had to clean it up, Mayor Giuliani this and that.’ And I said: ‘You didn’t do it for New Yorkers. It’s a place where tourists buy T-shirts and postcards, like Main Street in Disneyland. You didn’t clean anything up. You moved it on and made it someone else’s problem and found a way to make money off of the place it had been.’

Needless to say, I didn’t get the commission.

New York was more interesting back then. More genuine. People wanted to scribble on the subway so they did. If they wanted to vomit in the subway because they snorted too much heroin, they did. What I do is an accurate representation of New York whether you like it or not.”

-Alan Wolfson