We've lived in our apartment for a bit over seven years. My wife and I took it sight-unseen before we left the West Coast in an enormous yellow moving truck, transporting the belongings of six people across the country. We drove through the Holland Tunnel, down a cobble stone street in Soho and over the Williamsburg Bridge, which deposited us at our doorstep with shocking suddenness. We looked around. We spotted a crack pipe on our doorstep. We walked up the stairs. We looked around. The place was tiny and unfinished. A very large feral looking dog snarled at us through the barred window from an adjacent roof. You could see the hookers patrolling the street from our rear window. It was nothing short of 90 degrees with 80 percent humidity and there was no air conditioning. We shrugged our shoulders. We had no where else to go and it was a month to month lease.
We finished the apartment, made friends with the dog, the dog's mother and the dog's mother's owner and just every other neighbor we could find. We knocked out a window and replaced it with a french door and built a roof-top jungle. We had a hundred huge, blow out parties.
When our landlord admitted that the place was not entirely "legal" we offered to stay on and "oversee" the renovations. We lived in that building through the total gutting and reconstruction, often with only three walls and no locks on the doors. We coughed a lot. Many of our things became irreversibly covered in fine white dust.
We had more parties. Actually, some of the best we have had.
After a full year of construction, we moved into our "new" apartment. We looked around and marveled at its size. We planned our new domestic life. We had a baby and brought him to the home.
Such it is in Brooklyn with construction that after only a year, the brand new roof leaks like a sieve and the joining compound around the window frames slides across the glass like mud. The stairwell smells like a dead person, there is still no post office box and our hot water is still a debatable reality.
I doubt we will leave anytime soon though. It would just be out of character.
3 comments:
I remember I was visiting back in 2001 and we were out on your roof. You went inside for something and I stayed outside by myself and that same feral dog, I think, showed up and nearly bit my leg off.
That dog lives in the mountains of Costa Rica now. He got pretty fat and lays about on the cool concrete floor and begets puppies with the local lady dogs. He is somewhat mellower.
that dog was called toy (I think) and it still scares me. there is a variety of wild eyed dog that will probably always scare me. I push toward overcoming this fear, but toy set me back a lot. He bit and/or snapped me dozens of times. It was usually when I was at my most unhindered self making wild gestures and talking in that high pitched voice that for many years was my only aural ID tag.
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