Finding the Diviest Dive of All: New Place to Live

[oedipa maas]

I'm looking for a new place to live. I've looked at a couple spots in the last few days which were pretty run-down, but the last place I saw really set a new standard. Even the realtor who showed me around was like "I'd understand if you didn't want to take this place".

Things the advertisement didn't mention include:
-the house was shared by 18 people
-there was no washbasin in the room with the toilet
-there are no lights in the hallway (to deter loitering)
-the decor consists primarily of graffiti and grime

The places I've lived haven't always had the newest carpet or furniture, but they were reasonably clean and well-maintained. The student residence I lived in a few years ago was famous for the horrible couches - the load-bearing portion of the structure consisted of 5cm metal piping which ran along the front edge of the couch (right behind the back of your knee while you were sitting). The arms were made of this same exposed metal piping and the entire couch was just short enough that the average person couldn't lie down properly. We called them "birth-control couches".

More horror stories:

Some friends of mine who lived in Austin in the 80's told me that they gave up on eating toast rather than trying to deal with the cockroaches that the crumbs attracted.

Another guy I work with told me about the apartment where he lived in Amsterdam a couple years ago. Apparently you had to be addicted to at least one drug to live there. The cockroaches would fall off the ceiling at night and land on your face. And the only way to get rid of the 'roaches was to vacuum them up into a nasty squirming mass.

 

[Evo]

Wow, they sound lovely.

 

[dlgoff]

Well, I stayed in a motel once that had mushrooms growing on the ceiling. Don't think they were eatable.

 

[chroot]

I have stayed in some incredibly bad motels out of sheer necessity on my many scuba diving adventures. (Strangely, there aren't many four-star resorts out near the sinkholes that open into underwater caves in the scrub land in the middle of Florida's panhandle...)

One appeared to have blood stains all over it. The bathtub, presumably originally crafted from porcelain, was so broken and eroded that water flowed freely out of it into a rotting, moldy hole that was growing in the middle of the bathroom floor. The air conditioner had been ripped out of the wall, leaving nothing but a cut extension cord and a gaping hole, large enough for a raccoon. None of the lights worked; we weren't even sure if they had bothered to provide their guests with electricity. We used our dive lights to brush our teeth. The sheets on the bed were sickly color of dried drool, and there were deep brown blood stains all over them, and all over the comforter. (How ironic that it should be called a "comforter.") We, strong-willed men, could not bring ourselves to even touch the beds. We ended up spreading our tarpaulins over the beds and sleeping atop them in our clothes. At least it was cheap -- the bill came to $5 a person, with tax.

- Warren

 

[BobG]

First apartment I lived in after moving out from home was pretty bad. It was a house that was divided into apartments. Unfortunately, the other, more expensive, first floor apartment got the real kitchen and bathroom. On my side, the stairs to the basement were covered by a floor with a trap door and turned into the bathroom. The shower was a metal shower stall in the bedroom hooked to the house's plumbing with PVC pipe. The 'kitchen' was a gas stove and home built sink and counter in the living room.

The walls separating my apartment from the other side of the house were all home made, as well. There wasn't a single right angle in the whole apartment. It was a very discomforting feeling if I'd had anything to drink.

It was furnished. The living room couch was two futon cushions with an old door stuck between them to give a little firmness. It also had a box spring and mattress on one of those folding frames.

The guy upstairs was an alcoholic suffering from schizophrenia or something. It wasn't a good idea to visit him when he was drunk (i.e. - it wasn't a good idea to visit him). He chased me and my brother down the stairs once with his Samurai grill steak knives. Seriously - they were the regular $1.99 knives with long handles used for cooking on a grill. He had them mounted above the mantle. He had a long story about how he obtained them from a martial arts specialist when he was in Viet Nam. We shouldn't have started laughing.

I loved the neighborhood, though. It was a distinctly 'hillbilly' neighborhood. If anyone had stopped at your door while you were at work, you heard about it from at least 20 neighbors as you walked home. I never had to lock my doors or windows.

Best of all, it only cost me $65 a month. Not only that, but it didn't even have cockroaches.

 

[hypatia]

I once stayed 8 weeks on Water Island{US Virgin Islands}, sharing a room with a goat. It wasen't so bad, the goat enjoyed going out and watching the stars with me.

 

[rewebster]

Best of all, it only cost me $65 a month. Not only that, but it didn't even have cockroaches.

How could you leave such a sensorially exciting place?

When I was in college, one guy I knew rented a room in a basement --that's it--one room--with a shared kitchen (in an old divided house)--the bad thing was that the restroom was in the kitchen.

I think that was against 'code'--but college level landlords did a lot a funny things back then --someone turned him (the landlord) in (the stool was taken out), so that guy that to 'go' to the second floor after that.