This tale begins, as many horror stories do, in Door County, Wisconsin. Ok, maybe not horror but there are a fair amount of ghost stories that originate up there.
Anyway.
It was November 2019 and I’d recently made the decision to move to Chicago. My Door County moment had run its course and I was ready to be back in a city. My plan was to be a Chicago resident by Spring 2020.
And then a global pandemic happened.
I was thankful I was in a place where I was safe and by nature of the location, distanced from people. I took advantage of what I knew would be my last moments soaking in the outdoors but after a few months of complete isolation in an isolated place, I was ready to be amongst humans. Even if that meant it was just in a shared box because of ongoing pandemic restrictions. The cost of rent in Door County was a quarter of what it had been in DC so I was looking to re-enter the rental market on the cheap. Which I would soon come to pay for. Gravely.
My first mistake was looking for apartments on Craigslist. Craigslist, as I’ve now come to realize, is (usually) the place where (the majority of) people are looking to dump rotten units and sublet their leases. This is crystal clear to me now. Then? I thought I’d found a gem.
At this stage in the pandemic, you were not allowed to physically tour units if the current tenant was still living there. So I took the videos and pictures at face value (full well knowing this could be a bamboozle), did a hefty amount of sleuthing of my own, and signed a 12-month lease. In hindsight, this lease got me to Chicago for which I am thankful. The apartment housed me and kept me safe during a pandemic. That’s really all I can ask for. But you didn’t come here to hear about what I’m thankful for. You came here for the tea I’ve been promising to spill for over a year. So, here we go.
My upstairs neighbor, who was legitimately a beautiful delight of a human being, walked with weights on her ankles. It was part of her fitness journey that I discovered when running into her outside walking her dog a few weeks after I’d moved in. Until this moment, I thought I was going crazy. There was no way one woman could make so much noise. Enter: ankle weights. Suddenly, it made sense. And really, I couldn’t be angry about it because she was such a lovely person. I felt guilty about my constant rage but committed to lots of walks outside my unit and headphones when I was inside.
For my first Saturday night in my new Chicago apartment, I planned to eat my body weight in sushi and binge-watch New Girl. Which still happens to be one of my favorite things to do on a Saturday night. I’d spent the last few days unpacking and acquiring new furniture (including the second-hand IKEA dresser I thought I could carry entirely on my own and ended up breaking while carrying it up the stairs) so I was looking forward to a relaxing night. At some point during the evening, I went into the bathroom to face mask and saw water streaming down my walls and puddling on my floor. The toilet upstairs had been running all night and was flooding my bathroom. After the person on the other end of the emergency maintenance number told me they’d be there in the morning, I waited it out and hoped for the best. By the time they arrived the next morning, the damage was so severe they had to replace the drywall in my unit and the unit below me.
Knowing that maintenance would take a good chunk of that day, I decided to get ready and venture out into my new neighborhood. I went wild and blow-dried my hair. Which blew a fuse.
This same day, my air conditioning failed. Yes, I was lucky enough to have central air in the unit. But it only worked 50% of the time.
A few weeks later, my upstairs neighbor moved out and a new neighbor moved in. Let the record reflect that this neighbor was also lovely. But one of the first nights she was there, her alarm went off. Which would not have been a big deal. Except that on this particular night, she was at her boyfriend’s apartment. So it went off all night.
There was one washer/dryer in the basement for 6 units. It was routinely out of order.
I would wake up every weekday to my downstairs neighbor vomiting for prolonged periods of time. The walls were very thin.
My upstairs neighbor had a playful dog who would no normal dog things in her unit but because the walls were so thin, you could hear every movement. Which made for an anxious Wendell.
I set up my workout equipment in the sunroom at the back of the unit. After a workout or two, I noticed that this backside of the unit was literally falling off the back of the building. I never worked out there again.
There was no front door. Because of the layout of the building, there was a side door and a back door. So I’d enter and exit my unit from the side door which opened onto someone else’s front yard. Every time I came and went I’d be interacting with humans, who again, were delightful, but the lack of privacy was very overwhelming for this introvert. This side door was also only accessible via a wooden walkway from the sidewalk. It made moving, taking my bike outside, bringing groceries home, etc., an interesting experience.
Most notably, the space was small. Remember that very professional Craigslist listing? It listed the unit as a ~1,000 square foot space. More than enough room for me and Wendell. But it always felt tight. Around the 9th month of my lease, having no doubt I would not be resigning, I took to Zillow and every other rental website on earth to find a new apartment. I knew I’d want more square footage than what I currently resided in so I set my minimum square footage to 1,000. My search resulted in apartments that were hundreds of dollars more expensive than my current unit. My unit was a hot mess but I couldn’t figure out why other apartments in the same part of Bucktown with similar square footage would be that much more expensive. I had a hunch. So I measured my unit. It was 538 square feet. A four-room (two bedrooms, kitchen, living room), 538 square foot apartment. The building was ~1000 square feet: with one unit in the front and one unit in the back. The unit was 538 square feet. Bamboozled.
I quickly found a new unit in the same neighborhood that was actually 1,000 square feet and got to planning. On the planned move-out day, I scheduled movers to come to the old apartment while the cleaners did their thing in the new apartment. The movers would leave the old apartment and unload in the new apartment while I finished cleaning the old apartment so the painters could come later that day and the new tenant could move in. It was perfect. Timed down to the hour. And then my movers canceled on me an hour before they were supposed to arrive.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. The horror of the move-out day matched the energy of the apartment itself. I called the company and while profusely apologizing, they scheduled another team to arrive 4 hours later than the initial team was supposed to arrive and at the same time the painters were set to start working. During this time, I bonded with my new across-the-hall neighbor by having a full-on menty b. She gave me a key to her apartment for the day and we’ve been friends ever since. You’re a real one, L. The second moving team arrived an hour late (that’s 5 hours later than originally scheduled), walked through my apartment taking inventory, then left without a word. So I called the moving company back. I requested immediate reimbursement of my funds and got to work. As it was end of month, there was no moving company available to help that day. And the new tenant was moving in the following day. After many phone calls and part two of my menty b, I was able to secure a U-Haul truck, an hour before closing. A true miracle. I was asked if I needed labor in addition to the truck. Another absolute miracle. They would be available after the scheduled moves they had that day and were adding my move onto the back end of all their previous work. At 8pm that day, two brothers and their cousin arrived and loaded my old apartment into the truck in an hour. I drove it a few blocks south where they unloaded it within another hour. I tipped them handsomely as I had never been more grateful in my life. Initially, I booked my move with a company I’d heard good enough things about but they were also inexpensive. Because of their bullsh*t, I ended up spending twice as much on the U-Haul truck and the labor + their absolutely well-deserved tip.
Moral of the story: Don’t lease property from Craigslist. Additionally, book a reputable moving company, even if it’s more expensive.
