A lot has happened since the last time I reported on our domestic situation. First off, we lobbied our landlord to fix the shower–and he finally did, after 6 years! He did, because I told him N had scalded himself. “Scalding” is a magical word in NYC housing law. I was pretty impressed with my savvy.
So he sent someone to fix it, and they did, with mixed results.
On the plus side, we got new, non-leaking fixtures that actually allowed us to control the temperature of the water.
On the negative side, it took two weeks of us showering in a tub sealed off with contractor garbage bags and gaffer’s tape before they sent anyone to put tile over the gaping hole the plumber had created.
On the plus side, we met the super from the building next door*, a gracious former death metal drummer. (I don’t know what it’s like to go from touring Europe and getting blowjobs every night to living in a basement with your mother, in Queens. I imagine it’s not much fun.) We told him how much we hated hated HATED our neighbors and our apartment and the building, and he told us that if anything opened up in his building, he’d let us know. Because we are nice people.
Flash forward a few weeks and N & I had begun perusing Craigslist apartment ads daily in order to temper the escalating bloodlust we felt toward our neighbors. I was literally hitting Apple+R every 15 minutes.
An apartment from the building next door appeared in the list. A 2BR in one of the two most coveted lines in the building (this building is identical to ours, and is a prewar job, so each apartment line is–for some bizarre reason–a different shape. There are two lines with absolutely enormous living rooms, and this place was in one of them) and it was available for March 1. We went over to see it that night. We overlooked the quirks–the cabinet- and drawer-less kitchen painted bright green, the decrepit bathroom (I know, I know…)–because all we could think of was HOW BIG THIS PLACE WAS and how we could fit ALL OF OUR SHIT and THEN SOME. We grilled them: Are the neighbors noisy? Does anyone downstairs smoke? How is the water pressure? They claimed everyone was really quiet and kept to themselves.
So we decamped our 1BR with the awesome view of the city and not a single good quality beyond that, found someone to take over our lease**, and moved in last weekend.
It’s the biggest place I’ve ever lived in NYC. You could fit most studio apartments inside our living room. So that’s cool. The wood floors are nice and level. The bedrooms get good light. And they were right–the neighbors are pretty quiet.
So our first night, we got into bed, all proud of ourselves that we’d finally escaped all the screaming, banging, slamming, hammering, drilling, sawing, and smoking. It was so very quiet.
At first.
At 1 am, a startlingly loud whirring noise woke us up. I lived next to a long-haul trucker growing up. Sometimes in the winter he’d leave his truck running all night (or else it wouldn’t start). It sounded like that. We wandered around the apartment trying to figure out its origin–the floors were actually vibrating.
And then it clicked off. And 45 minutes later, it clicked back on. And then off. And then on. And then off.
It turns out that we live above the building’s boiler.
Which means that everyone whose name I cursed for the past 6 years has had the last fucking laugh. Oh, but let’s just see who’s first up against the wall when the revolution happens. At least our living room’s bigger now.
Lullaby for the Strange, by Gabriel Hart. [Via A Little Necrophilia.]
*Who, unlike the super from our building–the Serbian war criminal who once told me, when he was hooking up my gas stove in a rather cavalier way, “In my country, is man talk and woman listen, you know?” –actually does work.
**More on that later.
…Even after (or in spite of, depending) two giant cups of coffee. I’m feeling scattered, because I have lots of stuff to do this week and I [totally and completely lost track of what I was typing just then, because I decided to do three other things simultaneously, all of which are probably half-assed].
As such, this post will have no real narrative arc.
N and I are officially sans automobile. Last week we were trying to get our 20-year-old station wagon inspected before the current inspection expired, but our usual mechanic–who generally holds onto our car for weeks at a time, like it’s car rehab or something, and then returns to us a rejuvenated car with a more clearly defined sense of purpose–couldn’t fit us into his rather busy schedule of holding onto other people’s cars for weeks at a time.
So, our inspection expired and we drove our illegal automobile over the bridge to Greenpoint, where the mechanic wisely looked under the hood before he even began the inspection.
“You need two new struts and this hose needs to be replaced.”
N and I have discussed precisely how much money is too much to throw at a car with a Bluebook value of $50 (and that’s because it has a tape deck). “How much would all that cost?” N asked.
The mechanic motioned the garage owner over.
He started out, “Yeah, you’re looking at probably $90 for each strut, plus $65 labor for each side, plus this hose–well, the hose is like $20–but we have to remove the axle to replace it, and that’s like two hours right there…” at which point I stopped hearing anything except for an old-fashioned cartoon adding machine.
He seemed to think it was a totally reasonable amount of work.
N and I turned to each other. “Maybe we should just put it up on the Free section of Craigslist,” N suggested.
“Yeah, I guess that’s our best bet.”
And it really was a bet, because part of me was hoping that maybe the owner would make a counteroffer of, say, $75 to repair everything. But it was only a really tiny part of me. Paramecium sized.
“Well, hm,” the owner said, lighting up an unfiltered Camel [Aside: They still MAKE those? I can't believe it] and looking like he was trying to convey Deep Thinking in a game of charades. “The mechanic here needs a car.”
The mechanic looked vaguely embarrassed.
“Do you want the car?” We both asked this at the exact same time, our voices probably an octave higher because of our excitement.
The mechanic shrugged. “I could probably do something with it.”
“It’s a great car,” I offered. “Runs really well.” And that wasn’t even a lie! And even if it maybe were a little bit of a lie, the guy’s a fucking mechanic and the car is fucking FREE. Take it take it take it take it take it, I willed him telepathically.
He shrugged again. “Okay.”
I’d like to say that this was an act of altruism and generosity, or, as N’s parents would say, a “blessing.” But really, it was the opposite of selflessness. We dumped that car like it had a curse on it.
Hooray! I took the plates and registration and we marched over the bridge home, feeling a little sad. It felt like the walk of desperation you make when your car breaks down. But in this case, we were abandoning it.
Well, not quite, because the next day I marched back over the bridge to bring him the title and clear out all our cassette tapes. I patted the back hatch in a totally detached way, like I was trying to convey Old Yeller in a game of charades. Goodbye, car!
I wonder if we’ll see him driving around? Or will he opt to dump it in the East River, something we considered more than once?
Our neighbors, the snoring, shouting, banging ones, have been involved in some serious renovation on the wall that separates our bedroom and theirs. Yesterday was hammering and scraping and thudding that was making the wall literally bow outward, as N and I stood there, holding our hands against it. I think they could hear us exclaiming Jesus Walking Fuck what are they doing now? because they sent a 12-year-old girl over as their spokesperson. According to her, they’re apparently replacing the wall, because it’s cracked and our landlord (as I’ve said before) is not particularly proactive. I’m not entirely sure I believe that’s really what they’re doing, but who knows. Hope springs eternal in our household.
Did you happen to see this Daily News article about John LeBoutillier, a crackpot ex-congressman who got ripped off by the mafia? If you didn’t, you might be surprised to find out that enlisting jailed American mobsters in an effort to track down Viet Nam POWs being held as slaves in Belarus is not an efficient use of $18K.
This 1988 article from the NYT shows that LeBoutillier’s been peddling crazy for over 20 years now (alongside Bo Gritz, another selfless humanitarian), claiming at the time that there were anywhere from 4 to 400 POWs still alive in Southeast Asia. There’s not a shred of evidence that this is true.
And yet, he persists. LeBoutillier began collaborating with Frankie “Blue Eyes” Sparaco a few years ago, reasoning that an illiterate, imprisoned mafia hitman from Brooklyn would make the best emissary to correspond with Russian mobsters.
“In our prisons are hundreds of Russians, many of nefarious background; some were even in the KGB,” said LeBoutillier last week. “You and I could not go and find these guys and talk to them. If anyone in there could talk to them, that’s what I want. It doesn’t matter what his background is, if he can help get information about American prisoners of war I’ll talk to him.”
And as a favor to Sparaco, he used his clout to have a man who was convicted of FIVE COUNTS OF MURDER moved to a medium-security prison.
But it turns out that Sparaco and a flower deliveryman accomplice (the brains of the operation, it would seem) were conning LeBoutillier. And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
The Minutemen, Sickles and Hammers
*Original title: The beat don’t stop til the break of dawn, at which time there will be a 15 minute intermission, and the beat will then resume.
Oh for all that is holy why do I live in NYC? Our apartment, in past winters heated to nosebleed-inducing, skin-wizening temperatures, is now about 65 degrees in the day and even colder at night. My parents kept our house at 65 degrees in the winter. I hated my parents then. And I beyond loathe our landlord at this point, as he is responsible for installing the Situationists upstairs and the snoring, clomping, brawling family next door (about whom it must be said that they are probably just as miserable as we are, particularly when N and I practice our knife-throwing routine). He is also the man responsible for commissioning the bathroom artistry pictured above,* and which he is unwilling to repair, even though it is “nonconforming,” as the folks at the City would probably call it. (Oh, but don’t worry–I already have all sorts of forms downloaded from various agencies! He better hope that I don’t actually get around to filling those out!)
Worst of all, if you go to my landlord’s “website,” it immediately begins playing a midi version of “New York, New York,” which even Time Cube guy would agree is Bad Web Design.
Anyhow, maybe N and I should just move on down to Florida, seeing as we did just buy a house there and are spending eleventy-billion dollars to have the heater repaired today, given that it’s about 25 degrees down there, too.
Oh, speaking of down south, we have this, “Couple arrested for giving kids tattoos”:
They cleaned up a tattoo machine someone gave them, and used guitar strings as a needle. Out of the seven children in their custody, only the youngest child did not get a tattoo.
“They weren’t hurt by them,” Marsh said. “We would never do anything to hurt them.”
Little tiny crosses on their little tiny hands! I ask you, what is the point of having that many kids, beyond forming a gang or a basketball team? They needed those cross tattoos.
*This is only partly true. His father, from whom he inherited the building in the 70s (I know everything about this man, because I have super-detective powers, and if you have ever wronged me, it’s likely I know everything about you, too), was probably the one responsible for it, because those fixtures date back to the Eisenhower administration. And even Eisenhower, dead and in the grave, could tell you that.
Where did she go?
I am lazy. If you're bored, go visit my tumblr, updated daily with other people's witticisms and erudition.Also by me
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