If anything is pushing me to buy a house right now, last night's crapfest of apartment living is it.
My unit is on the top floor of the building, and the ceiling is common to the roof (i.e., no loft space). For the past few weeks I'd been hearing someone occasionally walking on the roof - the issue was brought up with the manager, but more as an informational thing since there wasn't really any harm being done, just occasional minor nuisance noise.
Until last night.
Somewhere around 2am, I was woken up by the sound of someone literally stomping on the roof right over my bedroom. And I do mean stomping - the bedroom window was rattling from the noise, which was made all the better by the fact that the roof's gravelled. I'm not a light sleeper either, which means that this person was really hoofing it up there. Pissed, I get out of bed and head up there to find out what exactly is going on, figuring that if someone ignored the off-limits notice on the access door I was pretty well within my rights to do the same in order to chew them out.
Up on the roof, I find this drunk kid who looks to be about 18 standing around yakking on his cellphone and having a smoke. Greeting him with a friendly 'what the hell are you doing up here?', he says, 'I'm on the phone, can't talk to you right now'. Good move there Charlie; now I'm moving from pissed to angry. 'Seeing as how you just woke me up with your goddamned clodhopping on my roof, I think you can call them back after we settle this.' The kid gives me the 'oh crap' look and finishes the call.
Long and the short of it is, he lies to me by saying the manager gave him permission to be there. Giving him an out, I call him on it and tell him that if he's straight with me we can sort this out here and now without any unpleasantness. Nope, the dumbass keeps lying about how he's allowed to be up there because he and the manager are 'tight'. OK, fine. You were dumb enough to tell me which unit you live in, so we'll stop dealing with this like men and go through the manager.
I head back down to my apartment and call the manager, apologising for getting him out of bed and explain the situation to him. We find the kid heading down the stairs. He's cornered and after some conversation it's explained to him in no uncertain terms that he is now evicted for breach of lease (failure to abide by posted notices plus a noise complaint after 10pm) and is to be out by midnight Sunday. Okay, not the result I went into all of this hoping for, but it serves the little bastard right. As I'm walking off, the kid's dumb enough to mouth off to the effect of, 'yeah, well, after I'm gone you're still gonna hafta deal with my roommates'. Clearly a real rocket scientist, this one.
Waiting a few minutes in my apartment for him and the manager to sort things out and not being real happy with his vague threat, I head back down to his apartment to have the talk with them about what's going to happen if any of my stuff in the common areas (mailboxes, laundry room, garage, etc.) suddenly starts being screwed with. Ring the doorbell: no answer. Ring it again: no answer, but I can hear people moving around in there. Knock heavily on the door.
This brings some short drunk kid I don't even recognise with a real smartass mouth on him to the door. I ask to speak to his roommate, and clarify the point by telling him that I specifically want the one who's just been evicted, but that he's more than welcome to hang around while I explain how things are going to work. What I end up with is another kid (also drunk) whom I recognise as one of the other tenants. Making him go retrieve the problem child, I figure that since the gang's all here we can begin.
I start off with the, 'if your friend hadn't lied to me, we wouldn't be here now' speech. The short kid with the mouth immediately tells me how he and his brother (the tenant) are going to sue me, that their dad's a lawyer, etc. Okay, Sparky, you go right ahead and do that, because in the course of your diatribe I've established that both you and the original assclown are 20, your roomate's 21, and all three of you are drunk - meaning that the tenant likely purchased alcohol with intent to supply it to minors, which is pretty small in the grand scheme of things right now. But given that you've just breached your lease in two fairly major ways and drunken minors are involved, maybe it's a good thing that daddy's a lawyer because now he and you can sit down and he can go over both contract and criminal law with you.
They go silent. I deliver the, 'now, here's what's going to happen if my stuff gets screwed with' speech and am ready to depart when the mouthy kid smarts off to me again and has his brother call the manager. Fine, go right ahead. I head back up to my apartment, wait a few minutes, call the manager back, and explain the situation to him. He and I agree that I'm well within my rights to warn them to not even so much as think about retribution over this, and I go back to bed figuring that things are wrapped up, these kids have the fear of God in them right now, and life can go back to its normal boring pace.
So, about an hour ago I headed downstairs to retrieve a book I'd left in the Jeep. The antenna's broken off and all four tires have had a pebble left under the valve stem caps. Call the local PD: they send out a car, the officer takes my complaint along with a recap of the night's events, talks to the manager, and comes back to my unit. Since the problem children are out (as evidenced by their car not being in the garage), he asks me to call the PD anytime I notice they're back and they'll swing by for a friendly chat. Can't issue a warrant since it's not known who actually committed the vandalism (I'm tending towards the mouthy little turd on this one myself), but once it's known there will be an arrest made.
So now I'm pretty much sitting here waiting for the cretins to come back so that one or more of them can be thrown into a squad car and hauled off for the weekend (the beauty of being arrested on a Friday: they won't get around to you until Monday or Tuesday). What amazes me is that the whole thing would've taken five minutes to resolve and gone nowhere near this far if the drunk idiot on the roof had just apologised for waking me up and promised not to do it again. Stupid spoiled snot-nosed Art Center kids are one of the very few things about this city I don't like.
My unit is on the top floor of the building, and the ceiling is common to the roof (i.e., no loft space). For the past few weeks I'd been hearing someone occasionally walking on the roof - the issue was brought up with the manager, but more as an informational thing since there wasn't really any harm being done, just occasional minor nuisance noise.
Until last night.
Somewhere around 2am, I was woken up by the sound of someone literally stomping on the roof right over my bedroom. And I do mean stomping - the bedroom window was rattling from the noise, which was made all the better by the fact that the roof's gravelled. I'm not a light sleeper either, which means that this person was really hoofing it up there. Pissed, I get out of bed and head up there to find out what exactly is going on, figuring that if someone ignored the off-limits notice on the access door I was pretty well within my rights to do the same in order to chew them out.
Up on the roof, I find this drunk kid who looks to be about 18 standing around yakking on his cellphone and having a smoke. Greeting him with a friendly 'what the hell are you doing up here?', he says, 'I'm on the phone, can't talk to you right now'. Good move there Charlie; now I'm moving from pissed to angry. 'Seeing as how you just woke me up with your goddamned clodhopping on my roof, I think you can call them back after we settle this.' The kid gives me the 'oh crap' look and finishes the call.
Long and the short of it is, he lies to me by saying the manager gave him permission to be there. Giving him an out, I call him on it and tell him that if he's straight with me we can sort this out here and now without any unpleasantness. Nope, the dumbass keeps lying about how he's allowed to be up there because he and the manager are 'tight'. OK, fine. You were dumb enough to tell me which unit you live in, so we'll stop dealing with this like men and go through the manager.
I head back down to my apartment and call the manager, apologising for getting him out of bed and explain the situation to him. We find the kid heading down the stairs. He's cornered and after some conversation it's explained to him in no uncertain terms that he is now evicted for breach of lease (failure to abide by posted notices plus a noise complaint after 10pm) and is to be out by midnight Sunday. Okay, not the result I went into all of this hoping for, but it serves the little bastard right. As I'm walking off, the kid's dumb enough to mouth off to the effect of, 'yeah, well, after I'm gone you're still gonna hafta deal with my roommates'. Clearly a real rocket scientist, this one.
Waiting a few minutes in my apartment for him and the manager to sort things out and not being real happy with his vague threat, I head back down to his apartment to have the talk with them about what's going to happen if any of my stuff in the common areas (mailboxes, laundry room, garage, etc.) suddenly starts being screwed with. Ring the doorbell: no answer. Ring it again: no answer, but I can hear people moving around in there. Knock heavily on the door.
This brings some short drunk kid I don't even recognise with a real smartass mouth on him to the door. I ask to speak to his roommate, and clarify the point by telling him that I specifically want the one who's just been evicted, but that he's more than welcome to hang around while I explain how things are going to work. What I end up with is another kid (also drunk) whom I recognise as one of the other tenants. Making him go retrieve the problem child, I figure that since the gang's all here we can begin.
I start off with the, 'if your friend hadn't lied to me, we wouldn't be here now' speech. The short kid with the mouth immediately tells me how he and his brother (the tenant) are going to sue me, that their dad's a lawyer, etc. Okay, Sparky, you go right ahead and do that, because in the course of your diatribe I've established that both you and the original assclown are 20, your roomate's 21, and all three of you are drunk - meaning that the tenant likely purchased alcohol with intent to supply it to minors, which is pretty small in the grand scheme of things right now. But given that you've just breached your lease in two fairly major ways and drunken minors are involved, maybe it's a good thing that daddy's a lawyer because now he and you can sit down and he can go over both contract and criminal law with you.
They go silent. I deliver the, 'now, here's what's going to happen if my stuff gets screwed with' speech and am ready to depart when the mouthy kid smarts off to me again and has his brother call the manager. Fine, go right ahead. I head back up to my apartment, wait a few minutes, call the manager back, and explain the situation to him. He and I agree that I'm well within my rights to warn them to not even so much as think about retribution over this, and I go back to bed figuring that things are wrapped up, these kids have the fear of God in them right now, and life can go back to its normal boring pace.
So, about an hour ago I headed downstairs to retrieve a book I'd left in the Jeep. The antenna's broken off and all four tires have had a pebble left under the valve stem caps. Call the local PD: they send out a car, the officer takes my complaint along with a recap of the night's events, talks to the manager, and comes back to my unit. Since the problem children are out (as evidenced by their car not being in the garage), he asks me to call the PD anytime I notice they're back and they'll swing by for a friendly chat. Can't issue a warrant since it's not known who actually committed the vandalism (I'm tending towards the mouthy little turd on this one myself), but once it's known there will be an arrest made.
So now I'm pretty much sitting here waiting for the cretins to come back so that one or more of them can be thrown into a squad car and hauled off for the weekend (the beauty of being arrested on a Friday: they won't get around to you until Monday or Tuesday). What amazes me is that the whole thing would've taken five minutes to resolve and gone nowhere near this far if the drunk idiot on the roof had just apologised for waking me up and promised not to do it again. Stupid spoiled snot-nosed Art Center kids are one of the very few things about this city I don't like.
ig: 
