Hello subscribers. Hope you liked my clickbait title. Why does it feel like I need to write an intro? Because this is in certain ways an email? Not sure. Anyway…commence Substack!!
I have never met the landlord for my new apartment building in LA and I never want to. Landlords are some of God’s meanest creatures. They love to act like they want you dead even though all you are doing to them is sending them hundreds of dollars every month, which would not bother most people. Once, a landlord I was fighting with told me in a condescending tone that he didn’t know if I “read the newspaper,” which I do think is a very funny way to tell someone that you think they’re dumb, but made me mad nonetheless. I read the newspaper occasionally and I like to think that it shows.
The first time I ever got an apartment alone, I had to meet up with my landlord in a Starbucks to sign the lease. When we were going over the terms, he mentioned that he didn’t allow loud parties in the unit, and then he sort of looked me over and added, “But it seems like that won’t be a problem,” implying that I looked, visibly speaking, like a loser.
It would have made sense, maybe, if I was wearing, like, a newsboy cap or a cape or something, but that was not at all the situation—in fact I remember distinctly I was wearing a light pink soutien collar Blocktech raincoat that I bought for $100 at the Uniqlo on Chicago Avenue in fall 2018, which even if you didn’t like it was absolutely not the kind of garment that would make you look at the person wearing it and go ok, this FREAK has never even BEEN to a party! Anyway, when he said that I just laughed, but in retrospect it’s probably the worst I’ve ever been bullied by a middle aged landlord in a Starbucks while wearing stylish yet practical Japanese basics. It feels good to finally tell my story!!!
The new apartment-related figure in my life is my building’s Property Manager, a man I love and respect but don’t understand. He decorates our mailbox area seasonally—when I moved in, it was summer/beach/Hawaii themed, complete with lei-like streamers and pictures of surfboards and a sign that said “aloha.”
This was early September, so I kept wondering: Will he change it for fall? Or is it a year-round beach theme because LA is by the beach? Maybe he’ll just forget? And the aloha sign will get dusty and eventually fall on the ground and a bunch of people will step on it so it’s crumpled and looks like it just says “aloh” and it’ll become one of those things I see every day and kind of hate seeing but also don’t throw away in case someone actually wants it, which they pretty obviously don’t? And I’ll start spontaneously thinking the word “aloh” all the time while I’m just trying to go about my day, to the point where it becomes intrusive to my psyche? And I will never forget “aloh”? So I waited and wondered, and then I came home on September 22nd, the very day of the autumnal equinox (also the shared birthday of my mom and Ayatollah Khomeini), to find that he had changed the aloha stuff out for pumpkins and leaves and signs that said “hello fall.”
Isn’t that satisfying? That he did it at the exact changing of the seasons??? I felt taken care of, like how in kindergarten you’d come in and the day would be marked on the calendar and you’d have a long discussion of what day and month and season it was. And there were seasonal decorations in kindergarten, too. It was nice. There must be an inborn human urge to mark the seasons visually, like how in the Neolithic era they’d freak out over the solstice and make a big rock formation. This is all to say that I appreciate it on a primal level when people decorate their spaces using the pagan iconography of beach umbrellas and snowmen from that weird sale section at the front of Target. And it is a profoundly human experience to feel that way!
Another incredible project of the property manager’s is the four-page newsletter he puts out, which bills itself as “A Monthly Insight” into what’s going on at our apartment building. I have no idea if his boss asked him to do this, or if he does it because he likes to, or if he is doing it semi-ironically because it is insane. Anyway it is one of my favorite magazines.
One of the best sections in October issue was the Q and A, which this time gave an answer to the age-old question “It’s MY parking spot!!!!!!!!!!”
Also this arresting image by an unknown photographer:
Definitely evocative and a great shot!!!
I was going to write on the topic of interior decor, but I’m running out of time so I think I’ll save that for next week’s substack. Until then please also enjoy my favorite notification I received this week, which depicts a TikTok man, the theme of whose TikTok is “I deserve respect.”
Ta-ta!!!!!!!!!!!!!!