NY1 traffic reporter Jamie Shupak was living in the West Village with her fiance, whom she’d been with for 10 years, when he suddenly began expressing uncertainty about marriage.
It was around Labor Day last year and, over the next few weeks, the situation deteriorated — especially, she says, when she learned he’d been cheating on her — and she quickly moved out.
“I took enough clothes for two weeks and said, ‘I’ll be back to get the rest of my stuff when I find a new home,’ ” says Shupak, 29, speaking to The Post from that home, a cozy, 300-square-foot studio in the far West Village.
Lorenzo Ciniglio/Freelance
Jamie Shupak
Lorenzo Ciniglio/Freelance
TRAFFIC REPORT: NY1’s Jamie Shupak moved into this cozy rental last October and then decorated the place from scratch.
After moving out, Shupak first stayed in her best friend’s West Village studio — so tiny that the two had to share the bed. And although she’d lived in the nabe for seven years and loved it, she began looking in the East Village and SoHo to put some distance between her and her ex.
But Shupak, who wanted an apartment she could cook in for under $2,000 a month, discovered that a change in neighborhood would have been one change too many.
“Everything in the East Village was really old,” she says, “and anything in a high-rise doorman building was either way out of my price range or just didn’t feel like home. This was more than just looking for an apartment. This was gonna be my new life.”
Shupak began looking closer to home and, after seeing around 20 or so apartments, found something quaint online. As soon as she stepped into the $1,600 studio with the white brick wall, her despair was replaced by relief.
“That [wall] was the first thing that caught my eye,” she says. “I knew that my space was gonna be small, so I would want it to be white and bright.”
Shupak moved in Oct. 1 and, single for the first time in her adult life, was determined to make her new home “the coolest single girl apartment there ever was.”
Having taken nothing but her personal effects from her previous apartment — save for the toaster and steak knives — Shupak set out to decorate her new pad from scratch. After buying a bed from Sleepy’s on 14th Street (with her parents guiding her by phone from a Sleepy’s in her native Philadelphia), she hit Bed, Bath & Beyond.
“I wanted everything to be really neutral,” she says, explaining the choice of khaki curtains, gray bedspread, tan couch and slate-gray table.
“I didn’t want anything bright and cheery. It’s not my style, nor was it my disposition at the time,” she recalls. “I wanted everything super plain and figured when the time was right, I would spice it up with little fun extras.”
She bought a mirror and a dresser from IKEA, replaced the knobs with those in a rainbow of bright colors from Anthropologie, then hit the flea markets. At Williamsburg’s Meeker Avenue Flea Market, she found the gray table with a stamp on it from the Allentown State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital that has since closed.
“I thought that was kinda cool,” she says, “that some freaky psycho was sitting here.”
Next, Shupak painted the door of the closet that houses her entire wardrobe with a $10 can of chalkboard paint from Garber Hardware. “You can tell I painted it myself,” she says, “because the corners are all messed up.”
She keeps a bowl of multi-colored chalk on the table, and visitors contribute to an ever-changing collage. Graffiti on the door includes “Tom Brady” and “Go Pats,” put there by, she says, “the very first boy I made out with [here],” plus “Sexy Time,” “Smoosh Smoosh” and “Jamie’s Pad” — all left by various friends.
At the foot of her bed sits a trunk for extra storage — found at the Brooklyn Flea in Williamsburg — that she and her best friend decorated with wallpaper from Anthropologie. “We sand-papered the wallpaper to make it look old and vintage-y and worn out, and then we shellacked it on,” Shupak says.
Finding an apartment and designing it to her liking has rejuvenated Shupak, who says she’s “obsessed” with her home and happier than she’s been in quite some time. (Inspired by her now coolest single girl apartment ever, Shupak dates pretty much every week and has even become the dating columnist for Complex magazine.)
“A sad girl moved into this apartment, but my life has taken off since then,” she says. “This apartment is more than just my home. It’s the first big thing I did in my life for me.”
Jamie Shupak’s favorite things
* The exposed brick wall
* The chalkboard
* A photo with her brothers
* A DeSean Jackson jersey
* A painting from her mother’s childhood
* Her Jerry Garcia doll
* A trunk she purchased at the Brooklyn Flea
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