my life above a crack den.

when ange and i were freshmen in college, she called me one day to go have a look at a house that her father was thinking of buying. if he bought it and fixed it up a little bit, she explained, we might be able to live in it next year with a couple of room mates. so, i eagerly jumped into her green jeep and off we went. the house was deep in the throes of old town maine, which boasts such amenities as a smelly mill, johnny's restaurant (one of the best breakfasts EVER) and tim's little big store, where you could mix and match six packs of beer and bitch drinks. we might have driven by it a time or two, but when we finally stopped in front of the correct house, i think underwhelmed would have been an understatement. the house was little more than a mint-green rectangle with a black roof, windows covered in tapestries, and an area of white vinyl siding where the front door had once been.

"dad," said ange on the phone. "you cannot buy this house. it looks like a crack den."

having never seen a crack den before, i tended to agree with her, and we were both certain that we did not want to live there. needless to say, andy didn't buy it, but the image of that sketchy little home stayed etched in my mind. if ever i heard the term "crack den", the mint green block would be all i could think of. that is, until i moved out of maine and learned what an ACTUAL crack den might look like.

at the time that ben and i signed the lease on our philadelphia apartment, our landlord did two things- first, he invited us to his daughter's second birthday party, which would take place in a month's time in king of prussia (this is ALSO a wonderful story, but it is one for another time). second, he told us that the woman downstairs was being evicted, and it was only the second time in his entire career as being a landlord (11 years times 32 units....you do the math) that he has ever had to evict someone. "she just got into some weird stuff," he said, and left it at that. for the time being. we learned later from rachel, who also lives in our house, that ms. downstairs was possibly a prostitute. it didn't take too long for us to connect the dots about her many gentleman friends that came to visit, (friends she referred to as "cousins"), the fact that her 5-7 year old son would sometimes just be sitting on our porch, alone, while she remained inside- those sort of things. (mind you, i KNOW this is all circumstantial evidence, but we all agreed that she must have done something pretty horrible in order to be evicted by our landlord, who made an exception to his 11 year rule by renting a one bedroom apartment to ben and [typically, no couples], allowed rachel to have her giant dog on the third floor, and didn't make a huge deal when michael, who shares the second floor with us, forgot to put his rent check in the mailbox and then went out of town for a week...something was fishy.)

the drama over the eviction continued- she and all of her stuff were supposed to be out on september 30th. on the first, we got a call from our landlord saying that he was on the property if we wanted to give him our rent check, (but if we weren't ready we could just drop it off another time). ben and i met him downstairs, where he was standing in front of her former apartment, the door wide open. i gasped. there was trash everywhere, broken furniture littered the floor and any other available surface, a half-full fish tank was perched precariously on the end of what i can only assume was a coffee table. a huge chunk of the ceiling was missing, part of the wall opposite the door was peeling and falling down, and the smell was unbelievable. ms. downstairs had clearly NOT moved out.

"believe it or not, this was actually the nicest apartment in the building," sighed our landlord. he explained that he was bound by law to keep all of her belongings for 30 days, and that he knew that she had been messed up with drugs, which had led to her eviction. "this is what drugs do to you," he said, hastily closing the door, "so don't get caught up with them."

certainly puts the quasi-dodgy mint-green house into perspective, doesn't it?

we have actually come into ms. downstairs a couple of times since then, through a sort of bizarre set of circumstances. she told us that she was absolutely not a prostitute or into drugs, and that the house was simply falling apart and our landlord didn't want to deal with it. THAT's why she was being evicted, and please don't think anything bad about her.

i was thinking about our apartment- the brand new carpets and the fact that we had been allowed to paint the walls whatever color we wanted, and at the same time the fact that she had told her 5-7 year old son to "get back here right now before i rip your face off" moments before defending herself. luckily ben chimed in with "oh don't worry, we definitely don't."

so, while i suppose the jury is still out on whether or not ms. downstairs is indeed a crack whore, i would say that the evidence stacked against her (while, i'll admit, it's mostly circumstantial...) is pretty substantial. she has one more chance to come and get the remainder of her stuff, and then i guess the pretty blue sign that is taped to our front door will be strictly enforced. [drama, drama, drama...]

ben and i have wondered aloud about who might take the apartment downstairs once our landlord is done cleaning it (and replacing the carpet, ceiling, wall, etc...) i hope it is someone our age, like michael and rachel, so that i could fulfill my secret desire to have a sitcom style living situation. i guess that "hey, did you know that your apartment was once an alleged crack den?" is probably not the BEST way to make a first impression with a new neighbor, but i will take full advantage of the once terrifying apartment downstairs when i tell my non-philly (and hey, maybe even some philly) friends about it.

and

i'm still pretty glad that andy didn't buy that house.