Apartment Hunting

I told David, the executive director and my new boss, that I would start working on April first. Over the phone he told me that he would prefer that I started the week before. I confidently explained that I was moving 800 miles, needed to find a place to live and “I’ll do such a great job once I start working you won’t even notice that I started a week later than you want.” He laughed and agreed to April 1st.

My mom was kind enough to accompany me to D.C. on an apartment hunting mission. It’s a stressful situation to know that you need to find a place in a two day time span.
I did my homework by checking Washington, D.C.’s best apartment resource: the City Paper. I made phone calls, sent emails and found out about a bunch of different places. Since I knew virtually no one in D.C. (was that past tense? ha!) I decided that a group house would be a good deal, a built in friend network. Hopefully.

D.C. is kinda deceptive size wise. The entire District is 100 square miles, make it a ten-by-ten diamond. And most of the “hip, young white kids” live in NW. So, basically you are in a quarter of a 10 by 10 diamond which isn’t much space at all. But, by D.C. standards Tenleytown is in the middle of freakin’ nowhere. It’s a residential neighborhood near American University. The first house I looked at was in Tenleytown. There was a big smelly dog, an over-zealous 30 something woman, more knick knacks then I’ve ever seen in my life, water damage and no central AC. I had been forewarned that D.C. in summer is unbearable and I knew virtually immediately I would not be living in this place.

I rushed my mom (who was sick with a respiratory infection) from Tenleytown to Shaw. As we ascended the Metro escalator, she was immediately skeptical. 8th and R Streets NW are not very picturesque especially after the suburbanized Tenleytown. There were boarded up houses, it was certainly a neighborhood in transition. We found the house we were looking for nearby on S Street and as we walked in, she perked up. We had stumbled upon a beautifully renovated, absolutely huge house. The four people who lived there (two guys and two girls) were all from the Midwest save Summer and all worked for non-profits or Congress save Erin. Summer had been an anthropology major, Dom liked indie rock and he informed me that the two big places to see shows were within six blocks of the house.

The room itself was small, but the rest of the house was rad, the rent was cheap and the people seemed cool. In a hyperactive tizzy I tried to make them like me enough to ask me to move in. I bid them goodbye and reiterated my interest in the place.

My mom and I headed back to our hotel by Union Station. At 5:30 p.m. my cell phone rang. It was Dom. He said, “we know that you’re looking at some other places and everything and we probably don’t seem cool getting back to you so quickly. But, we’d like you to move in with us.”

“Awesome! I want to live with you guys too!” It took one interview and two house visits before I had a job and a place to live. Mom and I went out to dinner to celebrate. We had planned to spend the next day apartment hunting, but we slept in instead.