:: Electric Psychedelic Pussycat Swinger's Club ::

:: Friday, January 17, 2003 ::

blood-sucking ass clowns

Living in nyc, not a lot of time goes by where someone doesn't bring up how happy they are with their apartment. At first i found this odd; like who cares, right?. But now i'm beginning to understand. You see... I live on the top floor of a brand new 18-story student housing facility with a view that most new yorkers would kill for. I can see pretty much the entire nyc skyline from my apartment - empire state, chrysler building, brooklyn bridge, manhattan bridge, the hudson... you name it, you can see it. But it's not the view, the completely furnished 2-bdrm apartment, or even my roommate that's the problem. It's the fact that 18 year old punks are pulling false fire alarms every other week. That means i have to get my ass to walk down 18 flights of stairs every time this happens. The people who run this building, which is provided by Polytechnic University, are bumbling idiots so they keep us outside for an average of 1 hour AFTER the fire department has already left. This is so that they can violate my constitutional right to privacy by using the false alarm as an excuse to go into everyone's apartment and check to see if "everything's in order" - whitebonics for "we're looking for marijuana". All this at night in 25 degree weather, EVERY OTHER WEEK. We also can't have more than 4 guests over at a time and overnight guests require prior permission. Goodbye one-night stands, hello masturbation city. Why i'm here is b/c the housing administration at my school lied to us about preferential treatment given to those who live furthest away (San Francisco is about as far away as you can get in the states from ny, but that's a whole 'nother headache i'm too pissed to get into) and i didn't have adequate time, nor geographical knowledge, to find a place over the summer b/c i was in Europe backpacking the whole time (yea i know, poor me).

That brings us to the now. No longer being able to stand living here, i've been trying to find a place on craigslist for the past couple months, time permitting, but it's almost impossible to find something w/o a broker's fee. The blood-sucking ass clowns demand an avg of 15% the YEAR'S rent for their take. My friends...as you may already know, nyc rapes you on rent. So if a studio goes for $1,200 (and by "studio" i mean a whopping 200-300 sq ft, which is about the size of my parents bathroom back in CA) and they charge 15% for the year, my broker's fee comes out to be $2,160.

TWO-THOUSAND, ONE-HUNDRED, SIXTY-DOLLARS!

You wanna know what the best part is? All these brokers have to do to get my money is to spend 2 minutes and place an ad on craigslist; a service that's already free. What blows my mind is that's all they really do. No need to advertise elsewhere for their clients b/c the demand is so high. But what these clients/landlords don't know is that they can just as easily place an ad up themselves and save some ca$h. Rarely do i find an apt advertised by the actual owner. Oh yea... and the beauty of the market here is that people will take anything ON THE SPOT (w/o even having looked at the apt in many instances) in order to secure a place. And i mean anything. For instance, there have been several studios i've found where they advertise the bathroom being IN the kitchen. I mean, c'mon. In the kitchen? Those wonderful smells coming from the kitchen aren't what they used to be. What's truly remarkable is that you should see the way these brokers spin it in their ads: "the wonderful part about the apt is that you can prepare your dinner while taking a cell phone-sized shit on the can! How time efficient is that in today's fast paced world!?"

So my search continues for a somewhat affordable & clean apartment with no broker's fee in the east village. I'm not holding my breath.

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