In and Out

If you sublet an apartment in Manhattan, get ready for a slew of freaks and weirdo's calling you at all hours of the day, ready and willing (and hopefully able) to write you a check and call your place "home" the second you hit OK to post your ad on Craig's List.

You'll get the pretty girl with a stripper's body, prepared to move in until she tells you that her ex-football-player husband has not yet come to terms with the divorce and has violent tendencies. No thanks. You'll get the people who want to remove things that are permanently attached to the apartment (for example, the cast-iron window guards that are unremovable). You'll get responses like this, from a Germany transplant reading "I do not drink. I do not smoke. I am silent."

You'll also get the people who seem perfectly respectable, people who gush over the place and give you a good vibe only to move in and then without warning move out one month later, claiming the apartment made them physically sick. People who will tell you the check is in the mail (a lie!) and then 5 days later, send you an email to let you know that they have exited the apartment, effective immediately. These nice people with whom you have been perfectly accommodating and civil, will now use an accusatory tone, suggesting that you knew that the building was "toxic" (it isn't) and seemingly complain about having to move so quickly after having shelled out money to us for a month's rent and security (sorry, not our problem - we have to pay the rent!). In summary, they will totally ruin your initial opinion of them, and make you question your own instincts about people.

So just be forewarned... people are totally nuts. But where there is one willing occupant, there will be another. And they will provide me with plenty of fodder for this blog, I am sure.