Adventures in apartment hunting

For the past two days, I have traveled literally hundreds of miles - between the cities of Baltimore and D.C., that is. If you do the math, that makes for several loops in and around neighborhoods from Laurel to Silver Spring, College Park to Takoma Park. Talk about facinating... that is if you like the beltway and Rte. 1. All in the quest for a treasure..., a diamond in the rough..., my very own apartment.

I have to say, there are some promising neighborhoods out here in which I could find a place, provided I'm willing to shell out the cash required. It's not arbitrary; rent prices definitely do reflect quality of environment. The closer you are to some home-grown, artsy downtown, the more it costs you. As well, the nearer you are to potted-plant-lined, brick roads flanked by large national chains of a certain caliber (read: Ann Taylor Loft, DSW shoes, Macaroni Grill), the more those apartments will go for. And, in both cases, the rent is sky-high (pun intended) even if you will barely be able to make out the store rooftops from your nosebleed balcony 15+ stories above the street. The reasonably priced digs are, well, less appealing. I'm not interested in having the metro stop parking lot across the street from my characterless complex of twenty buildings with their slowly rusting patio railings. I'm hoping to have neighbors who respect their property enough to put trash in the ubitquitous dumpsters and not on the sidewalks (or, even worse, NEXT to the dumpsters). And, I certainly do not want to see eighteen-year old men meandering around the lots with bottle-shaped paper bags lifted indelicately to their maws. I lived on college campuses for ten years, thank-you-very-much, and it's time to move on. (Not that twenty-five to thirty-five year old guys need to be boozing in my future parking lot, either.)

That's right, I think I've finally established some criteria for this hunt. But it did take me viewing a basement apartment in boring suburbia where my landlady would have been upwards of 80 years old (but allegedly quiet). In this scenario I could have had a red pleather bar in my living room, wood veneer paneling in the bedroom, and - wait for it - the shower in the kitchen area. Naturally. Where else does one put a shower, but right beside the utility sink, washer/dryer, and refridgerator?

Along with my very trusty apartment-hunting companion, Danny (who has a very nice apartment in a cool neighborhood that he's quite pleased with), I have seen misnamed high-rises ("The Chateau" has a beautiful view of the I-95/I-495 interchange), cool little townhouses built in the '30s as part of a co-op, a plethora of stripmalls headlined by Starbucks, darling red-brick houses subdivided into studios, and more terrible advertisements by the giant management companies populating this area than I could have thought possible.

Can't I just stay in Baltimore? Lizzie would love that; she'd never have to leave the window! Oh well, tomorrow is another day.