Well, the main reason is that our landlord hired an incompetent air conditioner repairman who painted the inside of our air conditioner vent with a chemical approved only for use outdoors, thereby rendering our apartment uninhabitable. But there were other reasons to leave Silverlake:
1. Parking Nazi neighbors: We drive old Mercedes-Benz's. They're cheap so we have no car payments, they're roomy so we can stash baby gear without driving a mini-van or (shudder) an SUV, and they're comfortable in a rolling-sofa kind of way. One of our cars is a diesel Benz, painted brown, with a dent in the front. We call him Heinrich. Poor Heinrich has seen better days but we love him anyway. But our neighbors did not, as I discovered one morning when I put my key in the lock and a woman darted out of her house to tell me she'd called the cops to have my car towed. My reaction: "What the fuck did you do that for?" She babbled about abandoned cars but the real answer is that she didn't like having my old, ugly car parked in front of her million dollar house. She later threatened to call the EPA on my because the car leaked oil. Then there was the dude who kept chalking our tires to see if we were moving the car. He finally let the air out of one of the tires and pulled the pin out of the valve so it couldn't be refilled. Ah Silverlake, what a tolerant and progressive community, hm?
2. More neighbor nastiness: There was a protest in our neighborhood over a new apartment building going up because...I have no fucking idea why that sparked a protest. They weren't building a shopping mall or a twenty story building, just your run-of-the-mill townhouses. I guess that affects property values somehow? Then there was the crazy bitch who threatened to call the cops on neighbors who were having a yard sale. No, I have no idea why.
3. Insane earthy-crunchy parents: There was an anti-vaccination flyer posted on the Coffee Table bulletin board. Parents push around $1200 Bugaboo strollers. A friend of mine who teaches at Ivanhoe told me about a parent who protested when her kid got detention for wrapping his hands around another kids throat because, "He was just expressing himself."
4. Head-up-the-ass syndrome: One of the shop owners in Sunset Junction had a dachshund that she let roam loose up and down the block. Predictably, the dog ran into the street and was killed by a car. So how did the hipsters react?
By having a candlelight vigil for the dog. Seriously.
5. Silverlake is just like San Francisco: This is not a compliment.
Posts
