Pacific Heights

Anyone remember that movie with Michael Keaton as the insane tenant from hell?

I just read Jenny's blog (Laughing Gas and Ennui on the right there) and she told about her old apartment from hell. I couldn't begin to match the awfulness of the place, but I've lived in a few not great spots myself.

There was the high rise in Prince Rupert--moved there after I got tired of the stereo wars with the guy next door, and my car always getting vandalized by the punk kids out on the street where I had to park--though I got my revenge; on the day I left, when I could see them watching from the window, I deliberately ran into their hockey net and then backed over it a couple times...

The high-rise was soundproof, which I wanted, but unfortunately, I lived on the 9th floor, and the heat usually only went up to the 5th--I remember frequently having ice on the inside of my windows. A girl who worked with me also told stories of the creepy building manager (she was on the 11th floor) who used to proposition her until she threatened him, and would use his key to go into her apartment when she wasn't home.

I lived across from the emergency entrance to Vancouver General for a while--in an old unsecure building in a sub-ground floor apt. My roommate, who'd lived there longer, told me of a time a whacked out guy tried to break into his suite with an axe, while my friend was inside. (It was, after all, right near the drug treatment center as well)

My wife and I took an apartment just before we got married that we thought was nice--expensive rent, but it was brand new--we were the first people in the suite ever--and had a fireplace, 5 appliances, two bathrooms, etc. and a great view. Problem was--they wanted to fill the apartments so they could get a year's worth of renting from everyone and then go condo. It's a trick developers use so they don't have to sell the suites as "new", which would mean, up here, that there's an additionaly 7% GST tax on them, which might scare buyers away.

It also wasn't a great neighborhood. There were half a dozen breakins in the "secure" underground parking and in one a car got stolen--we were only there for 7 months--the management figured some guys living in the building were helping or doing it. I remember our downstairs neighbor would get drunk and then forget which floor he lived on and we'd hear him trying to make his key work in our door, and then when you looked out the peephole he was swaying down on all fours. Vomit in the elevator was another nice surprise from time to time...

Drunk guy eventually moved, and potheads moved in, who needed to smoke dope on their balcony every night around 1:30 a.m., which meant them talking loud and essentially making our bedroom a second-hand smoke hotbox.

There were four guys maybe 20 years old across the hall--they got the locks changed on one of their buddies and he pounded walls and screamed for several hours... The building was built so crappy the doors would keep getting out of alignment and then not be lockable, so we'd have to leave our place unlocked for days at a time. They had to re-hang the doors to our balcony 4 times in the few months we lived there, and there was a gap between the top of one wall and the ceiling where it had "settled".

The cops were regular visitors to the building--including the paddy wagon one time, I recall.

It got really funny when they decided to "go condo". They wanted the place to look good for prospective suckers, er I mean, customers, and so that meant, for instance, a daily battle with the person who scratched profanities onto the elevator door--it was probably repainted 10 times in two months.

It was also funny when we got our "condo notice", offering to sell us the suite at the end of our one-year lease. I think I told the realtor "I'd rather stick needles in my eyes". Even so, because we looked after our place, and had nice furniture, a couple of the realtors begged us to let them show ours to prospective buyers--not the realtor who was actually selling our suite--so we agreed, our condition being that we could get out of our lease early. (We bought a house and fled.) The realtors made a point of trying to show it when we weren't home--not out of respect for our privacy, but because we were always careful to show the prospective buyers the problems, and list the litany of complaints.

We drive buy there fairly often, and always feel sorry for the folks who bought in. They've already had to all shell out probably 10 grand each for the outside to be redone, as it was another of this areas infamous "leaky condos".

Still, all of this seems like petty annoyances compared to what Jenny had. Go read her post.