#1 - Living in the hood.

Remember that time about 4 months ago when I said I was going to post stories about the top three shit hole apartments I lived in or roommates I had or something I can't even remember it's been so long, and then I posted one story and then forgot I was doing it and then remembered and posted another one a month later and then forgot again and never posted the last one?  Remember?  That was awesome.  So awesome that I imagine no one even knew I forgot or cared whether I posted the last one but I'm still going to post it anyways because YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.  So here it is:

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for older buildings.  I love the character of old hardwood floors and fancy arch ways and wooden banisters and plastered ceilings.  Unfortunately, were I used to live,  a lot of the cool older buildings are not in the most safe areas of town, and normally I wouldn't even go look at one of those buildings but, much to my parents displeasure, I did happen to go look at one and I loved it.

It was such a cute place with all the old characteristics that I liked, minus the wood floors. The best part was it had a little loft room up some cool stairs that looked down into the living room.   And it was very cheap and walking distance to work which sounds pretty ideal when you first look at it but if I would have thought about it for more than 5 minutes I would have realized that living close to where I worked wasn't necessarily the safest choice because I worked in the worst area of town.  Google "North Central Regina Crime" if you want to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.  Needless to say, my parents weren't pleased.  But it was cute and cheap so it was totally worth it.

Until I moved in and realized that no one had probably cleaned the apartment ever since it was built.  The carpets had been "steamed cleaned" but they had been so dirty previously that it didn't really matter if you had steamed cleaned them with bleach, I was still never going to walk on them without shoes.  The wooden banister was encrusted with grime the likes of which could only be successfully removed with possibly a screw driver.  And the fridge.  Oh the fridge.  I phoned my landlord after I moved in complaining about the smell and that I was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to smell like that but he said that, in fact, it was supposed to smell like that because it had been off for so long and that it would eventually go away.  It didn't.

The four months that I stayed there were pretty awesome.  The bath tub pipes froze almost every morning, smoke wafted into my bedroom from the people below me every night, and at least once a week I was woken up by cops storming into the building and dragging someone out.  The building was full of weirdos.  I often came up to the front door of the building to see some old dude standing in his basement suite in his underwear cooking dinner.  Not that cooking dinner in your underwear makes you weird but close the drapes or something.  Or maybe take a walk around the block every once in a while.

One day I had just come home from work and I had about 7 bags and I was struggling with my keys and it was probably about -50 outside and I couldn't get in but I was like, "Oh good, the guy who lives across from me who sees me EVERY DAY is coming down the stairs so he'll help me," but he just stood on the other side of the door and stared at me until I dropped all my bags and found the right key.  He must have stood there for a good 5 minutes just watching me freeze my ass off.  It was awesome.

The final straw was coming home Christmas day to my apartment literally full of smoke from the people beneath me.  I could actually see it wafting out of my apartment when I opened the door.  And I couldn't even open a window because they were all spray foamed shut.  And I couldn't have a shower because the pipes were frozen.  I immediately called my landlord and gave my notice.

The day I moved out was the day the guy from across the hall finally talked to me.  My apartment door was open because were loading things out to the car and he just walked right in and started looking around.  "Can I help you?" I asked.  "Yeah, uh, how much do you want for that TV?" "Dude, this isn't a fucking garage sale. I'm moving."  "Oh."  And then he left.  I was pretty confident with my decision to leave after that.

Well worth the wait wasn't it.