We looked at some apartments near Alamo Square, but
the application process just smelled like a racket. Like, it ought to be
illegal. There were eleven other people with Steph and I, all traipsing through
a couple of one-bedroom apartments in one building. After seeing the apartments,
if you were interested in renting one of them, you had to pay a $50 fee for a
credit check, to even be considered. Of the eleven people on our tour of those
apartments, six stayed afterwards and paid for that credit check, including
Steph and I.
Even without taking $50 from everyone who’s
interested, the credit check seemed like a waste of money. There's no way
someone with my craptastic job and severely-blemished credit report could score
that apartment, so Steph filled out everything in her name. I tried to be
supportive and positive, but it seemed hopeless even with Steph filling out the
applications. How could someone with no income and no local references land an
apartment in San Francisco, where rents were already impossibly pricey, and landlords
had their pick of a dozen applicants for every apartment?
And indeed, we never heard back about that
apartment, or any of several other apartments we'd walked through, and paid to
have a credit check done. They didn't want us in Hayes Valley, or Potrero Hill,
or Bernal Heights. They wanted our money, but they didn't want us. And we weren't made of
fifty-dollar bills, so our cash reserves were dwindling. It would've
been easy to grow discouraged. Steph's job-hunt was leading nowhere, and the apartment-hunt
seemed even more futile.
A few days later, while I was getting ready for
work, Steph mentioned that she had a bead on an apartment, and she was going to
go look at it that day. I responded with words of encouragement, but I’ll admit
now what I didn't admit then — I had doubts.
Early that afternoon, the phone rang at my desk
at work, and it was Stephanie. "We have an apartment," she said. "It’s
expensive, and the kitchen is across the hall, but they’re motivated to get it
leased. I want to write a check and sign the contract, but only if you’re OK
with it."
"The kitchen is across the hall? You mean,
it’s a place with a shared kitchen?"
"No, the kitchen is all ours, no sharing,
but it’s across the hall from the apartment."
"Um, I really don’t understand. Do you want
me to come look at the place?"
"You can see it when we have the key, but
Doug, to get this apartment, I need to sign the lease now. Meaning, as soon as
I hang up the phone. I’ll only sign the lease if it’s OK with you, so – is it
OK with you?"
"Steph, I love you, and I trust you. If you
think it’s a good place at a good price, sign on the dotted line."
"I love you, too. I’m writing a check and
signing a lease."
She clicked off, and I sat there, dumbfounded. I
didn't understand how she'd done it, but it was done. New in town and unemployed,
she'd signed a lease for an apartment. Not a rez hotel room, like the places I'd
been calling 'home', but a genuine apartment — and a pretty good apartment, in
a nice neighborhood, with a city park literally across the street. It was in
what's called the Duboce Triangle, with Haight Street, the Castro, and a
Safeway supermarket all within a few blocks. The N Judah streetcar, with quick
service downtown or to the ocean, ran right outside our window.
The apartment was in a 19th-century building, three
stories tall. It had probably been built as a one-family mansion, but sliced
into apartments long ago. Architecturally, it had some character. The steps up
from the street were marble, or faux marble, with Greek-style pillars and a swirly, wrought-iron handrail.
The laundry room in the basement was downright ornate, with wood-paneled walls
and a brick fireplace.
Our room had a large bay window, cut at a 45-degree
angle between the north and east walls, and a smaller, colorful stained-glass window — which
was beautiful, but we always wondered why an apartment would have a small
stained-glass window. The room itself was smallish and uncarpeted, but with an old-fashioned
radiator that kept the room snug and warm. The shower and toilet were small,
too, but adequate — how much room do you need, to take a shower or a poop?
The obvious problem was the kitchen. As
Stephanie had said, it was across the hall — the common hall, shared by
everyone in the building. Coming up the steps from the street, you needed a key
to get into the building, and then, from the front hallway, the first door on
the left was our apartment, and the first door on the right was our kitcen.
The set-up certainly presented problems. You
couldn't cook in your pajamas, or open the refrigerator or even make
toast in your underwear or naked. Crossing the hallway meant you
were (briefly) out in public, so you kinda had to be dressed. Furthermore, bringing
food from the kitchen into the apartment required opening both doors before
carrying the pot of whatever you'd cooked, and then closing and locking both doors behind
you. Sometimes it involved waiting, holding a hot pan or tray while neighbors
maneuvered the hallway carrying a bicycle or a kid. At least once I ruined dinner
by trying to turn one of the doorknobs while carrying food, and I'm not certain
but I think it happened once to Stephanie, too. Spaghetti and meatballs should
not be served on the floor, and mopping up supper is not fun. So yeah, that
kitchen was a hassle.
Then again, that kitchen was the reason we were
moving in. The real estate agent had told Stephanie that, because of its
awkward configuration, the apartment was very difficult to rent. He said he'd
already shown it dozens of times, and it had been empty for months, because
most prospective tenants balked at the disconnected kitchen. He was tired of
showing that apartment over and over again, and he told Steph that if she wanted
it and her credit wasn't abysmal, she could have it. "Just sign here,"
he said, and she had signed.
The rent, though, was another problem. It was
$1,600 per month. From everything I've heard, rents in San Francisco are now exponentially
more insane than they were then, so maybe $1,600 sounds like a bargain, but for
us it was a potential budget-buster, especially while Stephanie was unemployed.
It was more than a thousand dollars higher than the rent for our rez hotel room,
every month. And outside of the San Francisco solar system (and maybe New York
or Tokyo) $1,600 still seems like a crazy price for a one-room apartment. I'm
writing this twenty-plus years later, and the rent for our two-bedroom
apartment in Madison is still less
than half what we paid for that studio in San Francisco.
The apartment and the neighborhood seemed very
comfortable, though, and the kitchen and the rent felt like trivial problems, at least that night and at least to me. I invited Stephanie out to
dinner to celebrate our new digs, but she declined.
"We really can't afford to have dinner out.
I'll just cook something."
"You don't think we deserve a
celebration?"
"We deserve a celebration, we just can't
afford one. Seriously, Doug, we were poor yesterday. Today we're just as poor but
the rent has gone way, way up. And I still don't have a job."
"You'll have a job soon, love."
"I'd better, because as long as I'm unemployed,
the apartment isn't a solution. It's just another problem."
"You're good at solving problems, Steph.
We'll be OK."
"I'll never find a job," she said. "We'll
be living in residential hotels all our lives. Or in a cardboard box. I'll end
up on unemployment and welfare, cooking us dinner with food stamps. I'll end up
begging."
She wasn't
kidding, she was worrying. Stephanie was a worrier, by nature. She always
saw things realistically, and when a problem presented itself, Steph wanted to
have a workable plan of action, plus two good back-up plans, just in case. I
tried to say optimistic things, but the worries that day were bigger than any
words I could come up with. In our situation, locked into a rent that we
couldn't afford, she was right to be worried.
Instead of dinner
out, she made us beans and rice. Within a few days we said adieu to the Wallaby
Hotel, and made ourselves at home in our new apartment on Duboce Avenue. And before we were finished
unpacking, Stephanie found a job, and a pretty good job at that.