Thursday, March 11, 2010

Home is where the rats aren't

Despite no luck to date in the job department, earlier this week I trundled off to the city to join Sparta in undertaking round one of The great apartment hunt of 2010.

On the train ride up I read Cormac Mcarthy's heartbreaking, soul-sucking, post-apocalyptic downer, The Road.

The apartments we spent Tuesday visiting? More depressing.

For example, for $1000 a month we learned we could live in a tiny ramshackle bachelor walk-up.

The place was insulated with a healthy coating of grime and the previous tenants were clearly hippie/Christmas elf hybrids who loved red and green so much they even took the trouble of painting the 300 year old fridge to match the walls.

And a friendly, jauntily behatted cockroach carried my bag up the stairs for me...Actually, that sounds kind of cute. It probably would have been one for the pluses column at that point.

To be fair, it did have a pretty nice balcony...with an excellent view of the parking lot of an establishment Featuring "NUDE! INTERACTIVE! DANCING!"

It didn't get much better from there.

Next trip up I'm leaving McArthy at home and reading something about a sumptuously furnished Parisian flat. Any recommendations?

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