I'm weird in a thousand ways, and #8 is that I couldn't possibly relax and have a good time socializing, even with family and friends that I love, while I'm looking for a place to live. I need to know where I'm at first. Gotta have a home plate, before any at-bats.
Of course I'm looking forward to howdies and handshakes and masked hugs with everyone, but right now, finding a place is what my world is all about.
I'm not searching for an apartment, though. This is Seattle in 2022, the Amazon and Microsoft era, so nobody in my tax bracket could afford an apartment within fifty miles of here. I'm searching for a room, not an apartment, and I've seen enough rooms to house the cast and crew of Doubling Down with the Derricos.
You're welcome to ride along
in my thought process, and help me decide the setting for what's left of my life.
for the fat ugly face of me
peace and quiet and smelly air
from my derriere, somewhere...
It's an honor just to be nominated, and the nominees are...
♦ Ballard, in a basement. There are three beds in the cellar of an industrial space, with a good distance but no walls between the beds. It's basically a long-term hostel. The rent is cheap (cheapest on this list) and there's a kitchen and toilet upstairs, and the other two cellar-mates seemed likable in my two-minute meet-and-greet. With no walls between us the obvious problem is privacy, but a few dozen milk crates properly stacked could separate my section of the basement. The biggest drawback, though, is that it's clearly an illegal living situation, so everyone living in the basement could be homeless any time the Housing Authority cracks down on the building.
♦ Burien, in a small boarding house. Four oldish dudes are sharing the house, but one of them is moving out. The room being vacated is quiet, says the guy who's vacating. Actually he said, "The house could burn down and you wouldn't hear a thing," and quiet is good but maybe not that quiet. I liked the guy who's moving out, and one of the other mates is a gray blob of fatness like me, so I liked him too. The third guy living there, though, was wearing a "Let's go Brandon" t-shirt and he frowned when I said, "So you're an idiot?" I ain't wild about the neighborhood either, because it's 100% residential — no nearby grocery store, no coffee shop, and it's six blocks to the nearest anything that's not a house. There's a bus stop across the street, though, with frequent service that connects with Link and RapidRide and could get me to civilization within minutes. Also, even with an extra $25 monthly fee for my cat, it's the second cheapest rent on this list.
♦ Downtown, in a residential hotel. It's a short skyscraper from a hundred years ago, originally an elegant place to tie up your horse and hit the sack, but now it's a faded, dusty place selling rooms by the night, by the week, by the month. I like the location, though. Downtown means easy access to buses and trains going everywhere, which would open up job opportunities in any direction. Of course, downtown also means beggars and needles and lowlifes everywhere, and the whole neighborhood smells like pee. The hotel's rooms have no kitchens, and in fact, cooking is not allowed, but I don't cook much, and anyway, I know how to get around such silly rules. The elevator hasn't worked since the 1960s and my room would be on the fifth floor, but climbing all those stairs could help me lose some weight. The monthly rent is toward the high end of my poverty budget, though.
♦ Lake City, in a huge boarding house. Fourteen people live in eleven rooms in a big old run-down house. The rent is within my budget and it's in a semi-cool neighborhood, with a billion interesting shops and cafes within footsteps. The house has four bathrooms and two kitchens, and each kitchen has two refrigerators — 4 frigs shared by 14 people, which means no big shopping trips. Two out of three residents I met seemed like people I wouldn't hate, but the third one was glassy-eyed and incoherent, high as an elephant's eye. The room seemed livable, but the rest of the house was a catastrophe of cigarette butts and abandoned TV dinners. And 14 people in 11 rooms seems like more of a social club than a boarding house — too many chances for conversations I don't want to have every time I'm coming or going. Also, 14/11 means there are couples in three of the rooms, and in shared housing, couples usually means too much drama.
♦ Rainier Beach, in a room for rent. An old couple in a small house, scraping by on Social Security or whatever, make a little extra money by renting a room in what used to be the garage. They both swore like hungover sailors getting fresh tattoos, which could lose its charm quickly, but the room has a private entrance, so I'd hardly ever see the loud landlords. I like that, but I'm skeptical about the neighborhood, because it's so close to the high school. I hated high school when I was in high school, so I'm pretty sure I don't want a high school (and all those obnoxious teenagers) right down the street. Also, the room is furnished. I left all my furniture in Wisconsin, so you'd think that having a bed and table and chairs would be a good thing, but I don't want to sleep on someone else's bed and sit on someone else's couch, especially with all those pink Miss Piggys embroidered on the cushions.
♦ West Seattle, in a room in an apartment. One guy rents a family-sized apartment, and then sublets the rooms to individual poor people. It's a fine apartment in a modern complex, with a swimming pool and gym I'll never use, free cable I'll never watch, and neighbors I'll never be relaxed around. All the other apartments are occupied by yuppies and buppies and guppies, overdressed and with perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect lives, and electric cars. They're fancy people, and fancy people get on my nerves. The rent is mid-range, but the neighborhood is blah — there's a KFC and a small hardware store a few blocks away, and not much else, but man cannot live by chicken and screws and nails alone. Also, who wants to live in West Seattle while it's without a bridge?
All these are like places I've lived before — boarding houses, rooms for rent, residential hotels, etc. And maybe you noticed, all my possibilities are inside the city. That was my only requirement (well, that and cheap rent). I've seen enough of King County's crowded and crazy freeways, and don't want to spend what's left of my life idling on asphalt.
Always I've been a fan of city life — people of different colors with different accents cooking different foods, "Can't we all just get along?" (Yes, we can!), mom & pop restaurants instead of McDonald's, and lots of interesting people places and things within walking distance, or within a short drive, or (better yet) a quick bus ride. Being spare-changed by panhandlers gets tiresome, yeah, but with a twist of the wrong fate, there goes any of us.
So where am I gonna live? Unless there's an unexpected late-breaking development, the finalists are Burien and Downtown. My plan is to make another visit to each, and try to play them against each other, to see if one of them might reduce the rent by twenty or thirty bucks. Fat chance, but I'm a fat guy.
Anyway, everything's still up in the air, so don't make our reservations at Vince's just yet.