Our House
We're looking for a new apartment in Los Angeles. It's a pain, but a necessary pain - we got the apartment clearly as the 'first place in LA' kind of thing, with a premium on the right neighborhood (West Hollywood) and dreams of using amenities the building offered, amenities we have almost never used. So we're looking for another, better place, but as so often happens in these sorts of things, another, better place is difficult to find.
What is not difficult to find, however, is the shithole that I checked out yesterday afternoon. It promised a nice guest cottage in a nice part of town. It promised a private, fenced-in yard. It promised - well, let's not dwell on the fantasies described on West Side Rentals. I can tell you, however, is that it turned out to be the ugliest house on the street of beautifully well-kept homes. The front house looked like a crack house. Sure, people say, 'crack house,' and just throw these terms around without really thinking, 'does this seem like an actual crack house?' Whereas I, having grown up in the methbasket of California, I like to think I know of what I speak when I say that the low-slung house that's not been kept up, the one with the giant black Ford F-150 dripping oil all over the driveway, the one whose 'private yard' is actually a concrete-filled patch behind the main house - yes, that one - THAT one looks like a crack house. Did I mention that one wall of the house had a handle? Apparently, in the not-so-distant past, the 'guest house' was a 'garage.' The bonus room was probably where the tools were kept and where - distressingly - the current occupants had showcased various trophies and extra-large bottles of booze. While the broker was trying to show me all the wonderful storage in the place, I couldn't get over how the current tenants were using the storage - for their collection of booze. Uh, yeah.
I tried so very hard to imagine the place vacant, scrubbed clean, a liberal application of bleach... and yet, no. I'm sorry, lady. That place is not worth $1600/month. Seriously? No.
And the search continues...
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