another day livin in new york!! The Best City In The World!!!!!

he has literally never replied to a text, never picked up the phone, and never answered the door. it’s time for me to admit: i have no idea what a new york apartment building superintendent actually does

update: i just spent 20 minutes on the phone with the gas company, who told me they shut off the gas in this building because of a gas leak, and are waiting for the landlord to submit a maintenance request so they can begin the repair process . . . oops

update: two weeks without gas over here

update: four months without gas over here

three weeks after the gas went out i got sick with THE coronavirus for a month. many nights, i was so short of breath and my heart was beating so fast i thought i was going to die. when i emerged (mostly) healed, i had a hunger for a @DiGiorno pizza. i still can't cook one :-(

meanwhile, i checked the "no" box on the lease renewal the landlord sent last month. the landlord sent it back signed and OK'd two days later. i tried calling him about 95 times about the move-out procedure--next tuesday. he will not pick up the phone.

my first impression of New York City Landlords, Ey!!! was that despite telling me they were going to clean the place AFTER i signed the lease, the landlord, the management, the super--everybody!--roundly ignored my calls when i moved into this apartment that was full of garbage

my lease expressly prohibited using a third party to install an air conditioner. it said i MUST have the super do it or risk a fine. the super ignored my calls, darkened his peephole for a fleeting moment every time i knocked, and left me on "read" for a sweaty month

eventually i called some guys from yelp and they came over in a truck full of air conditioners and went Full Pro on this place. it cost me like $200. it was great

the lease also said i had to pay a $500 deposit if i got a dog. again, nobody answered the phone to talk about it

a few months before the gas went out, the idiot landlord showed up at our building for the first time in years. he was banging on doors and demanding people's rent. he was wearing wraparound sunglasses indoors and traveling with a crew of four muscular dudes.

he yelled in a tone of voice like harvey weinstein had just eaten fred flintstone and was having a long heart attack. he used many R-rated words and casually threatened violence to the "deadbeats" next door, across the hall, upstairs, and downstairs. "I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE," etc

aside: lord help any of us who ever comes to within even a football-field's distance of even casually uttering the phrase "i know you're in there"

shortly after that, this yelling born-rich adult toddler moron started lurking frequently around the premises. every time i saw a cadillac escalade double parked in front of the fire hydrant in front of my building, i knew it was him. he owns every building that hydrant serves

i once--i swear to GOD--saw this man sitting in the driver's seat of one of his THREE (white, black, gray) cadillac escalades literally counting hundred-dollar bills while smoking a cigar. you can't make this stuff up!! i mean, actually, you can, and it's boring even then

it then became clear (the omnipresence of many contractors, loud machine noise) that the landlord was Making Renovations to the building. all of the renovations focused on the lobby. he added a security camera, for example. in short: he's doing stuff that looks good (to a buyer?)

meanwhile, the front door lock (!!!) has been broken for two YEARS. i've counted that 8 out of 10 times the door is partially open when i return home from being outside.

not until the one sweet pre-virus month i spent Working From Home did i realize how many jehovah's witnesses and "energy" company scammers just walk right into this building and then spend several hours interloping peskily.

i confess: i told one particularly persistent group of fake "Con Ed" dudes "i'm gonna call the cops". i promise i would never actually call the police. it's just, they'd been talking to the old lady across the hall for an hour, during which i looked them up on reddit. they RAN

so yeah, the front door was broken, the landlord was counting hundos in his literal cadillac, and we have a fancy new CCTV setup in the lobby of our building. one day four months ago, during which the sound of much drilling reached my home office, the gas went out. it's still out

one MONTH later, after ignoring all phone calls and texts, the landlord got the super to slip this note under every tenant's front door. i've hidden the super's name and details because he's a working man, though i've left the trash landlord's stuff on there. who cares about him

in that letter, one month after our gas went out and he did NOTHING, this dude had the Absolute Gall to "encourage" us to "take advantage" of a comically fancy, huge, heavy, cold rolled steel drop box he put in the lobby because USPS *might* be slow in getting him our money

it's like, i just wanna make a digiorno, and this guy's over here purchasing an exorbitantly fancy bioshock cosplay for his money to wear temporarily

this is the same guy, don't you know, who went NINE MONTHS without cashing my rent checks in 2018. every time i'd look at my bank account, i'd have to subtract most of the balance in my head before deciding what to eat.

so here's what i did: i didn't pay the rent. like clockwork, his office manager called to ask where the check was. i said "you ain't even cashing them." and she said "i'd recommend in the future you send us cashier's checks." and i said "are you committing tax fraud?" she HUNG UP

so i arrived at the end of 2018 with nine months' worth of rent still rotting impotently in my bank account. well, that's probably not EXACTLY how i ended up getting audited by the IRS *again* in 2019, though i'd wager it has at least SOMETHING to do with it.

(the landlord deposited all nine checks on january 3rd, 2019)

every time i hate on landlords on twitter, on a stream, in a video, or on a podcast, i get a deranged DM from a different person who i'd like to believe might, someday, as i believe i did many years ago, privately reassess a few elements of their worldview and Become Better

though today, as i pack up my final belongings and prepare to leave this otherwise beautiful, large, cheap apartment in a LOVELY neighborhood (sunset park, baby!!) i reflect on those DMs: wow. anyone who ever tries to defend landlords is worse than a cop. (ok, maybe not THAT bad)

so here is my politics: money is a bizarre, complicated, baroque figment of our collective imaginations, reaching its filthy tendrils all the way back into the shadows of the jungle of a time before language. to be born wealthy is to be born without humanity.

(side note: i have hired a full-time editor for my next video, so don't worry: i now make less than i made at kotaku!)

one of these days, i will arrange my full thoughts about money (etc) into some segment of a Video Game Video Review--hmm, probably of a game with some kinda currency in it--though for now let me just say i am probably yet too ignorant to perform said thought-arrangement

in closing, we're leaving this apartment on monday. i have paid the rent, though i am *NOT* going to mop the floors. heck, i ain't even gonna LOOK behind the refrigerator

i have counted the landlord's cars: i am pretty sure i was never going to get the deposit back

can't believe i got through this whole thing without mentioning the lack of hot water, or the fact that the refrigerator is flat-out broken (i call it The Rot Box)

postscript number one: if you're going to DM me or reply that i "complain too much" or that i "seem jealous" of my landlord (psychedelically common responses to my tweets like this), why don't you save yourself the energy and just text your landlord offering to wash his car

postscript number two: you might want to say "good landlords exist, though; i have a good landlord." nope! i paid rent to a good man, once. he was a public defender in oakland, california. he owned the house i rented in san leandro. however, he was not "a landlord". he was "gary"

well, that's the end of my New York Landlords Thread, Part One.

looks like Part Two is about to start:

so the manager of the building we're supposed to move into on july 1st says that the board can't review our application until the end of july

citing "delays" "due to COVID-19," the man has replied at the earliest a week after receiving an email. he has required an avalanche of paperwork, which at first i respected: i can appreciate a stickler. sticklers feel, i don't know, thorough. thoroughness can be good!!

though as the months went on, it started to feel like MAYBE this guy is just messing with us. he absolutely knows our intended move-in date. in fact, we've been talking about it since *last october*. there's been plenty of forewarning!!

i remember thinking, back in december or so, "wow, it's great to know exactly where we're moving to. after a lifetime of stressful moves [dad was in the army for my entire pre-college-graduation life, etc], it sure is nice to have one that i know will be painless" lmao

in this case, there's plenty of situational factors and middlepeople involved, though i'm gonna put today's complaint on this property manager alone. he was so slow replying to The Final Piece Of Paperwork that it became impossible to get the revision in before The Board Meeting

when he replied, he was like, "ok, just send it back with [this] on it." we did. two days later he replied, "thanks. the board already met this month (2 days ago), so we'll review your application at the end of july"

the "(2 days ago)" in parentheses is Casually Evil imo

after blaming "COVID-19" for every single delayed email response, he pulls this. he's gotta just be messing with us at this point, right?!

anyway, this does not bode well.

well, i'll be spending all day today looking up storage units. also, i now might have to throw out my bed

anyway, "thanks" to covid, we can stay in a four-star hotel in times square (lmao) for a month for less than we were paying here for rent. so you all might be about to see some Serious Hotel Tweets for a month

maybe i'll get me an @Alienware laptop to edit my DOOM video on . . .

in summary (for now): now i have a couple more weeks to worry about picking a sofa

(also, to clarify: our apartment here is pretty cheap. i'm saying hotels are wild-cheap right now because there aren't any tourists!)

update: we have vacated our brooklyn apartment. we checked into a hotel in heckin times square (lmao) for a wild-low covid-special price. we ate a 2 bros pizza on the bed while watching naruto. bibby babbis has decided he likes the hotel bed. well, goodnight