Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

You can toast. You finally found a decent ad on Craigslist, contacted your new housemate by email and paid the first month’s rent through Western Union. Now you have a home in New York City. The excitement, though, lasts till you actually see it. 

When a brisk taxi driver kicks you out of the cab in front of your new building, you are not too impressed. A team of rats dances joyfully around the garbage bags. A snobby bunch of raccoons stares at you, as if your European look was rather funny. You realize that the door lock has been picked a considerable number of times. Plus, nobody has ever bothered to repaint the interior walls of the building.

Your apartment is a studio designed for hobbits. Your room, as pointed out in the ad, is cozy. It couldn’t be cozier. It’s no more than 32 square feet.

A white fan covered in dust is on a twin size mattress laid on the floor. The mattress is wrapped in olive-colored sheets. You take a closer look and establish that they used to belong to the previous roomie. Naturally, nobody took a stab at washing them.

The window, one of your main concerns, is there. It is a narrow rectangle covered with a Venetian blind. The view is breathtaking. You can see into other people’s living rooms.

Just 60 feet separate your pillow from the couch of a bold individual who frantically bangs on the keyboard of his laptop, from a woman who chews carrots, from a guy with a baseball cap surrounded by empty Budweiser cans.

As for the door, you realize you weren’t as lucky as with the window. You have no door. Instead, there’s a bright red cloth that is sometimes lifted up by your housemate as he makes period trips to “the office”, the toilet.

The bathroom reveals other problems. Problems it would be inelegant to mention them here. But just imagine that a colony of beetles has elected it as their adopted land, and the toilet is so tiny you need to be a contortionist not to get stuck.

It happens. Don’t despair. It’s not so bad. You get the chance to say hi to a next-window neighbor who is in the same situation. 

A week before leaving for New York I talked on the phone with a friend who lives in the City. When asked, I confessed that I hadn’t started looking for a room yet. “Are you crazy or something?” she shouted. “It takes ages to get a decent place on Craigslist.” Having realized that she was very sensible to the issue, I showed my commitment by not asking what Craigslist was. Honestly, though, my one week of Craigslist house-hunting turned out to be more exciting than a Simpsons episode, a quattro-formaggi pizza or even a school trip to Prague.

Looking online for an apartment in New York is not merely a way to find a room with a bed (at least the frame), a window (not just painted on the wall) and hopefully a closet. Looking online for an apartment in New York is like bumming around in an eccentric country. Forget about Italian handwritten post-its with a vague indication of the location of the apartment, the price of the rent and the telephone number of a fake tenant stuck on overcrowded university bulletin boards. These American ads are professionally edited, never-ending diplomatic treaties. They are maniacally compiled documents with perfectly pedantic lists of all the laundromats in a 10 mile radius.

The most interesting parts of the ads are not the room descriptions, but rather descriptions of the tenants and their ideal candidates. Take Jenny Matthews, a 20-year-old girl who wants to rent a $1,325 room in Greenwich Village. She is not happy with just any individual who can pay the rent without causing trouble. She is looking for nothing less than a saint. “You should be a drama-free, responsible, down to earth, clean and respectful person. Someone who loves to go out but keeps the party outside the house. Someone who isn’t noisy but is around. Someone who is around but isn’t a couch potato.”

Too selective? You must be joking. Some advertisers’ main concern is your astrological sign. It doesn’t matter whether you smoke weed, throw wild parties or are allergic to bathroom cleaning. If your sign is Scorpio, Cancer or Pisces, you’re screwed. No water sign roommates allowed.