Yeah, the author's heading over that paragraph and the paragraph itself conflict. Within the paragraph he mentions that he has $1000 more in his bank account after two months, not one.
There are a bunch of confusing parts. For example:
"Some might think that this is heavy alcoholism, but trust me when I say that having 1–2 drinks everyday in New York is more than normal."
"More than normal" can read as a conflict with the beginning of that sentence (he drinks more than what is considered normal), or, and perhaps more likely, he's illustrating that his level of drinking is normal, if not more normal than most other people, which seems to contradict the meaning of the word "normal".
Or maybe it's 4:30 PM on a Friday and my brain is just fried and I'm over thinking things?
What he's saying is that NYC has a huge drinking culture (small apartments, lots of street activity) where a LOT of social activity revolves around bars. In my experience, 1-2 drinks daily would be considered moderation.
It's definitely a place where you have to learn how to moderate yourself. It is indeed quite easy to blow through $1000 in a month on alcohol related socializing, even if you tend towards the cheap places. Alcohol begets all other sorts of consumption (cabs, transit, extraneous food, pool/foos, etc).
"Some might think that this is heavy alcoholism, but trust me when I say that having 1–2 drinks everyday in New York is more than normal."
"More than normal" can read as a conflict with the beginning of that sentence (he drinks more than what is considered normal), or, and perhaps more likely, he's illustrating that his level of drinking is normal, if not more normal than most other people, which seems to contradict the meaning of the word "normal".
Or maybe it's 4:30 PM on a Friday and my brain is just fried and I'm over thinking things?