Thursday
Jul032008
under siege: a faux-squatter's odyssey
Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 9:07AM
Last night a force of nature not unlike a tornado riding piggyback on a hurricane swept through town, wrecking perfectly planned drive-in hi-jinx and putting the big fist of god down on the West Bottoms. Power went out from the top of Quality Hill all the way into Kansas, rendering us already godless savages into some sort of extreme stone-agedness. Life in the Bottoms is a curious existence. We live without stores (mostly), trees (mostly), people (mostly) and fear (mostly). My block is one of the few that's been carved out and zoned for residential living, and if you assume that the once-thriving, now-dead center of Kansas City that has been flooded, industrialized, abandoned and now trapped in amber for gawking art school kids looking for photographable squalor attracts a certain strange element, I would have to agree. I live here, after all.
Technically, I rent my space, the 6000 sq. ft. remainder of what was once the first post office in all of Kansas City. There's labels over the doors for REST ROOM and UTILITY ROOM, there's a loading dock with a working bell, there's a bank vault that is permalocked to prevent stupid people (me) from locking themselves in there, there is 100 year old lettering flaking off the front windows and a bracket from which to unfurl a flag. The tin ceiling is changing colors, or the tin is reclaiming its original luster from an ill-advised white paintjob, the floors are crumbling apart in little sharp fragments, the windows leak whenever it rains sideways and the secondary set of loading dock doors are superfoamcaulked to make the bedroom slightly more livable (which doesn't prevent beams of sunlight from poking thru). Outlets explode, I sleep under a dead 2-ton central air doohickey and a huge exhaust fan. It remains cool during the day and heats up at night, and I could be kicked out at any given moment.
I found it, as you do, through friends of friends. When Hector and Renee of the Green Door found themselves neighborless, they let my friend Harold know, who casually let me know the space could be had at half its normal rent for a vague, indeterminate future due to vague, indeterminate court battles. I debated over it for a week or more, trading out my comfortable, though stifling digs in Hyde Park for a life free of convenience or normalcy. My rent could double itself in 6 months or I could find myself with an eviction notice in that same window of time. The river could tear itself loose and come flooding the Bottoms like it did in the early 1900s, chasing the one-bustling heart of the city up the hill to higher, dryer ground, I could lose everything from a natural fit of pique. But I could ride my bike inside (which I do) and play basketball off my walls (which I haven't done), I could live a weirdo, boho life, which I already was, only now I could do it in more appropriate surroundings.
So I hemmed, I hawed, and then I bit down and said yes. Come January, I was moved over here and there was no turning back.
to be continued
Technically, I rent my space, the 6000 sq. ft. remainder of what was once the first post office in all of Kansas City. There's labels over the doors for REST ROOM and UTILITY ROOM, there's a loading dock with a working bell, there's a bank vault that is permalocked to prevent stupid people (me) from locking themselves in there, there is 100 year old lettering flaking off the front windows and a bracket from which to unfurl a flag. The tin ceiling is changing colors, or the tin is reclaiming its original luster from an ill-advised white paintjob, the floors are crumbling apart in little sharp fragments, the windows leak whenever it rains sideways and the secondary set of loading dock doors are superfoamcaulked to make the bedroom slightly more livable (which doesn't prevent beams of sunlight from poking thru). Outlets explode, I sleep under a dead 2-ton central air doohickey and a huge exhaust fan. It remains cool during the day and heats up at night, and I could be kicked out at any given moment.
I found it, as you do, through friends of friends. When Hector and Renee of the Green Door found themselves neighborless, they let my friend Harold know, who casually let me know the space could be had at half its normal rent for a vague, indeterminate future due to vague, indeterminate court battles. I debated over it for a week or more, trading out my comfortable, though stifling digs in Hyde Park for a life free of convenience or normalcy. My rent could double itself in 6 months or I could find myself with an eviction notice in that same window of time. The river could tear itself loose and come flooding the Bottoms like it did in the early 1900s, chasing the one-bustling heart of the city up the hill to higher, dryer ground, I could lose everything from a natural fit of pique. But I could ride my bike inside (which I do) and play basketball off my walls (which I haven't done), I could live a weirdo, boho life, which I already was, only now I could do it in more appropriate surroundings.
So I hemmed, I hawed, and then I bit down and said yes. Come January, I was moved over here and there was no turning back.
to be continued
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