throwing and tantrums: Kensington got too cool

God I loved that bathroom. I'll miss it! Check out the reflection of the view; you could see the whole city from the shower.

Kensington was a dump when I moved there in 2004. I’d regularly find human poop on my stoop. The police were using my roof to surveil drug deals-just like on The Wire. After the birth of JP, my husband got arrested for attacking a pimp on the street with nunchaku. Instead of crack, I can now get a kale smoothie anywhere within a 1/4 mile radius. The pimps/prostitutes have been replaced by Millennials who smell like sandalwood. Clearly it’s time for me to go.

Honestly I’m a cranky, sweaty mom after a day of potting and cycling the 14-mile commute. I’m also terrible at being a landlord, and I hate it. I’ve never been OK with charging people to live in my filthy, old, gorgeous building, probably because I don’t physically do anything for the money. I also made a bad decision when I got my kiln back in 2005, so I’m getting a new, fancy kiln with my new space. My brother in law bought the building from me. To illustrate my failure as a landlord, he raised the rent of my tenant upstairs by 14% and took away his parking place. I just don’t have that in me unless I’m pre-menstrual.

I know I’m not supposed to admit that, but my menstrual cycle was my bargaining chip in my real estate negotiations with my brother in law. He’s a professional haggler. I’m not kidding. He works in the marijuana industry making deals. The guy who hired him wanted him because he’d experienced Mike on the opposite side of the negotiating table and wanted him on his side. My mother in law and I both thought it unwise for me to sell my building to Mike. However, Mike lives in the Bay Area; he is the only one of the brothers who isn’t part of the family business in Philly. He’s always wanted to partner with his brothers on something. The brothers are developing the factory floor portion of the building. I owned the office/locker room portion and 1/7 of the factory floor. The boys (spearheaded by my husband, Tim) wanted a neighbor to their development that they could control; Mike had the added incentive of needing to complete his 1031 exchange to escape a major tax bill on a sale he made in California.

That flower mural has been painted over by the unbelievably annoying Philadelphia anti-graffiti group. In the process they've painted over my tenant's lock twice leaving her unable to get into her apartment.

🙄🔫

In week one of the negotiations Mike was physically here and drunk. Of course he was; he was hanging out with his brothers 3000 miles away from his wife and daughters. We had a casual conversation about the sale. He mentioned some improvements that needed to happen before he’d commit, and I told him that it was going to be an “as is” situation. A couple weeks later Tim came into my studio while I was in my happy place, glazing. He told me I needed to separate the units from a zoning perspective before the sale. I told him that I was selling the building because I didn’t want to run or pay for any construction projects. I went back to glazing, and he wandered back into his office muttering that I didn’t understand how these things work, and I was going to need to make some compromises. Finally Tim showed me an e-mail from Mike referring to me as “The Seller.” There was a list of things that “The Seller” was going to do in order to make the sale go through. I responded that “The Seller” wasn’t going to do a Goddamn thing, and if “The Buyer” didn’t want the building, that was fine with “The Seller.” Tim threw up his hands and said, “You need to call Mike.” I did call Mike. My palms were sweating, and my heart was racing, but I re-iterated what The Seller was prepared to do, and he….APOLOGIZED! I went to bed feeling bad but satisfied for having stuck to my guns. When it comes to money I usually default to my dad’s advice when I was a kid: “De-ah (Dear) If you’re evah (ever) at a restaurant and people ah (are) bickering ovah (over) the bill, JUST PAY IT! You don’t want to have to listen to that crap!” With Mike I’d neither haggled nor picked up the tab. I got my period the next morning.

So Mike bought the office/residential portion of my building. The factory part I will sell to my husband and his partners for $1. They are building me a beautiful studio 3 blocks from my home that they will sell to me for $1. Let’s hope all of this happens without a divorce and a major family feud. My new studio is nowhere near finished. I just got the permits for the kiln room which means I just ordered the kiln, and it will take 3-6 months. We’ve already had a situation with one of the neighbors, and the guy upstairs, my new tenant, isn’t going to be eligible for his subsidized housing for a while. Yes, I know I said I didn’t want to be a landlord, but I’m hoping to make that apartment so nice that I don’t feel bad about taking money for it, and my best case scenario is that my dad moves into it. Here’s another illustration of my failure as a landlord: after 1.5 months of no rent, I called the tenant of my new building. He complained to me about stress and poverty, and I told him I was going to give him a SASE, and he could just pay what he felt he could comfortably pay. The upshot: his rent has gone from $600/month to $250/month because he’s given me $500 for two months so far. All of this is to say I’m going to be writing a lot with my free time to justify not cleaning my house.