To All The Landlords I’ve Loathed Before
Earlier this week I had an encounter with (yet another) aspiring journo visiting my humble ‘burgh seeking to “get the dirt” on the ‘Pernt. I met him in the most unexpected of places: the local Salvation Army.
The “new influx”of “dumbfux” has provided me a new means of acquiring nice duds dirt cheap. My only wish is that their mothers smoked during pregnancy so there would be more offerings in my size. But I digress.
Who knew the Garden Spot was so newsworthy? I certainly didn’t. The (lack of print) press coverage for my blog and those my fellow Greenpointers (wonderful people all) have seen fit erect makes my inner Dog Shit Queen wonder:
Why hast thou forsaken
meUS?
The only answer I have come up with that makes any sense is it’s easier to have young college graduates come up here and observe us like the relics we are: to solicit input from the local yokels would lower their employer’s journalistic standards. We are rent-paying Neanderthals in a Homo Erectile world. As antiquities we might be of journalistic or archaeological interest, but our presence and discontentment is
- incidental
- accidental
- inconvenient
to this neighborhood becoming “hip”.
When I walked into the Salvation Army and saw a clean-cut gent scribbling notes on a notepad while a porcine man pontificated about construction practices, undermining adjacent buildings and legal recourse. I knew I was onto something. I hung around. I eventually struck up a conversation with the scribbler.
He wanted to know about Greenpoint.
I told him I blogged about Greenpoint.
He asked what my blog was.
I told him.
He recognized it.
We talked.
What got me more than anything was his apparent surprise upon learning that I knew “the system”. And by “system” I mean housing law, rent stabilization law, the Department of Buildings, Department of Housing and Community Renewal and Housing Court.
I have been to Housing Court and I won. Twice.
Sure, I’m probably on a blacklist somewhere, but who gives a fuck? I don’t. Making that asshole eat shit for a collapsed ceiling, no electricity for ten days and no hot water was totally worth it. The judge even complimented me on the thoroughness of dossier I had painstakingly compiled for his edification.
When my landlord retaliated (by dragging me into court to set a date for making said “repairs”) my buddy Rachael tagged along and cheered as I ripped his paralegal a new asshole. The court-appointed moderator thought I was attorney “representing the tenant”. I told him:
I am not a fucking attorney, I am the tenant!
Housing Court is a very entertaining place. Those of you who enjoy gallows humor and/or care to know how miserably your condo-disabled brethren live should go. I mention this because (after a lengthy sojourn in Low Cal So-Cal) my buddy Rachael paid me a visit today and gave me a memento from my litigious past.
This is a water fountain in Kings County Housing Court.
This is a duck made out of a Post-It note.
Any questions?
Miss Heather