and I quote

june 2012

click for permalink June 25, 2012

Now that we've found a new apartment and are slowly transitioning from the "fun" part of the moving process (apartment hunting) to the shitty part (everything else), I'd better post a few more of these while I still can. Otherwise it will be a month after the move before I can even think about posting again, and when I do, I'll look at these apartment ads I've been collecting and say, what the hell did I think was so funny about that anyway?

So here are three more craigslist apartment ad "fails," beginning with a classic that I like to call "sent from my iphone."

$1750 "1000 s/f Spacious 2 BR"
iphone

The only thing we know for sure is that the floors are most likely hardwood, maybe that nice dark walnut color that seems to be popular lately, but just as likely the lighting is just bad and they're actually warped old regular hardwood floors with water stains in the middle foreground. And maybe there's natural light coming in through the kitchen, but from what little we have to go on, it looks more like the cold unearthly glow of the haunted refrigerator in Poltergeist (ahem—not for you, Mother). Nobody wants to be reminded of that when they innocently tiptoe into the kitchen for a late night snack.

I am not an advertisementSo hey, guy who wants to rent his condo with pictures taken on his iPhone? Yes, we agree, iPhones are beautiful, sexy devices that enrich our lives immeasurably (even people who don't own them) and they can make you ten times sexier just for holding one (isn't that what they say?). We can also agree that it's super cool now that everyone has a camera in their phone — we didn't even ask, they just showed up one day in all our cell phones, like a bonus prize just for carrying a phone around with you everywhere you go — which of course you were going to do anyway, but now it's even better — and it's just like you always hoped the future would be, right? Yeah, I'm talking to you.

Get a real fucking camera.

After my last post where I described the "fisheye lens" effect but could find only marginal examples of it to illustrate my point, I discovered these the very next day. Someone posted like ten pictures of this apartment and every one of them looked like it was shot from out in the hallway looking in through the peephole.

$1150 "Large One Bedroom"
Fisheye

The thing is, I know enough about cameras and even more about Photoshop to know that you don't just accidentally take a bunch of pictures and they turn out like this. You have to really think it's an awesome idea and then do it on purpose ten times. Fucking moron. Imagine what a monumentally crappy apartment this must be for someone to think that the fisheye-from-hell effect was an improvement.

And then there's this bathroom. Click to see it full size — I swear to god it's worth it. I call this one psychobath.

$1795 "536 s/f Furnished 1BR"
WTF?

The size constraints of my modest little web site don't do it justice... then again, neither did craigslist's. I don't even know what to say about this one besides wow. This is one room you wouldn't want to inadvertently wander into under the influence of over-the-counter decongestants, which I imagine might feel a bit like this. (Oh, the 80s...) Considering the fact that this place is all of 536 square feet, the Parallax View treatment was probably just someone's way of being helpful, to subliminally implant the suggestion of the vast emptiness of outer space... and white lines... Come to think of it, I'd say White Lines were definitely involved in the design process at some point.

That's all I have to say about apartment hunting for a while... Here's a picture of the view from our new living room. It's been cloudy or rainy all three times we've been there so far, so I don't have any pictures of it on a beautiful sunny day or at night, when it will certainly be even better. (And don't bother reminding me that those three times were infinitely more representative of what it will be like 99% of the time... I know where I live.)

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