Speaking of an apartment by Jane Stern

As a child who grew up on Midtown Manhattan, I learned to speak very early. When other parents might ask, “What do your friends’ parents do?” My parents asked, “Where do they live?”-Not geographically but want to know whether they live in rock chocolate, high-rise, train flat, six classic, studio, attic, efficiency, or penthouse. With that information, they can fill the emptiness.

After the basic category of domicile was determined, we came to the section set. Doorman? Fire runs away? Before war? Bathroom tiles or linoleum? Walk-up or elevator? What floor? Super on the spot? Lift man or press button? This might look like a random question, a little strange, but believe me, they provide accurate cultural barometers.

I was sad to see my friends (or, more precisely, their grandchildren) tried to find their first apartment. Reading apartment ads like trying to understand the list of materials behind the can written in a language that you don’t understand, or maybe like to try to find a partner on a dating site where everything is unclear and unclear: “He likes to walk on the beach.” This is a recipe for heartbreak.

If you read advertisements for the available apartments confusing, I can try to help by making this blanket statement: “What is written in the ad is all lies.” You should be able to see behind the veil of false hope. I have compiled several translations that might help.

Basic apartment glossary speaking

Comfortable: So small that you will store your clothes in a plastic box under the bed.

As is: Complete accident. If you are lucky, the owner will take off the corpse.

Captivating: A messy tree view, bent floor, shaky ladder.

Modern: Harvesting equipment or avocados from the year of the dies disguised as chic retro.

Built-in: The tenant previously added a strange cabinet and shelf that you could never delete.

Requires TLC: Likewise John Wayne Gacy.

Yoga facilities: The gloomy shared public space where you can open your rolls.

Especially for craftsmen: All home depot staff cannot help.

Original detail: Toilet flush with cables hanging on the ceiling and sealed cabinet doors, you can never open but hear sounds.

Rural: You will need permission to hunt for tracking and wild dogs scratch your door.

Good bone: Thinking about Katharine Hepburn in 1940, thinking about Katharine Hepburn she died.

Prison guard: The road is too expensive with the charm of the company office.

Airy: All windows are broken.

Friendly staff and leasing facilities: Machine Mr. Coffee in the lobby is mostly empty.

Hidden gems: So far from any shop or school that cannot be found by the police on their map.

Recently renovated: Fresh Paint Layers of Fifth are applied carelessly so that you will never be able to open a window or find an electrical outlet.

Where to start

Good rarely advertised; They are sent down to friends or family members. If you are lucky, you will be told by word of mouth. Some apartment seekers who were desperate to read local obituari or bankruptcy notification in newspapers to see if an apartment might become empty. Others watched the Elang to move Van and U-Haul.

Finding a good apartment often involves some cash given calmly for the right connection. There is no signed form, no documentation, only “understanding.” Some call this really money, but that is just a big bribe.

Renting an apartment in a city that is less “established” is no less tiring. You might be able to work around bribery and connection, but you will have an exchange in producing credit ratings, security deposits, endless signing of rent, criminal and bankruptcy investigations, and pet documentation. Pet ownership may look at least from your worries in finding an apartment, but don’t deceive yourself.

If an apartment “is a pet friendly,” you may still pay a large move for your pet and then a significant monthly rate. You need to provide vaccination records and other medical certification. Many apartments, especially those who have hoa, demand your dog have expensive oral DNA swabs.

Swab DNA is if you don’t take their dirt when they walk. The rental company will be able to match their dirt left with DNA in the file, and you will be very fined or expelled from your residence. This will then be a permanent record that will follow you when you try to rent another apartment.

Your new apartment

If you are lucky enough to find a decent apartment in a safe environment, don’t celebrate it. If there is, now is the time to prepare for battles.

Here is a short list of problems that you will find in your new apartment.

1

Unless you are blessed have moved to beauty before the war with a six -foot thick wall made of concrete and horse, you will hear your neighbors. Noise is the number one complaint among the residents of the apartment. The newly the building, the thinner the wall. You will hear it sneeze, have sex, change the TV channel, and drag the mysterious things across the 2nd floor MORNING

PS – If this crept you, remember they can also hear you.

2. Landing

Your apartment is likely to be one of the many who have landing. It doesn’t matter whether it is a walk-up building or with an elevator: You are not alone. After you close your apartment door, the space inside is yours, but outside the front door, there is a grass war.

If you are fortunate enough to share landing with “Creative Decorator,” you will find yourself in the chaos of the dollar shop, the dead holiday door bouquets, Mickey mouse inflatables as high as six feet, and posters or flags for whatever the popular causes of popular political, not to mention the incense and pungen candles spread by KUDZU. Landing is also a repository of bicycles, skiing, hockey sticks, and anything with outdoor vibrations.

The front door of your apartment will soon become an Amazon shipping site that is wrong for your neighbor, Doordash Suppers yesterday, discharged charity donations, wrong dry cleaner drop-offs, limestone from their children, and forgetting dog bags.

3. Parking

Parking might sound more like a house problem, but the apartment is an intense car war. If you have a house, you have an entrance or a kind of permanent car space, but imagine you live with three hundred other people and no space is set: Parking first comes, first -served. Even if your room is assigned and your apartment number is clearly painted in your room, it will be ignored.

In some high -storey apartments there is a garage in the basement, which is comfortable, but the tariff for monthly parking such as the Ivy League college lecture without clear reason increases every few months. Because the turnover level for people who are rented to park the car is astronomy, the fact that your maseti has a new scratch or dent when you call down for meeting your shoulder. “Raoul doesn’t work here anymore.”

4. Nail hole

If you rent, you can’t bang nails to the wall and hang the picture. You can’t install your TV on the wall. You cannot add wall units, security systems, shelves, chandeliers, or change equipment in the bathroom.

Of course, you Can Do all this, but if you have ever moved, get ready to spend tens of thousands to repair damage.

You cannot put something useful or permanent to the balcony or terrace (such as a picnic umbrella or TV antenna). Unfortunately, a sad shower that drips like the tears of old widows is yours forever. Do not torture yourself by looking at the size of a large plate in Amazon.

If you have the courage to want to move, the apartment will be examined and everything in the excavation of your utility level will suddenly become a valuable Sotheby class. A thin beige carpet, a bug that is in the window, a cracked plastic toilet paper holder, and the ceiling paint -the ceiling of the gravel popcorn is now an architectural gem. Diana Vreeland chose the same one for Met.

You can’t move

So the lesson to learn is: You might also learn to like your apartment because you can’t go. Another public misunderstanding about the life of the apartment is that whatever bothering you is not a big problem because it is temporary. In some cases temporarily, but if you decide not to like to live there, you can’t move.

This is the truth: You can move when rental and after you pay all your bills. You can move after the apartment has been checked for your damage, your dog, your parakeet, or your child is caused, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. Getting controversial divorce from billionaires is easier than violating standard rental.

In most states you can move the middle rent if your landlord instantly can rent that place to others, but this never happens in the history of humanity. This is like getting your security deposit back. Maybe very much, in Narnia.

According to the legal website, government documents, and my own rent, some things will make you out of the mid -year commitment. Even dead is ready for negotiations because now your apartment is a survivor.

Jane Stern has published forty -two books and has donated works The New Yorker, GQ, AtlanticAnd Gourmet. Permanent collection of his work was held at the Smithsonian Institute.