Pajiba

Mine was an efficiency, and I had to share it with my brand-new husband. The bathroom was like a closet with a bathtub on one side. You could sit on the toilet and wash your hands in the sink--hell, you could put your hands on three of the walls from the toilet.
The kitchen was even tinier. You could put your hands on every appliance or cabinet in there without taking a step. It had half a stove. Seriously, it was this wee Suzy Homemaker-like thing with three burners and a shoebox-sized oven. I've never seen anything like it before or since.
The whole place was carpeted with outdoor carpeting. I think the landlady had had some bad experiences.
Instead of curtains, we draped an American flag over the bedroom window. Most of our furnishings involved duct tape in some way. I worked the graveyard shift at Hardee's and walked home at dawn. We smoked Kroger brand cigarettes and went hungry and ill-clothed so we could spend money on dope.
Jesus, I haven't thought about that place, or that husband, in a long time.

If we include college, my first apartment was a furnished one bedroom with a tiny kitchen and bathroom and way too many lamps and odd pieces of furniture. My landlord was in his eighties, so I got the feeling that every time he found a night stand somewhere, he put it in this apartment to add to the furnishings. It came with a parking spot, and my parents lived close enough for laundry purposes. It was on frat row, but surprisingly quiet. $650 a month.
My second apartment/1st adult apartment was in Germany - two bedroom, though one bedroom was huge and the other was the size of a closet, good sized kitchen, giant living room area and a bathroom that tried to kill me on a few occasions. There were stairs leading down into the bathroom which were very slippery, the shower door also didn't always stay in place and the room never got warm because the heater was on the opposite end of the room from the window.

I'm still living in my first apartment ...

$930 a month for a two bedroom, two bathroom, 1200+ square feet. 3rd floor, comes with washer and dryer and a patio overlooking the pool. As long as you're not in Uptown, Dallas living is preeeetty cheap.

The flipside is that my roommate and I are both right out of college and pretty low on the maturity scale. I bought furniture from Ikea back in August. It sat in its boxes till last week. I don't have a power drill so the seats of the chairs still aren't in. No sofa. We sit on the floor like a pair of dirty hippies in a gorgeous apartment. It's kind of great.

During law school I rented a ground level studio that was $450 a month. It was pretty small but I lived by myself so it wasn't bad. The bed/sleeping area was in an alcove which opened into the sitting area. It had a nice sized kitchen and bathroom and plenty of closet space which were the main reasons I picked the apartment. The worst part was there were no windows except for the large sliding door to the patio, which was below ground level so I always saw people's legs while they walked by.

Well that was a bummer. Put the actual name of the movie next to the image and I was left with grand expectations of some sort of Jack Lemmon discussion revival. Was there a copyright issue with using an image from "Joe's Apartment"? That sneaky, cranky Jerry O'Connel...

'preciate it, andwhocares

If you're interested:

www.toddburge.com

He's a neofolkie who has been making his living for several years as an itinerant musician, i.e., he's supporting a wife and two kids on his music. I've liked his songs better in the past, when he was still an angry young man and not so domesticated (he puts his kids on his CDs now, Godtopus help us), but he's the only guy I know personally who has had the balls to quit his day job and try to go it alone as a musician, so give him some love. His singing voice has an Appalachian twang that takes some getting used to, but he's very clever with his interior rhymes.

I lived with two other roommates in a three bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, NY around the Park Slope area. It was really more like a one bedroom with two large closets. My bedroom was about 70 square feet, but it had a window! Since it was a rent controlled building and I had the smallest room, I only paid $500 a month. Who says you can't live cheaply in NYC?

I want to call Child Protective Services retroactively for idleprimate. You lived in an episode of Law and Order: SVU.

We smoked Kroger brand cigarettes and went hungry and ill-clothed so we could spend money on dope. Jesus, I haven't thought about that place, or that husband, in a long time.

Posted by: Jerce at July 10, 2010 4:19 PM

Damn, girl. Kroger sold their own motherfucking cigarettes? That's some ghetto/trailer park ass shit my friend.

The best I can do is an efficency near a college campus. I furnished a futon and a tv. The complex provided a galley kitchen full of ants and (oddly enough) one of the largest, nicest bathrooms I have ever had. I don't know. But you could get a contact high from walking through the halls at any time on any day.

My first apartment was semi-respectable. I was 17 and sharing it with three other girls, we were in college. My share of the rent was $125 a month.

We had a big cabinet TV that was given to one girl by her grandma. We had some couches we found on the side of the road that were mostly wood but had this velour pattern on the fabric part that had farmers bringing in some sort of crop on it.

My grandmother had given me this 40 year old dining set that was mid-century fabulous. At the time (late 80s) it was considered butt ugly, but now I wish so badly I still had it. That sucker would be worth money.

I had the twin trundle part of a bed that was supposed to go under a bigger bed. It looked like you could press a lever on the bottom, Monty Python style, and catapult someone off it. So it was my catapult bed from then on.

I found an old desk spray painted GOLD on the side of the road and put it in my room until we figured out it had a nest of mice or rats (we didn't get a good look for the screaming) in the bottom drawer.

On the way to the bus stop every morning, we had to avoid two or three guys in their 40s who would hang out in their bathrobes outside and would try to talk us into their apartments in various ways: you look like a model, I'm a photographer/I make the best coffee ever, do you want some?/and my favorite: I think I found your lost kitty cat. (We had no cat.)

We didn't even care about any of this because we were LIVING ON OUR OWN!!! WHEEEE!!! The kitchen was microscopic. Two people couldn't fit in it and you couldn't open the pantry and the fridge at the same time. None of the drawers were big enough for cutlery holders, so we just dumped our few cheap pieces of cutlery in one drawer.

*******

The grossest apartment ever was a sublease one summer. It was built over this creek, on stilts like. And it reeked of mold and mildew always. The carpet was ancient. I guess in the 70s they were probably considered very mod. But ewww. You could hear rats at night running behind the baseboards. It had spiders, roaches, rats, termites, and ants. If you set down a drink, it was carried off by hordes of ants just minutes later. The smell in that place--ug. It never ended.

Then a girl moved in who was also a sublease from the original two girls and she didn't believe in bathing. I lived there in the SUMMER. In College Station, Texas.

Two apartments, both from college. My first one was one lot away from an intersection in uptown New Orleans with a bar on every corner. It had two bedrooms upstairs, one downstairs, and the living room had a wall of bookshelves that were about 3" deep. We filled the wall with beer bottles, which were the height of decorating junior year of college. The second apartement was known only as the Fish Bar. My roommates had bought only a few pieces of furniture. An elaborate bar that barely fit in the living room, and a series of fish tanks scattered throughout the apartment. It's import that the connection between the two is that in both cases we were robbed while in the apartment.
In the first apartment, my roommates came home drunk and left the door unlocked. Someone came in, stole all our small electronics, and went into everyone's room to get their wallets. In the second apartment, we were held up at gunpoint. I really hope New Orleans is a safer city now.

My first apartment was in Waltham, MA and was ~$300/month. The original rent was $400, but I say about 300, because while it was a 3 bedroom duplex, there were five of us living there. 3 on the lease, two off. So we were paid $80 each by one of the off lease housemates who had her own room, and the other off-lease housemate who was sharing the makeshift 4th bedroom (doubled as a living room) paid the utilities for us. It was AWESOME.

I lived there for a year and never got a key to the apartment because we all entered from the kitchen at the back of the house on the second floor and the door was never once locked. It was not the safest area, but we were all too lazy to get keys made...across the street. Only two people knew each other before we all moved in, but we all got along great, with the exception of one guy. Super OCD about cleaning, keeping the heat off, etc. And he was the only one living on my floor, and he and his friends enjoyed playing Edward 40 Hands and video games very loudly on weeknights. This was my second year at school.

Shitty insulation, old crappy carpets. I had a hand me down mattress that was amazingly comfortable and I asked never to be told what the stain in the corner as from. We had a mice and after the first 3-4 times sighting them, none of us reacted when they ran across the room. We all gathered in the living room/4th bedroom on Tuesdays to watch Lost. We had crazy dance parties in the kitchen. I miss it so.

honeybee reminded me of one apartment with such non-existing ventilation that, after one year of living there, the ceiling in the bathroom was covered in mold. No window, no exhaust fan, no vent, nothing. Ug.

I live by myself in a broom closet-sized studio over a hardware store. My buzzer is broken, my window is broken (and was broken for a whole winter) and I hate my landlord. But it's mine and I'm in my favorite city, so I love it.

First apartment was in college. Junior year I was dating this guy who I had imagined was the "forever one." I decided to live with him and his 4 male friends my senior year. By the end of junior year, the guy cheated on me and broke up with me.

I was sort of stuck, financially. I had no one to take over my part of the lease, and I really couldn't afford to pay my rent in that place and also pay for somewhere else. Sooo...I moved in.

It seemed like it was going to be a nightmare, but luckily the place was huge enough that we all got our own room. One room was a closet, and my ex decided to punish himself by taking that room. I was fine with this.

After 3 years of living with just girls, living with all guys, even a sleazy ex, was a veritable vacation. They were all pretty laid back and down to earth, and none of them was too much of a slob.

My favorite part of the place, though, is that the entire apartment was just kind of undecorated and ramshackle (because guys don't really care) but you opened the door to my room and it was like when Dorothy enters Oz and sees color for the first time. I put up a full canopy on my bed, took down the broken closet door and put up this beautiful curtain, and even bought real furniture (from Goodwill, but still--REAL!) I loved that room. It was my oasis.

Even better, I started dating someone else that year, and we're getting married two months from now. Sometimes things work out okay, and I remember that apartment with a measure of fondness.

2BR, 1BA shithole on Grady Ave in Athens, Ga. Went for $230 per month in '86. We pirated cable for a while from the vacated apartment upstairs by switching a couple of wires. Otherwise, the only notable thing about it was that Michael Stipe lived across the street (and still lives in the same house, BTW). He has a small front yard, but it's very well kept.

My first apartment was an unfurnished studio when I was in university.I found a wooden kitchen table and chair and made a coffee table out of a closet shelf and bricks, slept on a foamy on the carpeted floor. After I'd been there about 1 week, I noticed I was getting a lot of bites on my arms and legs...then I realized the place was infested with fleas. I used to grab them and throw them in the melting wax of a big candle. At the end of the first month I went to the landlord and simply showed her my arms and legs...the fumigators were there the next day.

I was one of four (maybe five?) residents of one half of a house in Northampton, MA. A lesbian couple (both academics) owned the house. All of us rode our bikes to our various jobs (mostly working on campus, waiting tables, etc.) and none of us had jobs lined up for the fall. My, how things have changed since 1994. I think there's a lot more pressure on grads these days to embark on their careers (though probably not during this recession).

My first apartment was in New Orleans, sophomore year of college. It was uptown with mansions on one end of my street and shacks at the other end. It was a 3 bedroom and I think we paid $425 each in 2002? I had a huge cockroach in my closet the day we moved in which started my too close relationship with cockroaches in that city. We had to buy blue cable to connect our computers to the modems since this was before the days of wireless internet. It also had NO insulation and like most places in N.O. the heat came out of the central AC which was in the ceiling. Since hot air rises this meant that the place NEVER heated which is awful when it's just below freezing ouside.

The first apartment where I paid for my own rent was the year I graduated college and had a job. It was a converted garage behind a 90 year old lady's house. Rent was $495 in cash so she could go gambling at Harrah's. There were spaces under the back door so the moment it started heating up outside I was surrounded by roaches. Ugh. I got real paranoid living there! The bedroom area was loft-style. I actually liked my little place even though it wasn't so... not well-finshed? It was clear her sons put it all together and lots of the wood wasn't even nailed on straight.

If we exclude college dorms, my first and only apartment (I'm in a rented house now), was my final semester of college at an internship in Phoenix. I had no car, and had very little time to find a place. So we asked my Uncle who lived in the area to draw a box on where I should avoid living, but still reasonably take a bus to work.

We found something literally on the edge of the box, and based off nothing but a few pics on the internet got an apartment. Drove down with my dad to find out the complex had had a fire, and was under new management, and the "new" studios they advertised weren't ready. It became clear they needed dependable tenants. They gave me a one bedroom for the price of the studio, like 500 bucks a month (plus my precious internet.)

It had one bedroom kinda tiny, a decent sized bathroom, a tiny kitchen, a good living room with "fancy" wood paneling, and the kitchen even had a little counter pass-through to the living room.

I had one of those double height blow up mattresses that developed a tiny leak halfway through the internship. I would wake up in the middle of the night to find myself dipping low into the bed, turn on its auto pump and go back to sleep.

I also managed to catch a glimpse of what I deemed "man-baby". He liked to dress up as a baby, and I once saw him like Bigfoot, unable to convince anyone else he existed. A few years removed I've found out he was sort of a local character known to Phoenix.

Combine all this with the weird shit I saw on my hour long bus rides to work and back, and I like to think I gained some good perspective.

Excluding my on campus living (though that was fascinating for the huge cockroaches and the 3 AM wake up call to look for a victim and a perp to explain all the blood in our hallway), my first apartment actually wasn't horrible. I got a little 1 BR in the Bronx for $899/mo, which I lived in by myself for the first year and a half. TheMaskedEmu moved in at that point. Anyway, the whole place was slanted, so that the doors didn't even fit with the frames. This meant the stove was as well, so any time I cooked anything, it slid to the front. I had one window unit in the bedroom until he moved in with me, and since this was the 5th floor of a 5 story building, it was boiling hot in there. This also meant a 5 story climb any time I left the building. I had to have a lock replaced the first week when my key snapped in it, which was bookended by having to have the front door rehung my last week there since it literally fell off when I opened it. I had mice and cockroaches while there, as well as a domestic violence case downstairs that woke me at 3 or 4 AM one night with the woman screaming "I hate you and I wish you'd die, stop hitting me!" at the top of her lungs. Someone else had reached the cops first, because all of the sudden, I heard banging on my door, and there they were, asking if I was alone, thinking, I suppose, that it had been my apartment. I was alone, but they were worried because I was out of breath (I tend to sleep au naturale, and had to run around throwing on clothes to open the door). I explained that it was the apartment below mine they were looking for, so while most of the cops (there were 5) went down there, two stayed just to check my apartment to ensure I wasn't covering anything. I still jump when I hear loud voices at night.

On the other hand, the place was mostly comfortable, 3 blocks from the subway, and across the street from the best pizza place I've ever been to. Also, since I was the top floor, I could pop up onto the roof via the fire escape whenever I felt like to get away and get a new perspective on the city, which was awesome. I also loved my super, who let us get away with a lot during our final walk through because he liked us and "had seen MUCH worse". Which I believe.

Now we live in a lovely little 2 BR with a huge bathroom and serviceable kitchen, in a lovely secured complex with a balcony, on the second floor. Only thing from the old place I wish I still had was that bathtub. Huge and independently standing, with no little extra drain at the top, and super deep. It's the only bathtub I've ever been able to just sit comfortably in and be fully submerged the whole time. Lovely.

After a volunteer year stint in a former convent, I really like my first real apartment. I have a roommate, so it's a two bedroom/two bath. After our urban options looked shitty and overpriced, we found a little neighborhood just outside of the city. It's pretty much suburbia - tree lined sidewalks, little brick buildings with four units each. Free parking, washer/dryer/dishwasher, a clubhouse and pool. Our only big problem are the high utility bills in the dead of winter, and the lack of electrical outlets near the kitchen "breakfast bar." Plus, the people downstairs with yappy dogs moved out!

I know how you feel! My animals always love to get into and onto the bed with me at night. I wake up covered in moulted hair!