A Model on the Move in NYC

SELLER: Jessica Gomes
LOCATION: New York, NY
SIZE: 600 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom
PRICE: $875,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Typically Your Mama blathers on (and on) about over-sized and high-priced properties owned by name brand celebrities, high-nosed socialites, wildly wealthy hedge hogs, and other big bizness types. This morning we're going to go a slightly different route and discuss a small apartment in New York City owned and listed for $875,000 by model Jessica Gomes.

Your Mama understands that Miss Gomes is not a household name like temper tantrum tossing catwalker Naomi Campbell or the ubiquitous androgyne Agyness Deyn but she is an exotic looking up and comer in the commercial and sexpot model marketplace. Horny heterosexual men and lascivious lesbian ladees will recognize Miss Gomes as having appeared all but nekkid in several Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions (2008, 2009, 2010) as well as having posed in barely there undergarments in the the Victoria Secret catalog. More fashion minded folks might recognize her face from the pages of shiny publications like Vogue and Glamour and still others may know her face from advertisements for mass retailers like Gap, Hush Puppies, and American Eagle. Miss Gomes also appeared with P-Daddle (or Puff Papa or Fiddle-Diddle or whatever his damn name is) in adverts for Unforgivable, one of the smarmy egotastic entrepreneur's stoopidly named ladee cologne and man perfume products.

Property record show the 24-year old Aussie-Asian mannequin with the come-hither look snatched up her 1 bedroom and 1 pooper apartment in a pre-war doorman building in New York City's hip and trendy NoLiTa neighborhood in June of 2007 for $810,000. For the records Your Mama says "hip" and "trendy" with more than just a little hint of disdain. NoLiTa, for the non-New Yorkers, is a kind of acronym for neighborhood situated just North of Little Italy and a smidgen west of the new and "improved" Bowery. The narrow, tree shaded streets are lined with tenements that once house immigrants and now house low level finance types, Conde Nast staffers and other assorted downtown glitterati. In the last 10 0r 12 years the neighborhood has transformed from a somewhat forgotten and gritty pocket east of SoHo into an upscale enclave of uppity boo-teeks and restaurants that include celebrity friendly establishments such as Cafe Gitane, Cafe Habanero, and Public.

Listing information shows Miss Gomes west facing condo measures 600 square feet, which isn't all that tiny for a 1 bedroom downtwon apartment. In fact, for many city dwellers it's downright spacious. Case in point: For about 100 years before marrying up and moving into big doo-plex digs with the Dr. Cooter, Your Mama occupied a quite petite 2 bedroom 4th floor walk-up in a Lower East Side tenement that measured just 580 square feet.

Anyhoo, Miss Gomes' apartment opens into a minuscule foyer only about as long as the coat closet is wide. The main living space, sized at 12'8' by almost 18 and a half feet, has bleached hardwood floors, gleaming white walls, nicely sized soundproofed windows, an ass-uglee couch, a couple of black Eames molded plywood lounge chairs, and a Noguchi coffee table. We're not nearly as bothered by the lackluster day-core and lack of an area rug as we are by the clownish portrait above the couch or the off-center looking ceiling fan.

The room is certainly large enough to accommodate a diminutive dining table but for that stoopid faux fireplace piece of crap that takes up a long stretch of a short wall and renders that entire area virtually unusable. Your Mama assumes that utterly useless fake fireplace is the reason Miss Gomes (or whomever) had that depressing and psychologically upsetting corner desk/one person dining counter built into the corner of the room. We recommend removing the fireplace, filling the cut out with narrow floor to ceiling shelves and setting a 36" round table in that area. Just a thought.

As should be expected in a wee one bedroom Manhattan apartment, the kitchen is small. This is, after all, New York City where it's not unusual for kitchen areas to be used for little more than taking the Chinese food out of the paper sack and storing out of season clothes in the never even been turned on oven. None the less, Miss Gomes' kitchen comes equipped with a dishwasher, 4-burner range and an under counter refrigerator. While the fridge is barely big enough to hold a carton of half-and-half and/or leftovers from Rice, the under counter set up does allow for more counter space for doing things like folding laundry and cutting lines.

We're not thrilled that the renovated pooper can only be accessed through Miss Gomes all-white boo-dwar, but it's really better than losing the wall between the living room and pooper to a second doorway. The bedroom contains a walk-in closet–a real rarity and luxury for a small apartment–and a full wall of custom built cabinetry that includes a vanity. Between the coat closet, the built-in storage in the living room the walk in and cabinetry in the bedroom, there really is a decent amount of storage space for such a small apartment.