Adventures in Apartment Hunting

I haven't had to look for an apartment in years (thanks Mom and Dad!), so I was pretty rusty. And even back then I had Mom the realtor to help me out (thanks Mom!). Out here in LA, I was pretty much on my own. My future roommate James is gainfully employed from 9-6, which meant that during the week I'd have to fly solo. I originally thought that finding a decent place in a decent neighborhood within our price range wouldn't be that difficult, considering that Los Angeles is such a transient city and that we were looking right around the time when school gets out. Despite these two factors in our favor, it wasn't all that easy.

-Commuting is a bitch. The infamous LA freeways. They're fucking terrible. With no traffic, the trip from Long Beach to West LA usually takes 30-40 minutes. During rush hour, you can take those time estimates and double or even triple them. It once took me 2 1/2 hours. The sheer number of cars overwhelms the freeway and we all lurch and stop at a brisk 10 mph, baking in the sun. I once made the mistake of having the windows down and the arm out. My left arm is well done, while my right arm is still medium.

Music only satisfies for so long. I miss you, Glenn Ordway, Holley and Grandmaster Dale.

There used to be a sign in Boston, at the traffic snarl where 93 meets Storrow Drive, that read 'If you lived here, you'd be home by now.' I feel like they should put these up every ten miles on the freeway.

-Where the hell am I going? I didn't really have a clue as to which neighborhoods and areas were acceptable. I knew some major streets from past visits, but wasn't sure how they all connected. That's why they made the handy dandy Thomas Guide book of maps. It's an extremely detailed tome of all of Los Angeles County, from the Valley down to Long Beach. It's a godsend. It also helps that LA is kind of on a grid.

-Realtors suck. They almost never answer the phone. They almost never return phone calls. When they do, it's three days after the fact. Most of the time they don't bother telling me which property it is, as if their listing was the only one on my list. Anyway, fuck 'em. Didn't have to use any realtors this time around.

-Neighborhoods can differ greatly from one block to the next. It's strange. There's little progression from one area to another. We looked at one place in an entirely working class Mexican neighborhood. We walked one block up to look at another apartment, and suddenly we were in white yuppieville. The one block made that much difference. As such, expectations for a neighborhood based on address alone isn't going to cut it.

-Dude, where's my fridge? For some reason that I completely cannot understand, most apartments don't have refrigerators. You have to buy your own. When you move out, you take it with you or sell it. I'm wondering who the hell came up with this idea. I started imagining that Los Angelinos customized their fridges like they were hotrods or something. Black carbon doors. Chrome piping. A rear mounted spoiler. 5.1 surround sound. With options like those, I could see why you'd drag it from place to place. But that isn't the case. On the plus side, most apartments only require first month's rent and a security deposit.

-The eye candy from Beverly Hills to Hollywood is mouth watering.

-The city itself isn't all that nice to look at. The blue skies and palm trees are cool, but for a city obsessed with street cleaning and lawn maintenance, it looks run down and dirty.

-After a week of looking, getting lost, not having phone calls returned, and realizing that I'll need sunblock if I don't want to get super tan, I finally found a place. It's an area called Palms, which is south of Beverly Hills and east of Santa Monica. That means for LA, it's relatively cool in temperature, as Santa Monica is the beach. Being south of Beverly Hills means that it's relatively quiet and safe. Now that a place has been secured, the next step is scavenging all of the IKEA furniture from the fleeing college students. And finding out where I can pimp my fridge.

I want spinning rims.