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The World's Most Inconvenient Apartment
Nov. 10th, 2018 06:53 pmDarwin went out of town last weekend, and Max was at his mother's, which left me at loose ends. While I like occasionally having the house all to myself, I decided instead to take a trip of my own. I love visiting Chicago, so that's where I went.
It was a weekend of biking down the lake and hitting museums and eating in restaurants Darwin refuses to consider (best sushi in the whole world was at Rollapalooza!). I tried to visit the new bookstore/dessert bar that recently opened, but it was an hour's wait for a table, so I did other things. In fact, it was a weekend of doing all the things I liked doing, without worrying about what anyone else wanted to do.
And through it all, I stayed at the World's Most Inconvenient Apartment.
I rented the place through AirBnB, and right off, I found a whole mess of micro-aggressions that made me want to run screaming. These little annoyances started right when I arrived. The iron gate to the apartment's courtyard was weighted to swing shut on you, but the placement of the knob made it extremely difficult to open and get through with luggage and a bicycle without the gate slamming on you halfway through. And so it began . . .
The main door to the building had been rebuilt badly, and it wouldn't open more than halfway. The turning staircase inside was narrow, and you could hear everything that was going on in the other apartments because each apartment door had a 1/2" crack at the bottom. (I did hear some interesting conversations from the three guys who shared the apartment directly across from mine.) This meant, I knew, that they could hear me, too!
The apartment itself was . . . well, yucky. Every surface had been painted over and over and over, leaving globs and bumps. The kitchen linoleum was cracked, and there was a tiny lip between the main room and the kitchen--just high enough to trip you. There was no actual door to the kitchen, but someone had hung a 50-cent curtain rod and a pair of sheer curtains across the doorway. Getting through was like fighting a spiderweb, and I finally took the whole thing down.
There was no table in the kitchen--or anywhere in the apartment! The closest I got was a half-assed, cheap-ass, chipped-ass coffee table the size of a shoe box and about six inches off the floor. There was no place to eat.
The bathroom was awful, too. Bad paint job, complete with paint smeared across the edges of the windowpanes because someone didn't bother taping first. There was a medicine chest, which I was happy about (a shocking lot of AirBnB place have little or no place in the bathroom to put anything), but like the front gate, it was weighted to swing shut on you. This meant you had to hold it open with one hand and root through your toiletries bag with the other in order to unpack, an awkward business at best. The toilet paper dispenser was mounted behind you at elbow level when you're on the toilet, meaning there was no way to actually reach any paper. I removed the roll from the spindle--and discovered there was no place to put the roll except the sink counter, which is usually wet. I ended up setting it on the floor. The bathroom light switch was loose, and it took three or four tries to get the lights on.
The main room--a combination bedroom and sitting room--was dominated by a king-sized bed, which was nice, but the micro-agressions continued. The sheets were maybe 10 count. Seriously. They were so rough that they caught and held the fabric of my pajamas like Velcro every time I tried to move. There was no nightstand anywhere, though there was space for one on one side.
A fake fireplace of white plastic brick sat against one wall for no reason that I could see. It wasn't gas or electric, and it had no flue, so you couldn't actually have a fire. It existed solely to take up precious floor space.
The clock on the wall ticked properly, and the second hand moved at a brisk pace, but the thing was stuck at 11:59. Seriously. It didn't move past 11:59 the whole time I was there. I was afraid to do anything about it. (The demons cackled, "Mwah ha ha! When a mortal moves the Clock of Doom to midnight . . . " or something, I was sure.)
But the worst of it was the lack of outlets. Really and truly. There were no usable outlets. The one in the bathroom was connected to the light switch, so it rarely worked properly. There were no outlets anywhere near the bed. I mean, none! The bedroom/living room had ONE outlet behind the enormously uncomfortable Ikea futon, and it was filled up with cords to floor lamps and the wifi router. If I wanted to use it, I would have to either sit in the dark, or do without wifi. And the socket was buried deep behind furniture, so even if I decided to sacrifice the wifi and plug something in, I would have had to sit with one butt-cheek on the cushion and one on empty air.
I finally found a single socket in the kitchen, but it was placed in such a way that it wasn't any good for recharging phones or pads or anything else. I did uncover an extension cord and managed to get one end partway into the living room, allowing me to use electric equipment, provided said equipment sat on the bed.
Oh, and the entire place reeked of air freshener. BAD air freshener. It smelled like the bottom of a cheap potpourri bowl over a toilet.
The apartment seemed deliberately designed to be annoying in this small way and that small way and this other small way, until you were ready to hurl a brick through the window. On Sunday I was never so glad to leave an apartment in my life!
On the plus side, I did score a perfect parking spot with SpotHero, so that was something, anyway.
It was a weekend of biking down the lake and hitting museums and eating in restaurants Darwin refuses to consider (best sushi in the whole world was at Rollapalooza!). I tried to visit the new bookstore/dessert bar that recently opened, but it was an hour's wait for a table, so I did other things. In fact, it was a weekend of doing all the things I liked doing, without worrying about what anyone else wanted to do.
And through it all, I stayed at the World's Most Inconvenient Apartment.
I rented the place through AirBnB, and right off, I found a whole mess of micro-aggressions that made me want to run screaming. These little annoyances started right when I arrived. The iron gate to the apartment's courtyard was weighted to swing shut on you, but the placement of the knob made it extremely difficult to open and get through with luggage and a bicycle without the gate slamming on you halfway through. And so it began . . .
The main door to the building had been rebuilt badly, and it wouldn't open more than halfway. The turning staircase inside was narrow, and you could hear everything that was going on in the other apartments because each apartment door had a 1/2" crack at the bottom. (I did hear some interesting conversations from the three guys who shared the apartment directly across from mine.) This meant, I knew, that they could hear me, too!
The apartment itself was . . . well, yucky. Every surface had been painted over and over and over, leaving globs and bumps. The kitchen linoleum was cracked, and there was a tiny lip between the main room and the kitchen--just high enough to trip you. There was no actual door to the kitchen, but someone had hung a 50-cent curtain rod and a pair of sheer curtains across the doorway. Getting through was like fighting a spiderweb, and I finally took the whole thing down.
There was no table in the kitchen--or anywhere in the apartment! The closest I got was a half-assed, cheap-ass, chipped-ass coffee table the size of a shoe box and about six inches off the floor. There was no place to eat.
The bathroom was awful, too. Bad paint job, complete with paint smeared across the edges of the windowpanes because someone didn't bother taping first. There was a medicine chest, which I was happy about (a shocking lot of AirBnB place have little or no place in the bathroom to put anything), but like the front gate, it was weighted to swing shut on you. This meant you had to hold it open with one hand and root through your toiletries bag with the other in order to unpack, an awkward business at best. The toilet paper dispenser was mounted behind you at elbow level when you're on the toilet, meaning there was no way to actually reach any paper. I removed the roll from the spindle--and discovered there was no place to put the roll except the sink counter, which is usually wet. I ended up setting it on the floor. The bathroom light switch was loose, and it took three or four tries to get the lights on.
The main room--a combination bedroom and sitting room--was dominated by a king-sized bed, which was nice, but the micro-agressions continued. The sheets were maybe 10 count. Seriously. They were so rough that they caught and held the fabric of my pajamas like Velcro every time I tried to move. There was no nightstand anywhere, though there was space for one on one side.
A fake fireplace of white plastic brick sat against one wall for no reason that I could see. It wasn't gas or electric, and it had no flue, so you couldn't actually have a fire. It existed solely to take up precious floor space.
The clock on the wall ticked properly, and the second hand moved at a brisk pace, but the thing was stuck at 11:59. Seriously. It didn't move past 11:59 the whole time I was there. I was afraid to do anything about it. (The demons cackled, "Mwah ha ha! When a mortal moves the Clock of Doom to midnight . . . " or something, I was sure.)
But the worst of it was the lack of outlets. Really and truly. There were no usable outlets. The one in the bathroom was connected to the light switch, so it rarely worked properly. There were no outlets anywhere near the bed. I mean, none! The bedroom/living room had ONE outlet behind the enormously uncomfortable Ikea futon, and it was filled up with cords to floor lamps and the wifi router. If I wanted to use it, I would have to either sit in the dark, or do without wifi. And the socket was buried deep behind furniture, so even if I decided to sacrifice the wifi and plug something in, I would have had to sit with one butt-cheek on the cushion and one on empty air.
I finally found a single socket in the kitchen, but it was placed in such a way that it wasn't any good for recharging phones or pads or anything else. I did uncover an extension cord and managed to get one end partway into the living room, allowing me to use electric equipment, provided said equipment sat on the bed.
Oh, and the entire place reeked of air freshener. BAD air freshener. It smelled like the bottom of a cheap potpourri bowl over a toilet.
The apartment seemed deliberately designed to be annoying in this small way and that small way and this other small way, until you were ready to hurl a brick through the window. On Sunday I was never so glad to leave an apartment in my life!
On the plus side, I did score a perfect parking spot with SpotHero, so that was something, anyway.
