What a great idea, yublocka! Maya, have you let your bosses and coworkers know that you are looking for more hours? Even if it's not within that company--they may have outside contacts for you.

I second everyone's suggestions to get a second job especially to afford NYC. Everyone I have ever known who lived in NYC did this and worked *hard*. I also like Tamara's idea of doing free lance web design. My husband has been working on a dot com start up and he has really struggled with finding good designers. He has finally had good luck with a local design start up but it has been quite an ordeal.