SF Apartment Hunting!

gregorygerla1@gmail.com Uncategorized Leave a Comment

The Mixer:

I went to this place out in SOMA where the host had literally set up a mini party to find his next roommate. It was an open house from 6-9, and you could go check out the apartment and see if it was a good fit. While it would be fine as a dinner party, this was absolutely ridiculous as a way to find a roommate.

I have no interest in talking to other people as I only want to talk to the master tenant who is renting the room. After talking to a guy building a smart home light switch (#25 to hit the market), I realized that trying to find to get a word in with the host would be like trying to kiss the Bachelorette on the first episode: a bit sloppy, and all together not worth it.

I took down half a bowl of Hummus and bounced…

The Shared Living Room.

Next in my adventure was the double shared living room. For the low-low price of $1500, I was offered the opportunity to share a living room with another individual. The place was listed as in the Mission, the cool new neighborhood for 20 something’s. The only problem was that it wasn’t actually in the mission.

It was at North Soma, on Mission street, right next to the Twitter office. I would categorize it as closer to the Tenderloin(known for its rough streets, and ‘interesting’ characters). Right outside of the building I had a dude walk behind me for two blocks continuously going “You dropped something”. He was just begging me to turn around so he could either take my backpack or whip something out. Given my experience growing up in the mean streets of South Palo Alto, I knew to just keep walking.

Once at the apartment I was impressed, it had a gym and coffee bar. It would have been perfect if it weren’t for the shared living room…

Right in front of the kitchen counter top was a bed. If you walked another 100 feet around the temporary wall was another space which would be mine. This meant every time I wanted to go to my ‘bed room’, I would have to walk past another person’s ‘bed room’.

BR

Not my image, but same idea!

Given this situation there was of course no living room, or actual place to eat any food. I’m sorry, but I’m not paying money to not have a place to eat. I can’t tell if that’s me being a pompous tech kid or not, but either way a guy has to have standards.

$1500? No thanks, I’ll stick to my Van like that savvy Googler.

The Old Creepy Guy

 One of the nicer apartments I saw was in NOPA. On paper the place looked great, high Victorian ceiling, 12×12 bed room. Quiet Street. The kicker was the owner.

This guy was around 50, and just living alone in his apartment. When I first got in, he immediately had me shake the hand of his cat, who was in his arms. “Don’t worry, he’s an old guy”, he assured me. It wasn’t the cat I was worried about.

When we sat at the living room, I realized there were about 5 cats in total. I’m not totally against cats, but I just don’t trust them. I’m a dog person, and cats seem pretty judgy.

The other red flag, was when I asked if he was in a relationship. His answer was that he was in “an arrangement”. I probed him a bit, and he said he is with someone, whenever she decides that he is not in the dog house. I’m still 50/50 if his dog house was a bondage area… but I was not about to sign a one year lease only to get locked in some basement dungeon.

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