I have been frantically going through the craigslist room/shares for the past two weeks. Of the dozen or so replies to ads, one go see came up that yielded a cramped apartment with smelly old carpeting with a cramped room that could barely contain a bed and a table. No sir, the best you could do in there would be sun salutations and your knees would still be in peril from touching the bed.
My current one, sublet by a kindly couple friends of Jeff for a month, looks pretty good, spacious, a daughter's former room in a century old Victorian house, is in a perfect location - at the back of Haight with Ashbury as it's crossroad. But then one can't impose on such hospitality. While I try to tiptoe around to cause the least disruption in their usual lives, I take the chance to imbibe the atmosphere at Haight, including a whiff or more of weed hanging in the air in its every corner. I go staring at the smokehouses, the milliner and costume shop where I plan to get my own turn of the century top hat and rock star French poet shirt at some point. Any self respecting San Franciscan has to have one so I've been told. I have yet to enter the anarchist collective bookstore which seems to be closed at whim. It is also a relief that an organic market that is truly family owned and a mainstay of the area is just a few steps away for the usual cravings for cheese and salad though Falletti, a really pretty Italian grocer is so conveniently on my way to and from work.
At any rate, I must be accessing the wrong medium for apartment hunting. Every ad wants me to be cool, hip, artistic, young, preferably in my 20s, bikes, ecoresponsible, do yoga, fiscally able and yes, at certain times be 420 friendly. I wish I was but just inhaling the stuff 3rd hand is bound to throw my random testing job requirement haywire - it's so random and constant I now have a nose for detecting good shit. The better ones have a less pungent milder odor - like wine - the more mellow are bound to be more expensive.
I should be either a grad student (in her mid twenties) or employed in a hip start up high tech company. If my bio says Google all the better but working the meat counter at Whole Foods is just as good.
In the interest of honesty, I list down Asian, 40 plus old, female, nurse as part of my stats. Ctl Alt Delete - that is probably what's happening when these twenty somethings see my I'm Interested email. Those where I put LA transplant probably never saw a 30 second glance. And yet, my reality as a person never feels that way but somehow I am truly stuck with that demographic - and it sucks albeit a little coming from another point of view. Where the hell are middle aged race and age tolerant people with responsible jobs living anyway? Across the bridges?
At any rate, if this doesn't pan out I am either quitting my job and become a grad student with an enormous loan, or, break my bank to lease a place and be a snooty subletter - older mature people wanted - my ad would say. Or, pack my bags and drive back to LA, tail between my now firmer legs from all that walking, with a huge L on my forehead. Visiting Janis Joplin's ghost, the Grateful Dead old haunt and Jefferson Airplane's address may have to wait.
My current one, sublet by a kindly couple friends of Jeff for a month, looks pretty good, spacious, a daughter's former room in a century old Victorian house, is in a perfect location - at the back of Haight with Ashbury as it's crossroad. But then one can't impose on such hospitality. While I try to tiptoe around to cause the least disruption in their usual lives, I take the chance to imbibe the atmosphere at Haight, including a whiff or more of weed hanging in the air in its every corner. I go staring at the smokehouses, the milliner and costume shop where I plan to get my own turn of the century top hat and rock star French poet shirt at some point. Any self respecting San Franciscan has to have one so I've been told. I have yet to enter the anarchist collective bookstore which seems to be closed at whim. It is also a relief that an organic market that is truly family owned and a mainstay of the area is just a few steps away for the usual cravings for cheese and salad though Falletti, a really pretty Italian grocer is so conveniently on my way to and from work.
At any rate, I must be accessing the wrong medium for apartment hunting. Every ad wants me to be cool, hip, artistic, young, preferably in my 20s, bikes, ecoresponsible, do yoga, fiscally able and yes, at certain times be 420 friendly. I wish I was but just inhaling the stuff 3rd hand is bound to throw my random testing job requirement haywire - it's so random and constant I now have a nose for detecting good shit. The better ones have a less pungent milder odor - like wine - the more mellow are bound to be more expensive.
I should be either a grad student (in her mid twenties) or employed in a hip start up high tech company. If my bio says Google all the better but working the meat counter at Whole Foods is just as good.
In the interest of honesty, I list down Asian, 40 plus old, female, nurse as part of my stats. Ctl Alt Delete - that is probably what's happening when these twenty somethings see my I'm Interested email. Those where I put LA transplant probably never saw a 30 second glance. And yet, my reality as a person never feels that way but somehow I am truly stuck with that demographic - and it sucks albeit a little coming from another point of view. Where the hell are middle aged race and age tolerant people with responsible jobs living anyway? Across the bridges?
At any rate, if this doesn't pan out I am either quitting my job and become a grad student with an enormous loan, or, break my bank to lease a place and be a snooty subletter - older mature people wanted - my ad would say. Or, pack my bags and drive back to LA, tail between my now firmer legs from all that walking, with a huge L on my forehead. Visiting Janis Joplin's ghost, the Grateful Dead old haunt and Jefferson Airplane's address may have to wait.
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| Victorian? Edwardian? Italianate? Early blossoms at least show that Spring is creeping in slowly. |
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