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Okay, listen up world: I’m moving to Hollywood. That’s right. I’m living the dream. I’m packing up my bags and my books and my pots and my pans, my clothes and my dishes and my ridiculous second-hand overstuffed lounge chairs, and I’m moving. Ten miles away. Somewhere different, somewhere special, somewhere - cheaper than Santa Monica.
I mean, let’s face it: despite the rosy promise of rent control, the price of Santa Monica apartments inches higher each year – if I stay in my 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom place for another year, I’ll be paying an uncomfortably large percentage of my salary to rent an admittedly pleasant but aging place that’s about 30 blocks from the beach – about as far as you can get from the ocean and still be counted as Santa Monica, so there's really no cachet to be had in "beach-side property."
So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and split the rent on a nice somewhere-to-be-determined one-bedroom with my very special man-friend, who is breaking all sorts of my preconceived notions about men and is actually quite enthusiastic about the prospect of cohabitation.
So the decision has been made: now all I’ve got to do now is this RIDICULOUS NUMBER OF THINGS:
-- find a new tenant for my apartment,
-- find a new place to live,
-- pack up all my stuff,
-- find movers or rent my own truck and find friends to help me move,
-- figure out what furniture to sell and what to keep and what to give away and what to throw away,
-- and finally, figure out how to live with a guy for the first time and share all sorts of terribly personal things like bathrooms and fridges and budgets.
Our deadline is July 1.
Today is May 20th.
Can we do it?
Photo by firemonkeyfish via flickr
Here are the main factors involved: I'm moving out of my place before my lease is up. My current roommate is choosing to stay, so I've got to find a subletter who will be reasonably clean, considerate, and quiet. My roommate is more than reasonably clean, considerate, and quiet, but she will also be working on a dissertation all summer, and so her stress levels will be higher than average.
Next, my guy and I have to choose a new place based on price, size, and location: right now, he's living in a 2 bedroom in Hollywood, with high ceilings, big bedrooms, and a killer view, but his rent is inching up as well.
I work in Hollywood, he works in Studio City. In order to maintain a reasonable commute time (I'm talking the half-hour mark, maybe 45 minutes at worst), we pretty much have to live in North Hollywood/Studio City, or West Hollywood, Hollywood, Los Feliz, or Silverlake. I'm not averse the whole Glendale/Pasadena thing, nor to Culver City or Westwood. Our budget tops out at $1400, but paying less is always best, especially since we'd like to save money for things like travel and a wide-screen TV. (Priorities!)
We don't have pets, we don't have huge parties but we do enjoy a certain amount of rock n' roll music and late-night Guitar Hero sessions. We really love going to good restaurants, seeing cool movies, walking around eclectic neighborhoods, and just generally adventuring around the city.
We don't have too much furniture between us, but we do have too many mattresses and televisions and Playstations, which suggests that a serious Craigslist campaign will be necessary. We also have a crapload of books between the two of us: in my seven years in the English department at UCLA, I accumulated quite a collection of good literature that I'm fairly loathe to sell (let's not talk about the library books I'm still holding hostage), and he has a similarly extensive collection of mathematics textbooks and sci-fi paperbacks.
Have you ever tried to move a thousand pounds of books? I feel an ulcer coming on already.
So Angelenos: in the next forty days, I'll be needing advice, encouragement, and consolation. If you've got a hot lead on a great moving company, ideas about where to find a super-cool subletter, reasons why YOUR neighborhood would be a great fit for us, or tips on how to scrounge up sturdy cardboard boxes, here's the place to pass them on. I'll be updating you all on our progress: if all goes well, we'll be sitting pretty in a nice new place of our own by July 1st. I think I'll die of happiness - if I don't expire from the stress first.
