By staff writer Simonne Cullen
April 8, 2007
You will never truly appreciate the furniture your university gives you until you get your first apartment. For years you’ve treated that desk, coffee table,
chair, and bed frame as your own personal toilet, as have the carefree students who have resided there before you. But now that you’re on your own, you’ll
treat that second and third-hand furniture like solid gold even though you bought it at a steal for ten bucks at Goodwill.
Even when guests come over and one of them puts his feet on the coffee table you’ll go berserk. “Dude! I just Pledged that shit
this afternoon! Get your stinky foot off of it! It’s only got three legs, you’ll throw off the whole counterbalance!” And your friend will take one look
at your shitty coffee table, flourished with stains and cigarette burns, and then at the apron tied around your waist and wonder when the aliens switched your brain with
Martha Stewart’s.
The most important investment you will ever make is in your bed and mattress set. You spend a third of your life sleeping—spend the
money. Just limit yourself to a case of beer a week, and in a month and a half you can splurge on a mattress with memory foam. Or don’t. Nothing says class like a
squeaky bed frame and egg carton padding sticking out of the mattress cover.
“Anything remotely nice in a good area is overpriced. Anything moderately nice in a bad area is the same price.”
The kitchen is always hit or miss in your very first apartment. The appliances are either very new or very old—there is no in between.
You’re either operating with a new fridge with 16 different ways to freeze ice cubes, or a cauldron over a massive fireplace. And, regardless of whatever nineteenth
or twenty-first century kitchenware you acquire, you can be sure your dining table will not have a single matching chair to its name.
The only consistent entity everyone splurges on is the television/entertainment set. You could be eating cold soup right out of the can
because instead of purchasing a microwave you opted for
TiVO instead. Now you can eat slightly defrosted mozzarella sticks while watching a recorded episode of MTV’s Cribs instead of burning your mouth on the
cheesy goodness in front of a new episode of Gilmore Girls. Good for you.
Closet space. Will there ever be enough for women? Never. Never has a home been built on this entire great earth of ours where a woman has
ever uttered the words, “Wow. This is more than enough closet space to fit every season of wardrobe.” Never gonna happen. Period. When I moved out my mother
turned my bedroom—my entire bedroom—into her new walk-in closet, and my poor dad still has to keep all his clothes in the one bureau my mom allotted him
at the beginning of their marriage.
Rent here in Hollywood is ridiculous. Anything remotely nice in a good area is overpriced. Anything moderately nice in a bad area is the same
price. And then there are your neighbors. Ideally, you’re shooting for young couples without kids and no intention of having kids. Ever. The most ideal
place to live would be the building in which your landlord could make you sign a contract forcing an immediate move-out the moment any tenant’s pregnancy stick
turned blue.
Least ideally, you want child actor stars living in the same complex as you. Two weeks ago this child star that lives in the same complex as
the student housing lit some fireworks on the hill behind the Hollywood sign. As a brushy dry area, the hill naturally caught on fire and you could see flames shooting out from behind the Hollywood sign. The
entire complex had to be evacuated and all I could think about was the fact that that ungrateful brat must have a pinball machine and a coffee table with all four legs.
Who gave that twerp sparklers anyway?