Rent Unstabilized
I had been sitting stiff. No, no not stiff, still. I was sitting still on the couch when the doorbell rang. It was just after 11:30, I know because Conan O’Brien had just started. And the noise, the loud ding, it startled me. It made me flinch. Not tremor, a quick flinch. Everybody flinches. So I flinched and cursed the drunken, over-privileged, rude 20-somethings that have taken over this neighborhood. I’m going to tell you, I’ve lived in this apartment for 34 years. When I moved in, this neighborhood had its share of riff-raffs, but nothing out of the ordinary. It was just boys being boys. They’d have a few too many Zywiecs and Tyskies and they’d fight once in a while, maybe once a week, outside my window. No big deal. It’s natural for growing boys to let off steam after a few beers. Today? Those boys were tame, well-bred young men compared to the inconsiderate, ungrateful, college-educated kids yelling, cursing, littering, loitering, relieving themselves on the buildings and laughing the whole time. They fall onto my doorbell when they are drunk. They lay on my bell when they’ve lost their keys. They live alone in this world, these kids think. The world is just for them and their big bank accounts that have pushed rents up so high that I’m the last man standing, and only because of rent control.
