Movin' Out

We signed a lease for our new apartment last week. The second floor of a well-lighted brownstone in Sunset Park. Gonna start hauling things over there this Wednesday. By Friday, I will say goodbye to this sodden hell-hole.

So let's look back on some of the good times that were had here:

1. Signing the lease one year ago and realizing that this was not an apartment after all. Due to housing laws, this basement cannot legally be rented as living quarters. Therefore it was rented to us under the guise of a "storage space". The ensuing problems we encountered throughout our stay were par for the course, I guess. We should've known better.

2. Waking up on the second morning of my stay in this place to discover that it was slowly filling with water. Most likely the sewer backed up and decided to flood our little abode.

3. Tearing up all the carpeting as a result of the flooding. At one point we had to move my bookcase aside to get the carpet from under it. I began taking the books out to make it easier to move. The landlord said, "No, just lift" and as he did the cheap pre-fab bookcase fell apart and my books tumbled into the remaining water from the flood.

4. Due to this place not being a legally recognized apartment, Time Warner would not transfer my account and hook up my cable internet. They wanted to send out someone from the Housing Authority to survey the place and determine if it was indeed an apartment. I cancelled my account and went with Verizon DSL, which took almost 3 months to install.

5. Sometime around mid-October we discover there is no hot water in the shower. We continually complain to the landlord, who finally gets around to fixing the water heater in March. 6 months of cold showers in the dead of winter. Awesome.

6. One day I try to leave the apartment and discover that I cannot open the door from inside. After about an hour, I am able to open the door and leave. A week later i come home from work and find my brother laying on the futon. He tells me he has been trapped in the apartment all day and finally just decided to call in sick to work and watch TV until I got home. We duct tape the door jamb and use the deadbolt to keep the door closed for the remainder of our stay.

7. As a Christmas present, the apartment floods again the morning of the 24th as I am leaving for Philadelphia.

8. We discover a hole in the wall next to the front door one day. We plug it with tinfoil and ignore it. A week later a friend of my brother is visiting and as we sit around talking the tinfoil pops out of the wall and a giant wire starts moving into the apartment. Steve's friend screams and runs away from the door. We later find out that the landlord is installing a call box so people can call from the front door.

9. Since the call box was installed, the landlord's children continually ring our doorbell. At least three or four times a week. I usually just press the talk button and calmly announce, "I'm gonna kill you all."

10. Sometimes the toilet handle sticks and the toilet keps running. If this happens at 3 or 4 in the morning, the landlord will continually ring our doorbell and say, "Jiggle the handle Steve! Dave! Jiggle the handle!"

11. Being a basement there is always some water that seeps up from the ground. I will often forget this and leave some books or Cds in a pile in the corner and when I pick them up a week later, they are mildewy. Again, awesome!

12. There were a few weeks last autumn when it rained alot. One night as the torrents came down I heard a dripping sound. I woke up and discovered that part of the ceiling had torn away. Chunks of plaster and drywall were dripping off and a steady stream of water was pouring onto the floor. I put a trashcan under to catch it, went upstairs to tell the landlord, then went back to sleep. Two weeks later he fixed the hole in the ceiling.

13. A strange smell starts eminating from the laundry room next to our apartment. Since we are not allowed to use the laundry room, I've never been in there. days pass and it smells more and more like death. I am convinced there is a dead rat somewhere. One night, as I am leaving for work I ask my brother if he's noticed the smell. We open our door and start hearing a cat mewling. I open the laundry room door and there is a kitten scratching at the door and the strong whiff of uncleaned cat litter. I shake my head and go to work. The next day there is no more cat sounds from the laundry room. But that night the landlord cooks up a lovely-smelling curried "lamb"...

Jeez, I could go on, but you get the idea.

One more week...