New Neighbors

It’s finally time to put up curtains in the windows of my new pad. Up until now, I’ve been enjoying the luxury of facing a row of empty buildings across the street, so there was no worry about peeping neighbors. Which is great, because I haven’t felt like attaching curtain rods to the masonry in the front of my place.

Once again, though, my penchant for low-ish rents in uncool neighborhoods has found me at the crest of yet another wave of hipster migration. (I haven’t dubbed my building “the Cracker Factory” for nothing, you know.) Last week I saw them loading some sheet rock into one of the empty buildings across the street. Last night, I saw all the lights on in there, and the front door standing open. That, my friends, is what an open house looks like.

So Special Agent Josh and I ran over to inspect what they’ve built, and check out whether or not the new tenants would be able to see into my apartment. Sure enough, the factory has been carved into a bunch of modestly sized lofts, with one floor ready to go in a couple of weeks, and two more floors ready in the next couple of months. A decent conversion job, in case you’re interested, and the rents aren’t all that bad. Of course, the street-facing units all have an outstanding view of my desk at the moment, in case you own binoculars and want to see what’s on my screen. The angle would make it hard for my eventual new neighbors (who seemed to be racing to submit their applications last night, even for the units that haven’t been built yet) to see anything else in my place, but this new development would only make me feel weird about people watching over my shoulder when I work.

But the other bloggers are already starting to follow me to the neighborhood, so I figure that if people are coming to the area, I may as well at least try to give any interested friends and readers a heads-up on any opportunities to stalk me.