nyc

You might think you don’t know who Ashley Albert is, but you’ve definitely heard her voice. Maybe you’ve listened to her Grammy-nominated children’s band, The Jimmies playing overhead while you strolled through a store. Or if you religiously watched MTV’s Daria as a teenager in the nineties, you might geek out upon learning that Albert was the voice of slow speaking, valley girl Tiffany Blum-Deckler.

Tyler Tringas was living out of a backpack and working off his laptop in SouthEast Asia when he had to make a quick trip back to the States to attend a friend’s wedding in Vermont. This probably sounds like a logistical nightmare, but Tyler had a plan. He landed in New York City, met a MakeSpace driver in the lobby of his hotel, unpacked his tuxedo, and went to the wedding the following morning. No sweat.

Bike theft has become an obsession across the Internet. When it comes to locking up bikes, every tech and gadget website, athletic blog, and online store practically stages a nuclear war to test out the best of the best. And we’re not talking a 300-word list of “Bike Lock Dos and Don’ts.” We’re talking an extensively-researched, multiple-part, investigative article which tests the top bike locks against their ultimate enemy: the thieves themselves.

There is something unmistakably horrible, awful, and in every way excruciating about the particular sticky heat that seeps in through the cracks of your apartment and nearly suffocates you every summer in New York City.

It’s the kind of heat that makes you wonder if they’ve opened an illegal Russian bathhouse in the apartment below yours. The kind of heat that forces you to shower three times a day. It’s that 200% humidity, 99 degree heat that can only be combated by your trusty air conditioner. Veteran Brooklyners, Manhattanites and the like know that oscillating fans alone just won’t cut it.

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.