(Mis)Adventures in House Hunting – Part 1

(Originally posted May 19th, 2008)

I don’t really think anyone enjoys the process of house hunting. The somewhat creeping urgency of having a lease that’s going to expire in three weeks and having to find another roof over one’s head is stressful to say the least, but in this particular instance, it turned out to be one hell of a trip.

We had looked at a few places on Saturday – one of which we did end up leasing, but the entertaining portion of properties we toured occurred on Sunday, around Fells Point. To set the scene, it’s 2pm, I’m so exhausted from a Preakness party we had the day before at our house I’m about to fall over, it’s raining, and we’re standing around on a corner waiting for our guide to show. She rolls up and parks at the Royal Farms on Eastern Avenue and we start walking through a 3-bedroom apartment which according to the listing would be ‘available June 1st’ but upon walking through was in a state of total renovation-related upheaval – the floors were not finished, the bathroom was not finished, nothing was finished. Also, the apartment was slanted. Noticeably slanted, enough the cause everyone to remark “Hmm this place is slanted,” with the vaguely worrying sensation that you were slowly sliding downhill. And every single view from every single window featured a bizarre mix of wires connecting to the house, other houses, a strange sculpture with bike pedals on it on another roof, and a pile of rain soaked firewood on the tiny deck. The layout of the place had some potential to be pretty cool if it were finished …and not slanted, but slightly disappointed we moved onto the next place.

1715 Gough Street. Remember that address, burn it into your memory. On the outside it’s not a particularly strange place – form stone, a little bench, some plastic Virgin Marys adorning the window in a fairly run-down part of town just off of Broadway. Instantly upon seeing these things I knew that the house had previously most likely been inhabited by old people. No big deal, after all the listing had stated that it had been fully renovated, with a finished basement “perfect for entertaining!” – it even had pictures illustrating its modern, refurbished glory. Upon stepping foot into 1715 Gough Street, however, revealed a different set of truths. Apparently, while the address on the listing may have been correct, the description was quite the opposite of correct.

We start by coming through the living room in the front and notice that the house is not powered, and most of the windows have been covered by either boards or blackout blinds, so we can’t see a damn thing. Slowly crawling our way toward the rear, the lady showing us the house attempts to open a side door to let some light in, while W E Gatsum pulls out a pocket flashlight and tries to look around. The room we had entered was apparently the kitchen, as there was an old fridge sitting with its door wide open, connected to a full bathroom in the very back. A full bathroom with a shower and tub, …in the kitchen? Wah? The side door opens and lets enough light into the place that we get an eyefull of the layout – old furniture everywhere, a very dingy, red, weird carpet adorning wall-to-wall, and a tiny staircase winding its way up to the next floor. And wood paneling everywhere. Not only was I instantly turned off by what I was seeing, but I started to get …uncomfortable. This house is weird alright.

And it wasn’t until we went up one floor via the tiny red staircase that we really started to get a grasp of just how strange it was. The second floor revealed one of the most bizarre and unnerving layouts I think I have ever seen in a house. I come to the top of the tiny red staircase and turn left, coming down a hallway toward an empty room with laminate floors. Empty room, ugly, no big deal. I pass through to the rear room to another laminated room …with a stove and a fridge in it, and a tiny table. Another kitchen, on the 2nd floor. The lady showing the house at this point is just as confused as we are and says “Hmm. This must have been an in-law suite?” Who knows. I turn back and walk toward the front rooms.

Along the way, I witness another bizarre sight. While passing through what I’m assuming to be a bedroom due to the presence of a dingy old bed and more laminate flooring (?), to the left of said bed – a sink. A sink with a shelf, right next to the bed. Whu? Huh? What the fuck is this freakshow house all about? I take a one-second glance at the front room with nothing in it but old furniture and continue to Bizarro World lvl 3 via the tiny red staircase.

Level 3 also had an odd bedroom, without a sink in it, but the most grotesque sight present in this creepy land of lost souls was in the middle of the hallway toward one of the other weird laminated floor rooms with bizarre knickknacks. At first I thought it was a closet, but I halted abruptly when I saw a very tiny, very old SINK on the wall next to it. It was a shower. In the middle of a fucking hallway. And it wasn’t a ‘nice’ shower either, it was very, very dirty and barely had enough wall coverage to supersede the wood paneling surrounding it.

I’m starting to freak out a bit.

I keep looking around this house, full of old mattresses and pipe smoke-drenched chairs, old hutches with laminate peeling off of them, and creepy out of place shit and thinking “Some baaaad shit went down here.” Everyone else pretty much concurred that some old person, or old people, were stuck in this house at some point, covered in their own filth and emitting strange odors on a regular basis. I needed to get the fuck out.

So I’m walking briskly down to the first floor and the first thing I see is the parking lot adjacent to the house through the dirty side door window. Right there in the center of my field of vision, there’s a man standing in the lot. He’s really old, really (probably) crazy, has a walker with a ton of bags all over it, aaaaaaaand …he has no pants on.

“THAT FUCKING GUY DOESN’T HAVE ANY PANTS ON!” I gaze in awe at him for a moment and pivot to the right and start galloping toward the front door as quickly as possible and as far away from that dungeonous asylum as I could get. And unfortunately for them, the other three people coming down the stairway managed to catch a glimpse of what this crazy, disheveled person was up to: crapping in the parking lot. As we sped away on foot from the scene, the pantsless man soiling himself in the parking lot was still struggling to wipe while holding himself up on the walker.

We later dubbed the place “Old Man Poop House.”

NEXT PART: ADVENTURES IN SANDTOWN AND THE THRILLING CONCLUSION