Apartment Blues (II)

So I guess to test the elevator’s capacity, I have to find it first…

Early Saturday morning, in the middle of the leftovers of Ernesto, I decided to walk down and actually go see the apartment for myself. I let myself in by obediently “bringing the PROXIreader within close PROXImity of the magnetic reader”, could hear Ms.Manager’s voice ringing in my ears. The lobby looked beautiful. ANTIQUE chairs and pictures all around. My soon-to-be apartment was on the fifth floor and following the paper map tour I was given, I knew the elevator was next to the stairs. I saw the stairs but no elevator. I went back again and looked for the elevator. Nothing. In the modern world when you think elevator, you think of a flat, usually stainless steel door possibly with a split along the middle, hard to miss. But for some reason I wasn’t spotting it. Since when did an elevator become a needle in a hay stack? Maybe I was on the wrong side of the building, but there was no other side. All I saw was this big door, looked like the door to some kind of store room or something. Couldn’t be it. I worked around again, *Ok, think outside the box* by elimination, the only thing it could be was that door. So I went and tried to open it. No luck. Until I saw a little button next to it. Oh my goodness! This is the elevator, and its entrance is a wooden door, this can’t be good. I pushed the button and waited to hear beeps. Again nothing.

I eventually heard the sound of a bunch of metal rubbing against each other. And finally a tiny lit up room came into view. At this point the door clicked and I tried to open it. This time it obeyed. There before my eyes was another mesh gate that I had to open. I thought I was in a movie for a second, one of those movies based in the 1930’s. The elevator was one of those antique ones that I had only seen in movies, most of these kind of elevators were only used as freight elevators now(can’t seem to find a pic). Its inside was painted with fishes on a blue background. Not some professional masterpiece. It looked like they gathered a bunch of twelve-year olds to paint it as a last minute science/art project. It was until my fifth or so ride in it that I finally figured out they were trying to create the illusion of going under water while in the elevator. Perhaps to accommodate its more claustrophobic riders, cus the darn thing felt like a cage. Good try though, but I still felt like a gladiator traveling in his cage to God-knows-what up above.

I finally made it up, no angry lions or blood thirsty Romans waiting to watch a fatal battle. Great, but at this point I was dreading what the apartment itself would look like. I held my breath as I swung the door open...hardwood floors. Why are these East Coasters always so fascinated by wooden floors? Personally I think they’re too much work to maintain. I’ll rather do carpet that I can vacuum when necessary. On a more approving note, the bedrooms and living room looked pretty decent. Nice and spacious with one of those old school metal column heaters on the wall. Next stop the kitchen.

This was the biggest shocker of all. It was smaller than anything else in the rest of the apartment, in fact, than any kitchen I had ever seen. Apparently, back when the building was constructed, people did not feel that counter tops were a necessity. How was I supposed to throw down when there was no counter top or surface to create any masterpiece? So all that was in there was an old sink, a refrigerator, stove and some dingy cupboards. These cupboards were made of some rusty metal that looked like you might catch something from just opening them. The only relatively modern thing in there were the refrigerator and stove, so we’re going to try working with those until the bank accounts give us the green light to go shopping for tables and such.

The bathroom too had the same general theme, old tub, old sink etc. The toilet has an amazingly low water pressure that doesn’t look like it can handle a rough bout of constipation. At least thank GOD all utilities are included so if you have to try three or four times to bury the deed, water bills won’t be going off the charts.

And that ladies and gentlement is my home for the next year or so, maybe longer if I get into med school here

***************************************************************

When it eventually came time to move, you can trust we did not break our backs trying to carry stuff up a million stairs, apparently the tons of other people moving in were not trying to do this either so I did not feel too bad. The elevator thankfully was on top of the little game it had. Too bad Ms.Manager’s ten minute lecture was going to be of no use. It was while moving that I met one of my neighbors.

He advised us not to look at the building as being old, but rather as it having “character”. S-S-Suuuuure! Like I said earlier not many things live up to their hype, and even trying to play mind games with oneself is not helping this one. Our other neighbors(the roaches) have also been coming out one-by-one for their fatal meet-and-greet sessions with us. I guess with time I might eventually start to notice this “character” our friend talks about. Till then, its off to to take a 1930's style shower, then down the time machine…errr…elevator, out of here and back to the future(work)!