Friday
Nov282008
in dutch: a faux squatter's odyssey
Friday, November 28, 2008 at 1:14AM
It started, back in June, with an email, as these things seem to do lately:
Since a landlord wanting to come visit, especially wanting both tenants to be around, is suspect anytime it's asked for, it was twice as suspect since we pretty much lived with the daily threat of being evicted to make way for the landlord's ex to come reclaim what the courts decided was rightfully his. After no response from myself or K upstairs, the landlord pressed us, and we folded, while I climbed inside my doom cocoon and awaited the worst.
What I didn't expect, opening the door to my landlord that day, was her calling over a woman who appeared to be a friend of hers, who then proceeded to serve me in a manner far more literal and far less enjoyable than the movie would have you believe. I got served with a summons, a 10 page smear of legal babble I'd all but purged from my brain after the debacle of working at Lawyertown. When I asked her about it, my landlord just said it was a formality and I'd be doing her a favor by not responding to it at all, which was a relief since the last thing I want to do is enter a court of law under any but the most extreme forms of pressure.
Reading over it, it tells the tale of my space I'd never heard before. Here's what I did know, moving in: It was the first post office in all of Kansas City, in the center of what used to be the heart of town before floods drove everyone up the hill and left the Bottoms behind to elegantly rot. Time passes. Somehow it ends up in the hands of my landlord and then, when legal disputes between her and her ex make the future of tenants living here a fuzzy question mark, the rent gets chopped and I manage to weasel my way in.
What actually happened was, after closing, the post office was donated to the Humane Society of Kansas City, which is not the organization that cares for the stray cats and dogs who threaten to take over our streets, but something far more olde-timey and genteel:
Meaning they're at least partially responsible for KC being the "City of Fountains," and they're also my actual landlords, because almost 100 years later, they still technically own this entire building. The subpoena and all the blah blah inside was meant to wrest control from an organization that by all indications had ceased existing decades ago. How my landlord came to take control of it is beyond me, but at this point all the squiggly conspiracy lines are pretty unimportant. What mattered was that steps were being taken. Big important steps that spelled the end of ridiculously cheap rent for a ridiculously huge space. Which basically spelled the end of my time here.
What this also meant is I am, in fact, a squatter. Except a squatter who pays rent for the privilege of living with swiss cheese architecture, barely there electrical wiring and water pressure that made sponge baths out of the kitchen sink seem like a productive alternative.
While I ran the subpoena, which required me to show up at the same time I would be in London, past a couple friends, what shook loose was that as a tenant I had a "vested interest" in the property and could go to court and argue for my slice of the pie. Which is only true on paper. In reality, I've done almost nothing to the space beyond putting my shit in it. From the get go, I knew the bottom could fall out any week, so what's the point of buying shelving units for the ugly yellow kitchen wall? And why invest in starting an actual gallery when I was living on borrowed time (never mind the fact that I am probably the last person who should start an undertaking like that)? My friends who lived upstairs when I moved in had a case, since they'd lived there for several years and really fixed it up, but they'd moved out a few months prior, greasing the wheels for great justice in the courts for my landlord.
Upon me receiving the subpoena, the doors opened for weekly, sometimes twice-weekly missives from the law firm, informing me of developments that mostly looked like the last three documents they sent me. I know from working at a law firm that lawyers use paperwork to capture changes so incidental that only someone as OCD as them would catch it, so each one got scanned to make sure I wasn't being notified of eviction and then tossed out.
As easily as I threw those letters out, I tossed out any notions of moving. The web of legal entanglements this place was wrapped up in seemed like a long road, a road long enough that I could wander the fringes of it for as long I could stand, before moving back into normal people life. I worked, I lived, I blasted music at 4 in the morning and walked the train tracks when I got stuck on something, I rode my bike up to the halfway house and down under the expressway, I packed my bags and headed to Europe. I was confident that only a 1951-style flood could send me running from all this magic living down here.
And I was sort of right.
I am wondering if there is an evening next week when both of you would
be around.
Since a landlord wanting to come visit, especially wanting both tenants to be around, is suspect anytime it's asked for, it was twice as suspect since we pretty much lived with the daily threat of being evicted to make way for the landlord's ex to come reclaim what the courts decided was rightfully his. After no response from myself or K upstairs, the landlord pressed us, and we folded, while I climbed inside my doom cocoon and awaited the worst.
What I didn't expect, opening the door to my landlord that day, was her calling over a woman who appeared to be a friend of hers, who then proceeded to serve me in a manner far more literal and far less enjoyable than the movie would have you believe. I got served with a summons, a 10 page smear of legal babble I'd all but purged from my brain after the debacle of working at Lawyertown. When I asked her about it, my landlord just said it was a formality and I'd be doing her a favor by not responding to it at all, which was a relief since the last thing I want to do is enter a court of law under any but the most extreme forms of pressure.
Reading over it, it tells the tale of my space I'd never heard before. Here's what I did know, moving in: It was the first post office in all of Kansas City, in the center of what used to be the heart of town before floods drove everyone up the hill and left the Bottoms behind to elegantly rot. Time passes. Somehow it ends up in the hands of my landlord and then, when legal disputes between her and her ex make the future of tenants living here a fuzzy question mark, the rent gets chopped and I manage to weasel my way in.
What actually happened was, after closing, the post office was donated to the Humane Society of Kansas City, which is not the organization that cares for the stray cats and dogs who threaten to take over our streets, but something far more olde-timey and genteel:
In 1883 the Humane Society of Kansas City was established to prevent cruelty to women, children and animals. In 1904 they built Kansas City's first fountain near the west end of the intercity viaduct, 3rd and Minnesota.
Meaning they're at least partially responsible for KC being the "City of Fountains," and they're also my actual landlords, because almost 100 years later, they still technically own this entire building. The subpoena and all the blah blah inside was meant to wrest control from an organization that by all indications had ceased existing decades ago. How my landlord came to take control of it is beyond me, but at this point all the squiggly conspiracy lines are pretty unimportant. What mattered was that steps were being taken. Big important steps that spelled the end of ridiculously cheap rent for a ridiculously huge space. Which basically spelled the end of my time here.
What this also meant is I am, in fact, a squatter. Except a squatter who pays rent for the privilege of living with swiss cheese architecture, barely there electrical wiring and water pressure that made sponge baths out of the kitchen sink seem like a productive alternative.
While I ran the subpoena, which required me to show up at the same time I would be in London, past a couple friends, what shook loose was that as a tenant I had a "vested interest" in the property and could go to court and argue for my slice of the pie. Which is only true on paper. In reality, I've done almost nothing to the space beyond putting my shit in it. From the get go, I knew the bottom could fall out any week, so what's the point of buying shelving units for the ugly yellow kitchen wall? And why invest in starting an actual gallery when I was living on borrowed time (never mind the fact that I am probably the last person who should start an undertaking like that)? My friends who lived upstairs when I moved in had a case, since they'd lived there for several years and really fixed it up, but they'd moved out a few months prior, greasing the wheels for great justice in the courts for my landlord.
Upon me receiving the subpoena, the doors opened for weekly, sometimes twice-weekly missives from the law firm, informing me of developments that mostly looked like the last three documents they sent me. I know from working at a law firm that lawyers use paperwork to capture changes so incidental that only someone as OCD as them would catch it, so each one got scanned to make sure I wasn't being notified of eviction and then tossed out.
As easily as I threw those letters out, I tossed out any notions of moving. The web of legal entanglements this place was wrapped up in seemed like a long road, a road long enough that I could wander the fringes of it for as long I could stand, before moving back into normal people life. I worked, I lived, I blasted music at 4 in the morning and walked the train tracks when I got stuck on something, I rode my bike up to the halfway house and down under the expressway, I packed my bags and headed to Europe. I was confident that only a 1951-style flood could send me running from all this magic living down here.
And I was sort of right.
file under in the bottoms, solipsism
in the bottoms, solipsism
Reader Comments