I'm back! Did you miss me and this sad, sad column last week while I was on vacation, far away from the sadness? Well, buck up, because there are a lot more rental market atrocities left to cover.
Today I bring you a share in one of those high-rise towers atop Cathedral Hill at Gough and Geary. It's a two-bedroom unit, but neither of the bedrooms are up for grabs at the moment. No, the current renters there are just looking to subsidize their situation by renting out the mirror-walled dining room where, according to the photos, some sad sack has been crashing on a mattress on the floor.
The pricetag: $1295 a month. Because $1300 might sound too greedy.
Yes, all you'd have for privacy in this place are couple of paper folding screens, one blocking the kitchen door (where there is no door), and one partially separating your sleeping and fucking quarters from the expansive living room.
Here's what it's supposed to look like (staged, in some earlier real estate photos).
And here's what the dining room bedroom currently looks like. (There are, sadly, no photos of the common areas.)
Your two roommates would be "bachelors" who admit they don't really have any furniture, so maybe you won't be spending any time in that living room anyway. Per the ad, which links potential takers to a Dropbox with all the pretty staged photos like the one above, "Note: our place does not have the furniture in the images. We're living more like single bachelors."
Assuming everybody stays in their bedrooms most of the time when they're not heating up frozen lasagna anyway this living opportunity might not be so much worse than, say, sharing a child's bunkbed with an IT guy. It is definitely better than living in a tent on some guy's deck where you're expected to do yard work.
But, Jesus. You do know there are plenty of shares out there for around the same price where you don't have to set aside all your dignity and live in someone's dining room, right?
These assholes even added insult to injury by posting this in Apartments for Rent instead of Rooms & Shares, and I'm surprised no one's flagged it yet.
So, if you need to be stumbling distance from the Polk Street bars, and you can sleep anywhere, sure, go ahead. You may like it for a few months. But echoing a refrain that's come up again and again in Apartment Sadness, good luck getting laid.
