Apartment finding

It happened. I found an apartment for me and Maisie. I can’t help but think of Henry Green’s novel Apartment Finding, which is usually grouped with Loving and Living:

I first read it in a class taught by James Wood, and he loved Green so much that he’d do this little dance whenever he read an excerpt aloud. We all loved the dance and sometimes we’d chant for it right in the middle of something else. He’d get a little smile on his face, sort of like this one:

Soon he’d be prancing around holding Loving over his head, licking his finger and flipping through pages pretending to read all jauntily and that sort of thing.

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Apartment finding. We found one and I am happy. I’d say the trick to it was going on Craigslist a lot, and then agreeing to pay double the rent listed. I didn’t know to expect that, but my landlord explained that’s how it is now. And he was right – we had been applying to lots of places places listing the price we saw and hadn’t gotten any of them. But then we applied for his with double rent, and we got it. So all it takes is a little serendipity.

Another trick to finding a good apartment is to not rent an apartment from a guy named Ari Strimov. I learned about him because Craigslist had all these these gorgeous and reasonably priced places in Hancock Park, and one day I inquired about a lot of them. That afternoon, I got voicemails and emails back that were all some variant of this:

Hi, John. I am going to give your number to Ari (The Owner) and he will contact you to set up a showing, as well as answer any questions you may have.

No one said his last name. So I lamely googled “ari apartment los angeles.” But that ended up being enough. The first result was a blog with a post that began “I started this blog to channel my anger in a productive/therapeutic way.  Ari’s apartments are a revolving door of misery.” This was the site’s tag:

So his name was Ari Strimov. That led me to Yelp reviews. Excerpts from the 1 stars:

I had a terrible experience with the landlord of Elegant Deco Living. His name is Ari Strimov.”

“It makes me sick that I give him money every month and cannot wait to leave. He is abusive, mentally ill and a dirty businessman. I am counting the minutes until I leave. IF YOU BELIEVE IN THE GREATER GOOD, DO NOT GIVE THIS MAN ANY MONEY OR BUSINESS.”

“When we gave him notice (1 month as stated in the lease) – He pretty much harassed us for the next 4 weeks. At first, we were nice and allowed him to come in pretty much anytime to show the place to prospective tenants (even with a 10 minute notice) b/c we were worried about our $4600 deposit that he was in possession of. 2 weeks prior to our move out date, we asked him if he could give us a few days of privacy – the week we were moving out b/c my mother was in town visiting, we were moving, and my husband was working extra long hours at work under stressful conditions and tight deadlines so we didn’t need the added stress of Ari showing up every few hours 7 days a week with potential tenants walking through our apartment. We were only asking for 7 days! But when I asked him this, he laughed in my face. It was an evil laugh.”

“Even though I asked him 3 times not to come on the weekend and quoted the law, he entered while i wasn’t home. My neighbors saw him and I set a little ‘trap’ so I would know if he was there.”

And here are some of the 5 stars:

“He has been known to explode on a tenant once in a while, but usually not without merit.”

“Respect his property, treat it with care, and he’ll respect you.  It’s very simple.”

“You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone as dedicated to his work as Ari is.  He doesn’t have to do this…certainly he has better things to do than correct every tiny flaw and find countless ways to improve his properties.”

“He’s an old world gentleman and has a pleasant and open way of listening to concerns…This man is old school straight up.”

Those are the two ways people react to this kind of guy: either you suddenly find yourself crouching around and setting traps or you get Stockholm Syndrome and concepts like “old school” and “respect” start meaning a lot to you. (Which by the way, can you imagine how terrible life in the past would have been if the people really were all “old school”? Nothing but mean people yelling at each other because respect).

Even after seeing all this part of me was thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to rent from him. All I’d have to do is not care when he did bad or scary things! But it didn’t come to that because I got my good apartment.

Now if only furniture weren’t so expensive, especially the golden furniture which I favor.