Having bypassed the "arrive in a city, stay in a hostel, search for an apartment" that so many of us travellers dread yet thrive on at the same time, I considered myself to be blessed. Not only did I not have to trawl Craigslist (CL), trying to gauge distances, safe neighborhoods and good deals, but I landed a neat little one-bedroom in a comfortable, leafy neighborhood perched high up on the City's third-steepest hill, and all this in a place I could never afford had I not been blessed with the good fortune of meeting Mike and Rich. From my balcony (or tower, as I like to think of it- see photo above), I could regard the minions in their fruitless apartment searches, non-response after non-response, being shown dump after overpriced dump, and rejection after rejection.
Which is why it was a shock to me when I became one such lemming. I was one of (as I was soon to find out) the thousands of twentysomethings looking for a reasonably priced apartment in the City of San Francisco.
Thrust into the depths of CL, I scrolled through page after basic-formatted page of apartments. From the cheap ($500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in the Haight-Ashbury district, unheard of and obviously a scam from someone related to Nigerian royalty) to the completely unattainable ($1500 and more in Duboce Triangle- not surprisingly, the neighborhood I desired most).
Starting my search, I didn't heed the comments or warnings or advice of those who had been through the rental ringer. Ron, a veteran of shifting in San Francisco (eight times in as many years), had advice which I perhaps didn't listen to closely enough- "the best way is to get it through a friend". I should know this. I did share housing in Sydney. I also did it in London, cold-calling, walking in a complete stranger. This was in 2004. The transatlantic rental market seven years ago was nowhere near as cutthroat as today's- back then, an email on gumtree got you an appointment, only one housemate had to be home to certify you weren't crazy, and often the fact that you were antipodean was enough to get the go-ahead to move your Kathmandu backpack in the next day. Of course, you ended up living with cheap drug-loving, hard-partying backpackers and the omnipresent couch dosser, but we all loved it. We didn't care. I remember when I had to go about finding a replacement for my room in Clapham Junction, I placed an ad on gumtree, London's version of Craigslist in the early noughties. After interviewing one person, I asked the remaining housemates (all antipodes) if they wanted to meet him, to which the Kiwi, Bettina, replied "Nah, long as he's not psycho. Just get your bond off 'im and 'e can move in", and went back to showing pictures on her phone of the seven grams of cocaine they'd consumed on Christmas day to disbelieving Australian visitors.
Present day California is all about second interviews, call backs, open houses, "hanging out", "spending time", all so that they let the right one in.
One of the open houses I was cordially invited back to (all that was missing was the gilt-edged posted invitation) took place on a Monday night at 9pm. First, Monday at 9pm isn't my finest hour. In fact, it's usually the time at which I'm in my PJs, ready to light that joint and gaze at the city skyline before settling in to watch a non-committal thirty minutes of "Family Guy" before going to bed.
Instead, I found myself cycling down 14th Street to the Mission, to socialize with some strangers in order to show them that I was the one they wanted to let live in their, 8 x 8 ft, no direct sunlight, soon-to-be-vacant room. All this in a supposedly 'natural' social environment, yet we all knew who was being judged. Luckily for me, I have no trouble being me, and most of the time it works a charm.
When I got there, however, I found two other potential housemates at the dinner table. I immediately felt like I was in an audition for "Big Brother", where the least outgoing would be told that "it's been a really hard decision, and we'd love to choose you all , but..." Not least because one girl, desperate to outshine everyone else (I think her hoop earrings and make-up caked face did that) was agreeing with everything any of the housemates said, from the banal ("OH MY GOD- I love my bathtub too!) to the absurd ("I just want to carve out this pumpkin and stick my head in it and wear it to work too!") I was decidedly apathetic about my approach to the conversation, because I thought "I wouldn't participate in this as a housemate, so why pretend to care at the interview if I won't caress their egos outside of this artificial social gathering?" Plus, the girl was making my skin crawl. (When I told her I was from Sydney, her response, with a slow bobbing of the head, "I'm down.") Being pitted against someone (the likes of her) was not something I cared to subscribe to
So despite my best efforts to convince these people I was their one and only, I received an email from them at midnight saying that it was a "tough decision" (very reality show judge of them) and though they thought I'd be a "great fit" (I'm hearing echoes of "Australian Idol" here), they ended up choosing another candidate. Following this, they extended an offer to "hang out soon".
Excuse me while I vomit into this bowl of nail clippings I'm going to send you.
I am baffled- if they chose the obnoxious Big Brother wannabe over me, does that mean that I should don hoop earrings and a circa-2000 era Jennifer Lopez cap? Because that's apparently what it takes to get a room in this city.
No, no- give me an overpriced, undersized room in London with a bunch of two-pound-a-pill-loving Aussies and Kiwis any day. At least when they say "I love you", you'll know they mean it. Until the morning.
