NY Times
Isaac Goldberg was working on the 2014 re-election campaign of
Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of Huntington, N.Y., when he
decided to have a party in his Astoria, Queens, apartment. He sent out a
mass invite to everyone working on campaigns for Democrats on Long
Island.
Anna Doré didn’t know Mr. Goldberg, but she was helping
out with another campaign, heard about the party and decided to go. Ms.
Doré, who works in public relations, has spent only five months of the
last seven years working in politics. But that short window of time just
happened to coincide with Mr. Goldberg’s party. “It was very much
kismet,” she said.
It was also 90 degrees when she arrived, and
most of the partygoers were circled around the air-conditioning unit,
nursing Jell-O shots to keep cool. Campaign posters, an American flag
and a 1996 Yankees championship poster adorned the walls. “The décor was
definitely in need of some love and affection,” Ms. Doré said.
Surrounded
by a mix of memorabilia, election talk and spiked refreshment, she and
Mr. Goldberg found each other. One spark led to another and, seven years
later, they are married and living in the same building where they met.
“We
joke that Anna came to a party at my apartment and hasn’t left since,”
Mr. Goldberg said. The joke is only partially true: While the couple has
stayed in the building, they are living in their third apartment there —
all on the same floor.
It was just a few months into their
relationship when Ms. Doré moved in with Mr. Goldberg. She had been
living on the Upper East Side, but fate forced her hand when a 4 a.m.
fire broke out in her building. “Isaac raced over and came to the
rescue,” she said, “even though we were just newly dating.”
She
stayed with him that night, and the next day her building was condemned.
Sharing the one-bedroom with Mr. Goldberg quickly evolved from a
short-term fix to a long-term commitment.
“I didn’t want to be burned into living together,” Ms. Doré said. “But it worked out.”
In 2019, after the couple married at the Queens Museum, they
envisioned themselves remaining in the second apartment for years to
come. But then, Covid.
With both of them working from home, Ms.
Doré set up a makeshift office in the bedroom. “I was sharing a wall
with Isaac in his office,” she said. “As a political consultant, Isaac
tends to talk on the phone all day.”
Investing in noise-canceling
headphones helped “preserve our sanity,” she said, but it soon became
clear that they needed a more permanent fix.
They
thought the day had finally come when they would move into another
building. Over a couple of months, they looked at 10 apartments in 10
buildings, sticking to Astoria for their search.
They are, by Mr.
Goldberg’s admission, “Astoria obsessed.” For more than two years, Ms.
Doré ran a locally focused Instagram account, WeHeartAstoria.
“I started to love the neighborhood through that lens,” she said. “We knew we didn’t want to leave.”
For
his part, Mr. Goldberg is attracted to Astoria’s livability and
working-class feel: “There’s the joke that the two hardest things to
find in Astoria are doormen and dishwashers.”
Might as well leave this here. Mr. Goldberg happens to work for Berlin Rosen, the consultant lobby that donated robustly to Bill de Blasio's campaign and his illegal 501c4 PAC "Campaign for One New York" as "agents of the city"
