NEW YORK NOMAD SETTLES DOWN "Real estate's all about relationships. ...

SETTLES DOWN

"Real estate's all about relationships. Every place I've stayed in New York, I've been there because of a relationship. When I couldn't find a place to stay, I'd take a job on the road. Now I'm settled in my own apartment. I've even got a puppy."

-Scott Peehl, 33, filmmaker

IVE YEARS AGO, at the end of a love affair, Scott Peehl asked himself, "What do I really want to do now?"

"Move to New York and make movies was what came to mind," he says. "So, I hopped on a plane, and came, and I'm still here."

Peehl got his first-and current-apartment just about a year ago. Until then, he was a New York nomad, moving often, always staying with friends. First, he shared his distant cousin's good friend's coop. The cousin's friend was away most of the time. Scott had the bedroom; she took the living room couch when she was in town.

"It was fine, except the management was trying to evict me as an illegal tenant," he says. "But I toughed it out. Somebody said you've got to give New York a year before you give up."

Good thing, too, because during that year Scott finished his first film, an award-winning short called Mr. Christie.

Then he moved in with a friend who was losing a roommate-except the roommate never left. So Peehl wound up sharing his friend's bed-"platonically," he says-for five months, until another friend steered him to a summer sublet that got extended through November. When that sublet ended, he peeled off for a stint at Sundance.

"I returned to New York prepared to continue my sleep-around, but a friend-ironically, it was my ex-boyfriend who'd broken my heart and prompted me to move to New York-led me to the building I now live in on E. 3rd St., under the watchful protection of the Hells Angels. My building's a lovely refurbished 1850s house that was, I think, either an insane asylum or old folks home during the 60s. Now it's two floors of SRO and three nice apartments," he says.

"I started off on the top floor, in an eight-by-18 tunnel-like room with a door at one end and a window at the other. I shared the bathroom with 10 other tenants. But now I've moved up in the world-to one of those lovely apartments downstairs. I have a bathroom all to myself."

Peehl now has three times as much space, pays three times more and loves it. Settling down has changed his life.

"For one thing, I learned real fast how to earn more and spend less.

"When I had the SRO, I thought 'I don't need a kitchen 'cause my rent is cheap and can afford to eat out.' Now, with the comforts and convenience of my own kitchen and living room, it no longer makes sense to eat out. I guess you can rationalize anything."

Best, according to Peehl, is the relief from SRO claustrophobia.

"The room wasn't wide enough to put the bed in more than one direction. Actually, I built a loft for the bed, and the loft had room above the door for the microwave and tv. I was living like a monkey, climbing all the time," Peehl recalls. "The arrangement wasn't great for a single guy.

"I mean, I've never tried much to impress, but asking someone to climb a jungle gym to get to bed is embarrassing. So it wasn't 'Your place or mine?' It was, 'Where's your place?' That was a big part of my motivation to move downstairs."

But, Peehl says, it took patience and luck to get the apartment, because people who like the building really like it, and rarely move.

"It's kind of a family. I mean, with so many people sharing the same bathroom and all," explains Peehl. "If people don't fit in, they just fade away. This is the first place I've lived where I really feel I fit in.

"I'm staying. Then, too, there's Mayhem, my puppy. He's already three times the size he was when he moved in, so he fits the apartment, too-just perfectly."