I’ve started looking at apartment listings for real now that the Lad and I have only a month to find our dream home. Surfing craigslist every day with a very limiting set of parameters to work with is like commuting to work on MUNI. You recognize most of the people around you from the previous days; sure, every day there are one or two new faces and one or two people who aren’t around anymore, but mainly it’s the same crowd. The difference (apart from all the obvious differences) is that on MUNI, a regularly-seen face means respectability, someone who goes to a job every day and can be assumed to have a reasonable degree of cleanliness and sanity. On craigslist, a listing you’ve seen every day for weeks, maybe even being re-listed sometimes with a new rent amount or description, is probably neither respectable nor clean.
It gets me down, I freely admit it. I haven’t had to find a place with someone else since I lived in Santa Cruz, and then we just took the only place in town that we could afford. Now there are more complex requirements on both sides and sometimes I wonder if we will ever find something we can both live with. I mean, it’s been three days and still nothing. When I’m really depressed, I head over to the missed connections section. I figure it never hurts to cover all my bases; if the Lad and I can’t find an apartment together then maybe I can find a new boyfriend to live with, someone who saw me reading Anais Nin on the train and will describe me as “long-haired brunette beauty with sparkling eyes.” Or maybe some landlord will post for me:
Girl walking past Squat & Gobble on Tuesday night (landlord 4 w)
You: ponytail, paperback, strut. Me: hardwood floors, central Castro location, under $1700. Email me. This could be the beginning of a beautiful tenancy.
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