MISCmedia for 4/12/01
Every Home I've Lived In Is Still Standing, Part 4

MONDAY, TUESDAY, AND YESTERDAY, we've been counting down to the huge MISCmedia 15th Anniversary gala (June 2, mark your calendars now), with a glimpse of the art show that'll be part of the festivity--randomly-ordered pix of every home yr. web-pal had lived in. Today, another.

#17: The Towne Apartments, 1414 12th Ave. A cheap, spacious studio in a dingy, crime-ridden building. Occupied January-May 1984.

After an apartment-sitting gig ended prematurely (the guy I was sitting for decided not to finish his year-long exploration of G.I. Gurdjieff's philosophies), I had to find a place quickly. As was usual for me at the time, the place had to be cheap. The Towne appeared to fit the bill, on the basis of a quick tour escorted by the building manager. Yes, I'd have to use a bathroom down the hall, but I'd get a huge space and free basic cable.

The day I moved in, said manager was nowhere to be found; neither were the promised window shades. What I did find were filthy hallway bathrooms (all except the one first-floor example I'd previously been showed), gazillions of cockroaches, several loud arguments/fights clearly audible through the thin walls, and central-heating pipes that loudly banged and clanged all night long.

Several shabbily-dressed residents came up to me over the next few days with complaints about the bathrooms, the heat, etc. I had to patiently tell each of them, "I'm not the manager. I just live here." Their unanimous response: "You live here?" (Implying I was too clean-cut or too clean-and-sober for such a creepy building.)

It turned out the real manager had been fired hours before I moved in. The management company offered to discuss the firing with any tenants who could make it to an evening meeting at the company's offices in outer Lynnwood, a difficult trick for these mostly-carless tenants.

Over the following twenty weeks, all but four of the other units in the building would be vacated, some by eviction orders. I was regularly panhandled, saw at least one attempted break-in, and had to vacate the place twice when sleeping bums inadvertantly set mattress fires in the basement. And the cable was no longer free after the first month.

A woman who helped me move out of there told me she'd never seen a building that gross when she lived in inner-city Cleveland.

The end of my residence at the Towne (which looks a lot nicer in this modern-day image, at least from the outside) marked the end of 32 months in which I'd had six addresses. From now on it was only real jobs and real apartments.

NEXT: The last of this for now.

IN OTHER NEWS: Kozmo.com is closing. We now may never know whether there was really a market for the home delivery of ice cream sandwiches and Pauly Shore videos.

ELSEWHERE:

• Even free-reading Websites have their own manifesto!...

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Parts one, and two, and three of a tour through every home I've lived in.
• Parts one and two of a guest columnist's reminiscences of beer, basements, and playing Dungeons and Dragons.
• Mulling still more potential changes to the site.
• Memories of the radio station formerly known as KCMU.
• Thanks to the Net, some folks are writing more. That's supposed to be a bad thing?
• Remember rain?
• In defense of DIY publishing.
• A special offer on slightly-hurt Losers.
• Parts one and two of Boeing becoming just another global corporation.
• Could you be turning into a hippie without even knowing it?
• Is it time to privatize welfare customer-service?
• Tell me a story.
• A TV critic faces cancer.
• Music to accompany the mattress mambo.
• Goodbyes to film critic John Hartl, the outre-music zine The Tentacle, and some cool stores.
• A last lingering look inside the OK Hotel.
• Seattle as a city that works (and works and works).
• The terrible beauty of the freeways.
• The end of our little makeover parable.
• PBS discovers marketing to kids.
• Courtney Love reinvents herself as an anti-major-label crusader.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
• Longer articles and essays
• Some slightly weird little fiction pieces
• X-Word crossword puzzles, now with on-screen solving
• Cyber Stuff, links to cool and/or useful sites
• A listing of many Things I Like (and a few things I hate)
• The origin and future of MISCmedia