Apr 19 2006
A Downtown Adventure
Some of you may not find this story too exciting, but for my mundane existence it was quite an adventure.
This evening after work I went downtown to check out an apartment complex I found. Yes, you heard me right. Downtown. Most sane, safety-loving, law-abiding citizens don’t want to live downtown, but hey, on my budget there aren’t many options. Anyway, despite my extensive research I found a place that I hadn’t heard of before. Studio apartments, pretty basic. They’re not run down but they are older. All utilities included, even satellite tv, and local telephone, and I’d only have to pay for electric. Overall, not bad. Of course, it is still a last resort. I’m looking for a casita. There are communities here in Vegas where many of our older, wiser citizens live and some of those homes have detached guest houses on the property. Most people use them as legitimate guest houses or home offices, but a few rent them out. I feel that I have enough contacts that some extensive networking should turn up a few leads, and with any luck I’ll be living in a very safe neighborhood with plenty of peace and quiet. Keep your fingers crossed for me, ok?
Back to downtown. There are plenty of rough neighborhoods and most of them are in the downtown area. General advice is to stay away from the letter and number streets (like A St. or 2nd St). This place is on the corner of 7th and something, within walking distance of the fabulous Fremont St. Experience and many dirt cheap buffets. I pulled into the small visitor parking garage, the one that basically only visitors to the office use. I didn’t know that it was an office hours only thing. There were no signs regarding hours that the garage is open, none whatsoever, but the garage was there and the office was nearby. The office was closed, of course. Whenever I want to just drop by a place to check it out the office is closed. So I decided to take a few minutes to walk around the property and get a feel for it. I struck up a conversation with a resident and started asking questions about living there. He offered to show me his place, so I took him up on it. They’re studios, so I would be able to see the whole place from the doorway, which would leave me an opening if I needed to take off in a hurry. Well, the place isn’t bad at all. I could certainly make do with it if I can’t find a casita. Mr. Resident and I kept chatting away without any worries about the time (isn’t that always the way when you’re yapping so much?)
What seemed like a few minutes into our conversation, I glanced over at my car and saw something was amiss. No, my car was fine. In fact, it was very safe. The gate to the garage was closed and locked with a padlock. Mr. Resident informed me that the gate closes at 6pm and opens again at 9am. By then it was 6:40pm. I have to be at work at 8am. What was I to do? Mr. Resident tried calling to see if he could find an emergency after hours number. No luck. Then we tried finding maintenance, but Mr. R has only lived there a short time and wasn’t sure where Mr. Maintenance lived. During our search Mr. Resident mentioned a neighbor across the courtyard who was a bit “weird” because he seemed to know everyone’s business. I said if anyone knows where to find Mr. Maintenance, it would be Mr. Nosy. Sure enough, Mr. Nosy knew so we went up to the 3rd floor and luckily, Mr. Maintenance was home. He had to give me a bit of a hard time about it, because he wasn’t supposed to unlock the gate at all after hours. I pleaded with him, telling him that I live all the way on the other side of town and had no way of getting home, since I only carried a few bucks with me and didn’t have my credit card. Now, before we found Mr. Maintenance, Mr. Resident offered to give me a ride home. I knew that since my home is so close to the office that I would be able to get to work and someone there would give me a ride to pick up my car, but the issue would be explaining why to my co-workers. They’d never believe this innocent story. No siree, not at all. They would much prefer to give me a hard time about some deep dark secret double life I have that has me getting trapped downtown at all hours of the night, and I’d never live it down. No, I needed to get home and be done with this ordeal.
It was becoming clear that Mr. Resident was an honest to goodness nice guy. Not too many of those downtown. He helped me plead my case to Mr. Maintenance, who after about 60 seconds relented and agreed to unlock the gate to let me out. I must say, I was quite impressed with the security at this place. I live in a much nicer part of town in what’s considered a “luxury” complex, and the gates here are a joke. I’ve never in 2 years of living here had to buzz in a friend or dinner delivery or even the cable installation guy. They either follow someone in, or else every delivery driver in town knows the gate code when the office staff insists there is no code. So anyway, Mr. Maintenance unlocked the gate, Mr. Resident saw that I got into my car and out of the complex safely, and I got home in time to watch some silly movie on tv. First impressions are lasting impressions, and if I can’t find a casita then I don’t think I’ll have too many reservations living in this downtown complex.
