With tuition prices at a historic high in the United States and the astronomical cost of living in New York City, side jobs are a must for many students at The New School. Of course, there is the conventional route of becoming a waitress or working at a retail store, but sometimes work and school schedules can be difficult to coordinate. These New School students have found unconventional ways of making some cash on the side.
One student, Antonina Rettenwander, was bringing in up to a thousand dollars per night doing what she describes as professional flirting during her freshman year. Most people would call it stripping, but not her, she said.
“There is no pole, no getting completely naked. There’s no one dollar bills,” she said.
Antonina is tall and blonde with striking rounded cheekbones. She wears a tight choker with a single pendant on the front and her hair is pulled back into a half ponytail. Others would notice when she walked into a room, but she’s not loud about it. Her neck was exposed during the interview and I kept expecting a red blush to expose her shyness, but it never came, she owned her story.
She thought back on it like a past life. She did this her freshman year when she arrived in New York to go to college from Key West, Florida. She looked around for a job with her friend and found a Craigslist add for cocktail waitresses. Her friend acted first, submitting the mandatory tight clothed photos for approval.
It wasn’t until the boss signed off on her photos that the nature of the job was revealed, but she was still drawn in by the lucrative prospects, and so the two friends soon signed on.
The job was relatively simple, go to the bar, flirt with a guy and ask him to dance. The location of the bar changed every night, but each one had the same elements – changing room, a bar and a dance room in back. The dance room had champagne, loud music and plush couches, guarded by both male and female security guards (female guards are called “house moms.”) Sometimes a trip to the dance room involved a lap dance and sometimes it was merely a conversation.
This is where the money comes in. Once the guy enters the dance room, he is charged $20 per song. Nudity is only there if the girl wants it and below the belt is strictly off limits.
“Because you know, THAT would be illegal,“ Antonina said with a smile.
Antonina left when she felt like she’d lost control of her job. It wasn’t one moment, more a culmination of things that didn’t make the money worth it anymore. Ultimately her boss started taking away more and more of her freedom and a customer became violent, so six months felt like a good time to hang up her heels.
Natasha Price, junior at NSSR’s Food Studies program, had no clue what she what she was doing when she decided to take her cousin up on his offer to work on his venison butcher unit in rural England last fall. She knew only that she could not return to Tulane, it was too late to transfer, and whatever she did next, it needed to involve food. Within a second of arriving from Los Angeles, she was a proud employee of South Downs Venison and Game run by Jack and Jessica Smallman.
It was quite an adjustment, but she dove in head first.
“The first day I worked was the first day I tried venison!” she said with a laugh.
From that moment, she had no time to think. There were birds to be gutted and defeathered, there was venison to be wrapped and deliveries to be made. Three days per week she would make the hour journey, starting at 5 a.m., to the London farmers market, not returning home until 7 in the evening. The other three days were spent at the farm beginning at eight in the morning and sometimes going until ten at night.
She lived, breathed and survived off the farm. The work was fulfilling, isolating, grueling and exciting.
As the months past, she became more and more sure of her decision to pursue a life in the food industry. In her limited down time, she researched how she could pursue food beyond the obvious option of going to culinary school. She came across the New Schools Food Studies program and it felt like a perfect match. She decided she would trade in her bloody apron on christmas eve and attend school in New York City in the spring.
But South Downs is a part of her now, it was her introduction to the professional food world.
“Everything I learned about sustainable food practices and customer service I apply to my schoolwork and restaurant work every day.”
She now works at El Rey Coffee Bar and Luncheonette and has a month long “stage,” — essentially an internship in the food world — set up at esteemed Berkeley, California restaurant, Chez Panisse.
Todd, who asked to be referred to by an assumed name for fear of legal repercussions, has many projects in the works. Some make money. Some don’t – or don’t yet. Some are varying shades of legal. Some are very firmly on the wrong side of the law. And some are ideas he comes up with while scouring the dirty depths of the internet. All this while still a full time junior at Eugene Lang.
The first, was a scheme to resell 128G SD cards – those cards you put in your camera – he found on eBay for a considerable profit. While looking for an SD card for his own personal use, he found three from a seller in China: 128G for $5 each. But Todd knew they could sell for about $60 a pop. Skeptical, but intrigued, he ordered them and to his excitement verified the storage size.
Bursting with entrepreneurial spirit, Todd returned to eBay to place a large order, dreaming of the profits, only to find that while the product page was still active, the buying option was gone. Disappointed, but undeterred, he noticed that the same seller has another product with potential – ladies lingerie.
An odd combination of products, but to Todd, this was an opportunity. He had at one point heard that big money was to be had by selling unmentionables after they had worn and soiled by a lady. Research confirmed his beliefs and he hopes the future will be lucrative, but for now he’s sticking with the only of his ideas that currently makes money: drug dealing.
While on the job hunt, a friend presented him with the opportunity to sell weed on a relatively small scale. Now,he sells almost exclusively to college students and all by word of mouth. The risk, he said, is quite low compared to other dealers he knows.
The only risky situation he could think of when pushed was a time he accidentally set a meet-up half a block from a police station. He only realized after the deal happened that there were police cars lining the street.
“It’s quite fun, you know, you get to meet new people, you get to stay relatively fit with deliveries,” he said.
And he is fit, wearing the skinniest jeans, a black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He held his cigarette between his lips as he texted a customer who would stop by within the next hour. The house was littered with beer bottles and a futon was folded out, stains mixed in with stray papers, lighters and ashtrays.
One of his customers, producer of the song “Bitch You Guessed It,” is a complete pain to deal with. But, he understands that despite the constant haggling, return customers like this jerk make his work a lot easier. Most of the interactions are quite simple. The one I witnessed took all of three minutes and involved Todd weighing out a tiny pile of weed and placing it in a bag for the girl with paint stained hands.
The amount he makes is less than he could if he wasn’t working under another dealer and going straight to the source, but for now, he’s happy with the separation. In an average week, he’ll earn about $200 selling two ounces, usually in increments of grams, dubs and eighths (for those not familiar with the lingo that is 1 gram, 1.3 grams and 3.5 grams, costing $15, $20 and $50 respectively). So, a month will bring in about $600, enough to get him by on the side, he said.
For Todd, this is short term, he plans on finishing up when he graduates in a year and half. He aspires to music production.
Nathan Kamal stood, with his violin in hand, alone with an anxious man about to ask his girlfriend to be his wife. He had set up an elaborate scheme of various loved ones, ending with Nathan, himself and a ring. As she made her way from friends to family members, the boyfriend leaned over and asked Nathan:
“You got a girlfriend?”
“No,” Nathan replied.
“Good.”
And then the woman arrived, Nathan began playing the requested Bruno Mars song and the two were engaged by the end of the song.
Nathan is a stranger present at many couples most important moments. As a violinist BAFA Jazz/Lang student, he is hired to serenade at both weddings and engagements around New York City.
Spring time is the most lucrative. Apparently, love is as present in the air as pollen. On average, he brings in between $100 and $200 per gig. Considering the commitment is rarely more than an hour, he’s doing quite well.
But the Bruno Mars gets to him.
“It’s always Top 40 music. People have super mainstream taste in music to the point that they will use a song that is on the radio to mark one of the most significant moments of their life. That’s always baffling to me,” he said.
For weddings, he tends not to follow the requested list of mainstream tunes, finding that usually, the bride and groom are happy to have someone who knows about music take control. Plus, it’s easy to make a pop song sound good or even recognizable when it is just a single violinist and not an whole ensemble.
Nathan gets most of his jobs through the New School Jazz Gig office and being one of two violinists at the Jazz school, the competition is not particularly fierce. Other jobs are mostly word of mouth.
The process seems to be an emotional roller coaster for Nathan.
“I’m always surprised at how much fun it is, I go in, you know, expecting it to be depressing, or sentimental in a way I can’t identify with. But I always end up kind of enjoying it at the end.”
Then he says he awkwardly stands around, waiting to be dismissed.