The Crap Shack revolution will not be televised

It's common knowledge that I don't live in a great apartment complex. It's dirty, smelly at times, the elevators suck, and someone next to or beneath me blasts three tracks from Michael Jackson's Thriller album. Religiously. While there are an endless amount of characters in the building that have made it worthwhile to live here over the last year (White Trash Lady, One-Legged Woman, the friendly old guy on the 11th floor who smells like booze all the time, the bickering couple next door to me, even a former SFU football player on the sixth floor who I drove to the U a few mornings in the first semester), things have gone too far downhill for me to continue living here. I'll start with the internal problems and work my way out.

My apartment is too hot.
Over the last few weeks, I've had two fans (one in the bedroom, one in the living room) running continuously, to no avail. I'm living in a sauna, where sweat is as common as comfort should be. Also, there are holes in my window screens, which prevent me from opening my windows, unless I want to let bugs in. Needless to say, over the last few weeks I've had to bite the mosquito bullet.

The dripping faucet
As I type this, I can hear my sink absorbing what is now, after 10 months of living here, a stream of water pouring from the tap. The day I moved in, I told the manager that there was a leaky faucet. She looked at me like I was retarded and turned the tap back tighter. Brilliant. I've resorted to putting a face cloth in the sink to absorb the water while I'm sleeping at night so that I don't have to hear it, and run the risk of peeing in the bed (just to clarify, that hasn't happened yet).

They stole my fucking cupboard door

I've added the picture here as proof that I'm not just making shit up to be funny. During the winter, management went into people's apartments to check valves and stuff for the plumbing. I came home that day to see that my cupboard door was gone. I waited a day and nothing happened. I saw a manager and asked her where my cupboard door went. She told me they were probably fixing it. I never saw it again.

Because of the previous tenants, my Mom thinks I'm a junkie.
Back in September, my parents came to visit me shortly after I had moved in here. It was for two days, the same two days that I was trying out for the Bears basketball team. After the first night where I had puked my guts out into a garbage can, I came home and plopped on the couch, took notes on how I did, and didn't move for a few hours. My parents were here with nothing to do, so they started cleaning my kitchen (the entire apartment was moderately clean, at best, while the kitchen was the worst room out of all of them). My mom opens up a drawer and asks what's in there. I tell her it's my junk drawer: hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, stuff like that. The last person here before me used it for his junk drawer too, and kindly donated his belongings when he left. My mom's going through it when she shreaks. "WHAT IS THIS?!" I sit up, the most movement I've had since getting home that night, to see my mom holding Visine and a pack of Zig Zags. I'm not sure if her and my Dad ever really believed me that it wasn't mine.

The elevators force us to rise up

This might be my favourite pic taken in this building. Look at the anger, the unwillingness to pay rent, and the blatant effort to get everyone in the building to not pay rent. Why, you ask? Just over the elevators being down? What if I told you that those elevators were down for almost four straight days? Keep in mind that I live on the top floor of the building. While it's just a nuisance to me (I carried groceries up the stairs on Sunday night, that's the worst thing that happened to me), I was seriously worried about the tiny old woman I saw walking up the stairs (she was up around 6, I think) when I was leaving the building.

Stairway to hell
Having to walk the stairs wouldn't be that bad if it didn't stink like a men's room at a trucker stop. On my voyage from the top to the bottom, I've found loads of dirt, cigarette butts, a condom wrapper, what looked to be the pine needles off of a Christmas tree and the new trend at Grandin Tower, discarded garbage. Apparently if you throw your garbage in the stairwell, it's no longer your problem to deal with. The other night I found a box that had discarded ribs in it. Over the weekend I saw three neatly-tied Safeway bags. I don't know what was in there, but I pray it wasn't diapers.

It was the combination of the elevators and stairwell that have prompted me to find a new pad. In August, I'll be moving from my Crap Shack to the tranquil surroundings of Callingwood, where I'll be renting my sister and brother in law's condo from them. It's a big move, all the way out to the West end, but it's got to be done.

If they try and charge me for the cupboard, I'll burn this building down.