Origin Story Vol 4.

4.
A few minutes after making the revolutionary decision to move to California at my desk in Austin, I started researching employment and residence in LA. Housing was/is fucking ridiculous. How so you ask? To this I respond:

LA is three to four time more expensive than Austin. My apartment in Austin (the fourth incarnation) was a two- story, 1,150 square foot townhouse two blocks north of Braker and 183. This gargantuan domicile was extremely well kept (fresh paint, carpeting etc.) and going for $729 a month for two people. No utilities were included, but the overall cost per person was probably, at the maximum, $450. For those of you who never lived in Austin, that's pretty fucking good. By contrast a similar apartment in central LA goes for about $2,300, without utilities. As I knew no one who wanted to split a lease at the time or needed a roommate, I was compelled to house alone.

I used a few of websites to gage what I was looking at: apartmenthunterz.com, rent.com and Craigslist. One of the main obstacles I ran into was a total lack of metropolitan comprehension. In Austin I knew to stay away from the east side of town. San Antonio: I had to stay away from the south side (for me, anything south of 1604). But I got to LA and realized I was hunting everywhere. Van Nuys, Echo Park and Inglewood were just names on a map, not words of caution. To this end I went to the corporate office of Apartmenthunterz.com in Beverly Hills to discuss the areas in Southern California to avoid. I was so let down by their office. It's located in this really glamorous building, but their actual office looked like two broom closets fucked and gave the offspring up for adoption. Inside I learned the areas to look in and refined my search a little more.

I rummaged metro LA as well as the better/affordable parts of The Valley. I met with a few people to check out some places and some apartments wouldn't even return my calls. My budget range was a severe hamper on the quality of apartments, so eventually I just pulled my nose and dove in. I came to realize that I was being unrealistic looking for a centrally located residence in a well-maintained building for a reasonable rate. I began to wonder how anyone ever made such a transmittal into the city of LA in the first place. Do you think Rivera y Moncada went through the same fucking hassle I did?

Two friends of mine had been living in Koreatown for a year or so, and despite their disdain for the area en mass, they found it a good base of operation for the recent arrivals. So, following their lead I narrowed my search even more to the confines of Koreatown, Mid-Wilshire and West Downtown.

I was still searching when Jillian J. M. handed me a pillar of light and I found a place that met my criteria. Finally I could stop looking, worrying and sleeping on her couch. I had a place to call my own.

One task down…