Day 71: Cat Drama

Day 2 of the apartment hunt for my sis-in law, Alex!  And man, did we cover a lot of terrain.  We saw charming and out of the budget in Santa Monica, hideous in Culver City, and my favorite, the Barton Fink apartment on a walk street in Venice Beach.  The manager at the Barton Fink apartment ushered us into a tiny, old-school elevator, just about big enough to fit the three of us.  When he showed us the apartment I almost bumped into myself turning around.  I asked him where the rest of the apartment was.  It was a tiny postage stamp of a room, a strange cubby that was billed as a "loft bedroom nook" and a little kitchenette, and a little bathroom.  I would say the whole place was around 150 square feet.  For 1,500 a month.  He replied, yeah, it's actually not even a studio, it's a bit smaller than that.  So it's a half apartment? Yeah, he answered back.  It's almost more like a dorm room.  OK, awesome.  Oh, and did I mention it was facing a brick wall?  That was part of the cell-like charm.  It included one parking spot, which was, "off-site."  On to the next.

Well, we took a break for a great lunch at Cafe Brasil, and I got to turn Al on to Brazillian food.  She had a steak sandwich that she loved.  Nnogo suggested we check out Playa del Rey, so we drove on down to the beach.  We saw a few potential apartments, one quite noisy, the other facing a stucco wall (there is a theme here...)  Al spotted a rental/real estate office, and we stopped in. At 2:00 there was a place they could show us - it hadn't come on the market yet, but the tenant was willing to let us check it out.  It would not be available until March (perfect for Al's timing.)  We waited in front of a quite decent building, on an amazingly quiet, charming street.  We were praying it was a rear-facing unit, because if it was, it would have a gorgeous view of the beach.  And if it was an upper unit...bonus...Well the rental gentleman came along, showed us in, took us upstairs, to the rear of the building.  We were pinching each other.  We walked into a sun-filled apartment overlooking the canal and the beach, good size, great terrace, perfect kitchen, cute little bathroom, and quite decent bedroom.  Excellent closet space, laundry and parking spot - make that spots, plural. Two tandem spots!!  The rent was 1,600, a slight stretch of the budget, but not far off from the mark.  The only thing remaining a mystery...would the owner allow a cat?...to be continued...