Wally has an apartment building in town. It is within walking distance to Paramount Studios, to Larchmont, which use to be trendy until they let in a Koo-A-Roo fast food joint. That started the downhill. There was a little French cafe there that Wally and I would walk to on a warm summer evening. They had a fantastic free range organic roast chicken that we always ended up ordering, even after saying we would try something else, just once. It closed, the hardware store closed where you could get just about anything you needed including kitchenware.
Anyway, the apartments are nice. Six units, hardwood floors, and each apartment has its own layout. Each is different in some way. It is from the early fifties I think, the style is anyway and it is right across King of King's church. A lovely edifice to the Catholic gods with bells that peel out chimes at the hour. It is a school in the day, beastly children roam the asphalt, chain link preventing them access to anything green. But that's Catholicism for you. You have to suffer if you want to go to heaven. That's why they think every sperm is sacred. You get so much more suffering that way and on such massive scale. Think of the future starving saints of the Church, how more delighted god will be with such suffering. Anway...
I digress, Vine becomes, Rossmore at Melrose. It is the dividing line between the rich and the poor. The portal is the church sticking into Melrose like a sword. As if to say, 'Beyond this point live the privileged. Enter at your Peril'. Right away, the highway is brought down to a one lane road. People have to merge to pass by the church and Wally's apartments across the street.
It is a careful place to live. The merging of traffic, people cutting off others, horns honk, rage, it's a city with a lot of very important people converging into a single lane so imagine what it is like for them to be behind someone else. Wally's apartments are amazingly quiet with all this going on, It could be the old type of construction, it could be the vegetation, sycamore trees in the parkway that shade the street and assorted plants in front.
Not a bad place and remember, six units. The good side for the tenant is that there is not a lot of other people. Not too much of a problem to do a load of laundry. There are front and back doors to all the units. The back door at the kitchen or located nearby. All front doors go into a two story small lobby that has only a staircase, no elevator, to the upper three apartments. The mail is located inside so that no one has to go outside for it. Each has a separate, one car garage in back with a large cement area to get to the garages fixed with genie garage doors.
The tenants, those that get along and they usually do on some level--like it there. The rent can't be raised too high, there are no amenities. No security except for security doors on each outside door and bars on windows that can be opened in an emergency from inside. No air-conditioner, and the heaters, except for one, have to be turned on manually. But only on occasion does it get hot enough to really want air-conditioning. For some reason, a cool breeze blows there. It is located in what use to be a swamp in the early days of Los Angeles. A low point that collects the cooler air. The mail carrier always says she loves to get the building on a hot day because going up to the door was like having air-conditioning on your face. And she's right, it is cool right there. A tunnel of sorts is formed by separation of properties and the wind is funneled between, bringing a cool breeze from the North side of the buildings and the foliage along the way, cooling the air further.
Six fucking units and you would think the tenants would be appreciative. The building is worth millions, if sold. Because of the location and what you could build on the piece of land probably an apartment with sixty units like the new one next door. The six units go for about a thousand each, more or less, in rent a month. A real bargain for that area. Some months there is no rent money coming in, the bills to maintain six units, the taxes, and all the rest of what owning an apartment building can and will take a big chunk of change. We get, on average about three rents for ourselves, minus income tax and the other three units go for the bills for the building.
So why the petty bullshit? Why the whining about the goddamn church bells. That's from the fucking Catholic that moved out. Why did he think anyone would want to move into an apartment that he painted green and red on certain walls? He wanted his deposit back, it was just painted he said and yes, it was a nice paint job. But fucking green and red? So he got the security, just wore me down and it is now painted, an off-fucking white.
I use to have empathy for their plight, now I wait for that day when vultures circle the little village.
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