Gavin & Scott's West Town Story Full (transcribed) Interview
This interview is transcribed from my interview with the guys. This is not a PG interview.
aL: When did you guys move in here?
G: December 28th...
S: Like right at the cut off.
aL: Of…?
G: Of last year. We got the apartment on Christmas Day, and then we moved in [the] 28th.
aL: Cool. That's nice. Good Christmas present!
G: Oh my God. The End of…, it was the End of Christmas Day, like, the last thing that happened.
aL: Yeah. and it's two bedrooms, right?
G: Yes. if there's a third one, I have not found it yet.
aL: Washer dryer in unit. That’s cool, that's convenient?
S: Yeah. This is actually my first place with a buzzer.
aL: Yeah?
G: Like, I've had apartments that had them, but none of them ever worked. This one actually works, which is weird. [It's nice] to not have to walk down.
aL: What's your favorite room in this place?
G: Favorite room? Well my bedroom now, I just painted it, so... Um... it was out here (in the living room), ‘cause I hated... our room was this burnt orange color before, which I don't…
aL: The color of Scott's room?
G: Uh, but just in part of it, like right here. Ours was that whole fucking s.. That's so much burnt orange, and I like hated it. Hated it, hated it. Like... His is nice ‘cause it’s just like one wall, and it's like compliment. And it… pops.
aL: With the brick it looks nice.
G: But it, it was like way too, way too much orange.
aL: Did you guys paint these walls, too? Or was that done?
G: Nah this is... it's called "eggshell"... is the color. All of this... We're... Our rooms we're allowed to do whatever we want, but out here we just have to like, tell him.
aL: Oh, okay!
G: The rooms he was like, you can do whatever you want, you don't have to ask, but out here, he's like, just tell me if you're gonna paint it or whatever.
aL: Do you have to change it back when …
G: That will probably be dependent on what color. To be honest, if he was worried about the paint job, I would just show him a picture of my room and be like Hey, like, I know what I’m doing, like… Uh I, I somehow amazingly like, I wore… the outfit I had on to paint, I had it on the night before and the next day, I didn’t get any paint on my clothes.
aL: Good!! That’s impressive!
S: You just had it on your… on your chest.
G: Yeah… I did, it was like, he was talkin’ to me, and there was a big thing right here and I had no idea. I leaned on something when I was on the ladder, so…
aL: That’s funny. Do you know when the building was built at all or anything about it?
G: No, I know…
aL: It seems a lot newer. Or at least a little.
G: I know it’s a gut rehab. So the frame of the building is old and… uh I, all I know is he said this bricks have been redone and they’re like three layers deep now.
aL: Oh, okay.. wow…
G: Which, helps keep it quite a bit… My stepdad is like, knows a shit ton about brick, and he was, saying that’s like, people don’t do that anymore, either. I have no idea. Next door I think is only two layers, cause I was watching them build it, so… this has three.
aL: So it keeps it really warm, during the winter.
G: I mean during the winter this place was toasty. This room is cold, Like every room but our bedroom is warm. Your’s is warm in there mostly, right?
S: In the bedroom?
G: Yeah.
S: Yeah, it gets a little bit chilly.
G: This room always stays hot.
aL: Yeah.
G: Like, it’s always good.
aL: It’s nice though.. with the windows open. Um… Was this your first choice, for apartments? Or did you guys… were you looking at a billion of them?
G: Oh my god…
aL: Was there something you wanted more?
G: Oh we uh… we looked at sooo many. And our… none of us really have very good credit. So like, we got turned down like all… this place, actually, we uh, it was the cover photo on domu.com.
aL: Oh, really?
G: And I used to, I was one of the domu models once.
aL: Yeah, I remember that.
G: I’m still their twitter icon. Which is… weird, I don’t know why?
aL: Really!
G: ‘Cause they’ve done like four or five campaigns since then, and I don’t know why they still use my picture. But…
aL: Maybe you look like a typical, Midwestern person, who wants to live in Chicago…
G: Well like the picture is… I still have my long hair and a beard, like the way I did when we were working together, and I like uh… I have no idea why. But I told him, I just wrote him, and I was like ‘hey, I’m.” or, I called him right away like he answered and I was like “I’m actually, I work with that site , too,” like and he was like “cool” and he had us come by, and he told us that when we came by to look at it, if we just brought the check we could sign.
aL: Wow.
G: And every other place was like, you’re going to have to pay for a credit check, and then we had people that weren’t returning our calls cause of Christmas day. So we were like, really getting scared, and we probably…
aL: So you guys looked last minute, to?
G: No, no, no, we were looking for, well we only had a month’s notice, so we uh… our landlord… the landlord at the last apartment, he sold his house and moved in. so he…
aL: Oh my god..
G: He decided, I mean to be honest it was a GIANT flat in wicker park. Like, if I owned that I would want to live their too.
S: Yeah it was enormous.
G: it was enormous. Like, but not like in comparison between the two, that one had so many like. Theres lots of cracks in the wall, like the living room was slowly… it was slowly falling off.
S: Like ‘eeeuuuuugghhh’
aL: Like slanted at the end?
S: Just slanted.
G: I mean I didn’t notice it until a few months living there but then I was like, that wall is like really crooked.
aL: Things are rolling down!
S: Yeah slowly… rolling down.
G: Structurally, this one is way better, that one was just… but dude,we have the view here so I don’t fucking care. Every morning I wake up I know that I live in Chicago. Cause I can see all the …
aL: Yeah, it’s awesome. I love that view, that’s very cool. Did you guys have any problems with this space when you moved in, like, was there anything that you had to fix or… that you didn’t like, or?
G: The upstairs neighbors didn’t like us. I had people over for my birthday, and I had… some words… and they’ve never said anything to us since then…
aL: Oh, really?
G: Like not a peep. Nothing. I just… got mad and uh… they’ve never said anything since. So…
aL: Cool… I meant like… spacially?
G: I know. Well that’s all I could think of when you asked that…
aL: But that’s a good, I mean yeah that’s a huge… problem. I had new neighbors move in above me and he’s the loudest person in the entire world and I’m like “why are you constantly walking in stilettos,” I don’t understand.
G: There was, honestly, the only thing like, I feel like in the first week like three light bulbs burned out, so the landlord like… he timed that perfectly.
AL: Oh, it was annoying, huh?
G: Right when he moved out all the bulbs burned out and I was like, how does one do that?
S: He’s been, our landlord’s been great.
G: Coolest dude ever, he gave us that grill on the porch, like…
S: Our heat went out, the next day or…
G: Same day.
S: He fixed it.
aL: Perfect!
G: And he, he never cashes our rent check until the seventh, like he needs it before then but he, doesn’t, he won’t pull it out of, it comes out of Mo’s account he doesn’t pull it ‘til the seventh.
aL: Awesome… yeah, that’s good, gives you a little extra time. What is your favorite thing about this neighborhood? What do you guys like about living here?
G: Um… it’s fairly clean. On the streets, and stuff like that. It’s quiet… After living in Wicker Park for 5 years, I don’t mind that it’s a little quieter at night, like a little bit…
aL: Yeah, not as many bars…
G: ‘Cause off the six way, I mean at the old apartment, not as much when he moved in, but living there in the summer there was always vomit on the front steps and stuff, like, we lived on Wolcott.
S: Yeah… it’s like the place that you would go to like… “okay I’m going to wander over here…”
G: It’s just off the… We were at **** Wolcott before which is like…
S: Man I never even thought about that .
G: Oh yeah you didn’t even live there. He moved in during the fall and like, summer time, vomit on the steps all the time.
aL: That’s terrible.
G: Felt like Wrigleyville
aL: Yeah. I guess that does happen a lot there.
G: I don’t know this area’s like pretty chill, too, like, mostly adults are here, too. I feel like all of our neighbors are older than us.
aL: Yeah?
G: But like, like ten years older than us.
aL: It’s a lot of families, or…?
G: No, lots of like single couples. Or kid-less couples. There’s actually no kids in our building. Like, none.
AL: Really?
G: Like all that’s in our building is dogs… everyone has dogs. Like mostly everyone has dogs and our whole building smokes weed. I mean, well it’s because no one’s home during the day, but normally this building smells like pot. If you come in at like 7 our hallways, it smells like pot.
aL: That’s funny. Where have you guys gotten your favorite pieces of furniture? Can you kind of… can you tell me again what that organ is?
G: Oh yeah, yeah, I have a, I have like a mid seventies uh, Hammond M3, so … yeah the B3 is like the rock organ and then the M3 that I have is the like, mobile version of it, they make for travel and stuff.
aL: It’s very cool. And you use it as a desk?
G: That one.. right, I mean I still I can still pop it off and play it, it’s out of tune right now, it needs.. all you do to tune it is grease the gears, but it’s a little more work than it sounds like. Uh, but that, the organ and this Wurlitzer were my uncle’s and uh, when he was in college, he had like a really successful band in Indiana and like he, uh, that, they were the house band at like, some big clubs, and like he would always have that organ with that Wurlitzer stacked on top, and he would play both… he was like the band leader, but he couldn’t sing, so, he just was like the musician. He had all these hired girl singers, like… he was making money. ‘Cause his band was like, him, like soulful black dudes and then really pretty girls, so like he was making some money.
aL: Everybody loved to see that.
G: Oh, yeah.
aL: What about the chairs? And…
G: Oh cool thing, his parents made this desk.
aL: I love that desk!
S: My dad is really like, really handy when it comes to making things, like you see that’s, it’s not metal, but it’s PVC and it’s just spray painted to, to look like rust.
aL: Yeah, it’s very cool.
G: This was, when we moved in this was a giant empty space, that was … most people would just put a giant big screen TV right there, but…
aL: Book cases, and stuff…
G: But Scott wanted a desk because before his workspace was like, here.
S: Yeah, because I do freelance, I’m a photographer, and videographer as well, so yeah, I just edit, all day, you know.
aL: So you need a place to, work. That’s actually conducive to working.
S: A little, I wanted just a low, sort of low profile conservative space. Just thought I would just…
aL: I’m a little jealous of that desk, actually.
G: Yeah, most… the pots that we have, like the bigger ones. Any big one you see that has plants in it I got from uh, when dibs on our street, I would always steal them from people that would put parking dibs and all of those are from parking dibs.
S: Is that true? I remember you brought home like “yes, dude this is from a dibs”
G: I uh, I got… four I think,
aL: Should I scratch that from the record?
G: No! Dude no, let them know. I drive, too and I hate dibs. Like I’m the kind of vehicle that like should do dibs because I have a big car and I you know, if I don’t do it you don’t need to do it. So… I brought those home, bought plants, and then put them all.
aL: Can you tell me about those chairs, too? The chairs and this um, floor cushion?
G: Scott knows more about the floor cushion, but the two chairs came from Salvage One and they were my last roommate, she bought them and then she moved in with her boyfriend and, and she, I really liked them and she passed them down to me. Because when we moved in here we didn’t have anything. All I had was this super comfortable bed, and music gear. So, because, before I moved in here, the last place, I was homeless for like 8 months, and then I lived at the last apartment, this time last year is when I moved in, and I had to start all over, I did not have anything. So, um, everything in this apartment except for music gear is mostly been acquired in the last year of my life, so… Hitting, hitting restart is the best feeling ever,
AL: For sure, you get to do everything your way.
G: And 8 months of not having an apartment taught me like, there’s like so many things you don’t need. Like, uh…
aL: But it accumulates really quickly.
G: Yeah… I’m pretty good about throwing… I just, if I don’t want it I, like I even have I think I have too many clothes, so, getting ready to get rid of a bunch of those.
aL: What’s the story?
G: Oh the cushion, yeah.
S: Oh yeah a bunch of this different stuff, so there’s, there’s some funny stories, so… um… the cushion is actually a meditation cushion, uh, from when I used to teach yoga, um, and let me see… the chair, is actually a purchase that I made when I was 13. For my, for my, after my bar mitzvah, I used my bar mitzvah money, to buy that luxury recliner, I don’t know if you know, but this goes all the way back, Let me, let me show you why…
aL: Do you still sit in it?
G: Yeah, he does all the time.
S: Not just sit…
aL: It’s your favorite chair? Oh, Yeah… It looks really comfortable.
G: It took me a while to actually try it, but it’s really comfortable.
S: So… I don’t know what it was, I was like “yeah, I want a bad ass chair.” And I was like, 13, 14 so uh, that uh, that purchase has stuck with me, now its… now it’s here.
aL: Did you have a lot of girls in it when you were thirteen?
S: Um… yeah, I had a waterbed too. So, I was pretty, I was mackin’ when I was you know… I was mackin’ in middle school.
G: He just dropped that on us the other day that he had the waterbed growing up and I was like, that is ridiculous.
S: Yeah, it was pretty ridiculous.
aL: That’s pretty awesome.
S: I don’t know, I was like somehow like some trashy seventies like wannabe porn star, apparently.
G: At least you didn’t look like one for a year.
S: yeah, right…
G: I… I had that look down to the T for a while.
G: The stools you’re sitting on we got from his friend who moved to New York City, the wood that we built the record shelf out of came from rehabbed wood that his parents were maybe going to buy the desk with, and then, this is really funny, those cattle rods that we have in the corner, I, those are real cattle rods from a Texas ranch, from a girl I used to live with, and uh, I tied them up like that to move them here, that was it, and then I shit you not like that same week, I went to CB2, and they had this as a like, that was a display thing in their store you could buy, driftwood they had tied together…
aL: Somebody saw it and stole it from you…
G: I sent Scott a picture and I was like dude apparently I am ‘hip’
aL: Trendsetter!
S: Yeah, I was like whoa, all right !
G: That was literally rope that we had at the apartment and I was like this is good, cause they’re really messy and I was like let’s make it easy and then we, they haven’t moved since we got here.
S: Yeah, these little, these little shelve things now that are holding up our, our plants, I don’t know they were just like, we were originally thinking we were going to like, use them because they’re shelves that you can just install in the wall but, it looks awesome,
G: Well and, cause our fuckin’ windows open from the top…
S: Yeah.
aL: Yeah, that’s strange..
G: I mean, you don’t have to worry about anything falling out of the windows… I mean, I don’t really want to sit on the window ledge and stare out onto Ashland, it’s not that exciting.
aL: Cool. Is there anything else you guys want to tell me about this place?
S: It’s haunted. No, I’m just kidding.
G: The big white dresser in our room is… we’re using it because we can’t get it out….. ‘cause we had it online to sell, and someone was getting, we had it for $275, and then uh… even though apparently Ikea sells it for like $250… so…
aL: Someone probably emailed you that and was like…
G: We did, no some guy was like “Well despite the fact that you’re over charging for this…” I was like, dude I don’t even know what it is… Oh… this, probably doesn’t need to be on the record, but the, I don’t think we went in the bathroom, which we don’t have to, it’s not the coolest, it’s my least favorite thing about the apartment is the bathroom, cause there’s no natural light. It’s just a dark room… but our landlord previous to us, I guess he travels a lot, for his job, he designed the shower and bathroom after a hotel that he liked… he said he stays there all the time. So it’s the same shower curtain, same like, tile, and the same shower head, he had at some hotel that he loves.
S: Yeah, it’s like a holiday inn or something.
G Yeah it’s their shower head that he’s like, “It’s the greatest shower head!”
aL: Oh jeez, I forgot to ask the most important question… What makes your apartment feel like home?
G: That is a good question… The feel, the plants, the natural light, the view of downtown. It feels like where we are supposed to be right now.
This interview is transcribed from my interview with the guys. This is not a PG interview.
aL: When did you guys move in here?
G: December 28th...
S: Like right at the cut off.
aL: Of…?
G: Of last year. We got the apartment on Christmas Day, and then we moved in [the] 28th.
aL: Cool. That's nice. Good Christmas present!
G: Oh my God. The End of…, it was the End of Christmas Day, like, the last thing that happened.
aL: Yeah. and it's two bedrooms, right?
G: Yes. if there's a third one, I have not found it yet.
aL: Washer dryer in unit. That’s cool, that's convenient?
S: Yeah. This is actually my first place with a buzzer.
aL: Yeah?
G: Like, I've had apartments that had them, but none of them ever worked. This one actually works, which is weird. [It's nice] to not have to walk down.
aL: What's your favorite room in this place?
G: Favorite room? Well my bedroom now, I just painted it, so... Um... it was out here (in the living room), ‘cause I hated... our room was this burnt orange color before, which I don't…
aL: The color of Scott's room?
G: Uh, but just in part of it, like right here. Ours was that whole fucking s.. That's so much burnt orange, and I like hated it. Hated it, hated it. Like... His is nice ‘cause it’s just like one wall, and it's like compliment. And it… pops.
aL: With the brick it looks nice.
G: But it, it was like way too, way too much orange.
aL: Did you guys paint these walls, too? Or was that done?
G: Nah this is... it's called "eggshell"... is the color. All of this... We're... Our rooms we're allowed to do whatever we want, but out here we just have to like, tell him.
aL: Oh, okay!
G: The rooms he was like, you can do whatever you want, you don't have to ask, but out here, he's like, just tell me if you're gonna paint it or whatever.
aL: Do you have to change it back when …
G: That will probably be dependent on what color. To be honest, if he was worried about the paint job, I would just show him a picture of my room and be like Hey, like, I know what I’m doing, like… Uh I, I somehow amazingly like, I wore… the outfit I had on to paint, I had it on the night before and the next day, I didn’t get any paint on my clothes.
aL: Good!! That’s impressive!
S: You just had it on your… on your chest.
G: Yeah… I did, it was like, he was talkin’ to me, and there was a big thing right here and I had no idea. I leaned on something when I was on the ladder, so…
aL: That’s funny. Do you know when the building was built at all or anything about it?
G: No, I know…
aL: It seems a lot newer. Or at least a little.
G: I know it’s a gut rehab. So the frame of the building is old and… uh I, all I know is he said this bricks have been redone and they’re like three layers deep now.
aL: Oh, okay.. wow…
G: Which, helps keep it quite a bit… My stepdad is like, knows a shit ton about brick, and he was, saying that’s like, people don’t do that anymore, either. I have no idea. Next door I think is only two layers, cause I was watching them build it, so… this has three.
aL: So it keeps it really warm, during the winter.
G: I mean during the winter this place was toasty. This room is cold, Like every room but our bedroom is warm. Your’s is warm in there mostly, right?
S: In the bedroom?
G: Yeah.
S: Yeah, it gets a little bit chilly.
G: This room always stays hot.
aL: Yeah.
G: Like, it’s always good.
aL: It’s nice though.. with the windows open. Um… Was this your first choice, for apartments? Or did you guys… were you looking at a billion of them?
G: Oh my god…
aL: Was there something you wanted more?
G: Oh we uh… we looked at sooo many. And our… none of us really have very good credit. So like, we got turned down like all… this place, actually, we uh, it was the cover photo on domu.com.
aL: Oh, really?
G: And I used to, I was one of the domu models once.
aL: Yeah, I remember that.
G: I’m still their twitter icon. Which is… weird, I don’t know why?
aL: Really!
G: ‘Cause they’ve done like four or five campaigns since then, and I don’t know why they still use my picture. But…
aL: Maybe you look like a typical, Midwestern person, who wants to live in Chicago…
G: Well like the picture is… I still have my long hair and a beard, like the way I did when we were working together, and I like uh… I have no idea why. But I told him, I just wrote him, and I was like ‘hey, I’m.” or, I called him right away like he answered and I was like “I’m actually, I work with that site , too,” like and he was like “cool” and he had us come by, and he told us that when we came by to look at it, if we just brought the check we could sign.
aL: Wow.
G: And every other place was like, you’re going to have to pay for a credit check, and then we had people that weren’t returning our calls cause of Christmas day. So we were like, really getting scared, and we probably…
aL: So you guys looked last minute, to?
G: No, no, no, we were looking for, well we only had a month’s notice, so we uh… our landlord… the landlord at the last apartment, he sold his house and moved in. so he…
aL: Oh my god..
G: He decided, I mean to be honest it was a GIANT flat in wicker park. Like, if I owned that I would want to live their too.
S: Yeah it was enormous.
G: it was enormous. Like, but not like in comparison between the two, that one had so many like. Theres lots of cracks in the wall, like the living room was slowly… it was slowly falling off.
S: Like ‘eeeuuuuugghhh’
aL: Like slanted at the end?
S: Just slanted.
G: I mean I didn’t notice it until a few months living there but then I was like, that wall is like really crooked.
aL: Things are rolling down!
S: Yeah slowly… rolling down.
G: Structurally, this one is way better, that one was just… but dude,we have the view here so I don’t fucking care. Every morning I wake up I know that I live in Chicago. Cause I can see all the …
aL: Yeah, it’s awesome. I love that view, that’s very cool. Did you guys have any problems with this space when you moved in, like, was there anything that you had to fix or… that you didn’t like, or?
G: The upstairs neighbors didn’t like us. I had people over for my birthday, and I had… some words… and they’ve never said anything to us since then…
aL: Oh, really?
G: Like not a peep. Nothing. I just… got mad and uh… they’ve never said anything since. So…
aL: Cool… I meant like… spacially?
G: I know. Well that’s all I could think of when you asked that…
aL: But that’s a good, I mean yeah that’s a huge… problem. I had new neighbors move in above me and he’s the loudest person in the entire world and I’m like “why are you constantly walking in stilettos,” I don’t understand.
G: There was, honestly, the only thing like, I feel like in the first week like three light bulbs burned out, so the landlord like… he timed that perfectly.
AL: Oh, it was annoying, huh?
G: Right when he moved out all the bulbs burned out and I was like, how does one do that?
S: He’s been, our landlord’s been great.
G: Coolest dude ever, he gave us that grill on the porch, like…
S: Our heat went out, the next day or…
G: Same day.
S: He fixed it.
aL: Perfect!
G: And he, he never cashes our rent check until the seventh, like he needs it before then but he, doesn’t, he won’t pull it out of, it comes out of Mo’s account he doesn’t pull it ‘til the seventh.
aL: Awesome… yeah, that’s good, gives you a little extra time. What is your favorite thing about this neighborhood? What do you guys like about living here?
G: Um… it’s fairly clean. On the streets, and stuff like that. It’s quiet… After living in Wicker Park for 5 years, I don’t mind that it’s a little quieter at night, like a little bit…
aL: Yeah, not as many bars…
G: ‘Cause off the six way, I mean at the old apartment, not as much when he moved in, but living there in the summer there was always vomit on the front steps and stuff, like, we lived on Wolcott.
S: Yeah… it’s like the place that you would go to like… “okay I’m going to wander over here…”
G: It’s just off the… We were at **** Wolcott before which is like…
S: Man I never even thought about that .
G: Oh yeah you didn’t even live there. He moved in during the fall and like, summer time, vomit on the steps all the time.
aL: That’s terrible.
G: Felt like Wrigleyville
aL: Yeah. I guess that does happen a lot there.
G: I don’t know this area’s like pretty chill, too, like, mostly adults are here, too. I feel like all of our neighbors are older than us.
aL: Yeah?
G: But like, like ten years older than us.
aL: It’s a lot of families, or…?
G: No, lots of like single couples. Or kid-less couples. There’s actually no kids in our building. Like, none.
AL: Really?
G: Like all that’s in our building is dogs… everyone has dogs. Like mostly everyone has dogs and our whole building smokes weed. I mean, well it’s because no one’s home during the day, but normally this building smells like pot. If you come in at like 7 our hallways, it smells like pot.
aL: That’s funny. Where have you guys gotten your favorite pieces of furniture? Can you kind of… can you tell me again what that organ is?
G: Oh yeah, yeah, I have a, I have like a mid seventies uh, Hammond M3, so … yeah the B3 is like the rock organ and then the M3 that I have is the like, mobile version of it, they make for travel and stuff.
aL: It’s very cool. And you use it as a desk?
G: That one.. right, I mean I still I can still pop it off and play it, it’s out of tune right now, it needs.. all you do to tune it is grease the gears, but it’s a little more work than it sounds like. Uh, but that, the organ and this Wurlitzer were my uncle’s and uh, when he was in college, he had like a really successful band in Indiana and like he, uh, that, they were the house band at like, some big clubs, and like he would always have that organ with that Wurlitzer stacked on top, and he would play both… he was like the band leader, but he couldn’t sing, so, he just was like the musician. He had all these hired girl singers, like… he was making money. ‘Cause his band was like, him, like soulful black dudes and then really pretty girls, so like he was making some money.
aL: Everybody loved to see that.
G: Oh, yeah.
aL: What about the chairs? And…
G: Oh cool thing, his parents made this desk.
aL: I love that desk!
S: My dad is really like, really handy when it comes to making things, like you see that’s, it’s not metal, but it’s PVC and it’s just spray painted to, to look like rust.
aL: Yeah, it’s very cool.
G: This was, when we moved in this was a giant empty space, that was … most people would just put a giant big screen TV right there, but…
aL: Book cases, and stuff…
G: But Scott wanted a desk because before his workspace was like, here.
S: Yeah, because I do freelance, I’m a photographer, and videographer as well, so yeah, I just edit, all day, you know.
aL: So you need a place to, work. That’s actually conducive to working.
S: A little, I wanted just a low, sort of low profile conservative space. Just thought I would just…
aL: I’m a little jealous of that desk, actually.
G: Yeah, most… the pots that we have, like the bigger ones. Any big one you see that has plants in it I got from uh, when dibs on our street, I would always steal them from people that would put parking dibs and all of those are from parking dibs.
S: Is that true? I remember you brought home like “yes, dude this is from a dibs”
G: I uh, I got… four I think,
aL: Should I scratch that from the record?
G: No! Dude no, let them know. I drive, too and I hate dibs. Like I’m the kind of vehicle that like should do dibs because I have a big car and I you know, if I don’t do it you don’t need to do it. So… I brought those home, bought plants, and then put them all.
aL: Can you tell me about those chairs, too? The chairs and this um, floor cushion?
G: Scott knows more about the floor cushion, but the two chairs came from Salvage One and they were my last roommate, she bought them and then she moved in with her boyfriend and, and she, I really liked them and she passed them down to me. Because when we moved in here we didn’t have anything. All I had was this super comfortable bed, and music gear. So, because, before I moved in here, the last place, I was homeless for like 8 months, and then I lived at the last apartment, this time last year is when I moved in, and I had to start all over, I did not have anything. So, um, everything in this apartment except for music gear is mostly been acquired in the last year of my life, so… Hitting, hitting restart is the best feeling ever,
AL: For sure, you get to do everything your way.
G: And 8 months of not having an apartment taught me like, there’s like so many things you don’t need. Like, uh…
aL: But it accumulates really quickly.
G: Yeah… I’m pretty good about throwing… I just, if I don’t want it I, like I even have I think I have too many clothes, so, getting ready to get rid of a bunch of those.
aL: What’s the story?
G: Oh the cushion, yeah.
S: Oh yeah a bunch of this different stuff, so there’s, there’s some funny stories, so… um… the cushion is actually a meditation cushion, uh, from when I used to teach yoga, um, and let me see… the chair, is actually a purchase that I made when I was 13. For my, for my, after my bar mitzvah, I used my bar mitzvah money, to buy that luxury recliner, I don’t know if you know, but this goes all the way back, Let me, let me show you why…
aL: Do you still sit in it?
G: Yeah, he does all the time.
S: Not just sit…
aL: It’s your favorite chair? Oh, Yeah… It looks really comfortable.
G: It took me a while to actually try it, but it’s really comfortable.
S: So… I don’t know what it was, I was like “yeah, I want a bad ass chair.” And I was like, 13, 14 so uh, that uh, that purchase has stuck with me, now its… now it’s here.
aL: Did you have a lot of girls in it when you were thirteen?
S: Um… yeah, I had a waterbed too. So, I was pretty, I was mackin’ when I was you know… I was mackin’ in middle school.
G: He just dropped that on us the other day that he had the waterbed growing up and I was like, that is ridiculous.
S: Yeah, it was pretty ridiculous.
aL: That’s pretty awesome.
S: I don’t know, I was like somehow like some trashy seventies like wannabe porn star, apparently.
G: At least you didn’t look like one for a year.
S: yeah, right…
G: I… I had that look down to the T for a while.
G: The stools you’re sitting on we got from his friend who moved to New York City, the wood that we built the record shelf out of came from rehabbed wood that his parents were maybe going to buy the desk with, and then, this is really funny, those cattle rods that we have in the corner, I, those are real cattle rods from a Texas ranch, from a girl I used to live with, and uh, I tied them up like that to move them here, that was it, and then I shit you not like that same week, I went to CB2, and they had this as a like, that was a display thing in their store you could buy, driftwood they had tied together…
aL: Somebody saw it and stole it from you…
G: I sent Scott a picture and I was like dude apparently I am ‘hip’
aL: Trendsetter!
S: Yeah, I was like whoa, all right !
G: That was literally rope that we had at the apartment and I was like this is good, cause they’re really messy and I was like let’s make it easy and then we, they haven’t moved since we got here.
S: Yeah, these little, these little shelve things now that are holding up our, our plants, I don’t know they were just like, we were originally thinking we were going to like, use them because they’re shelves that you can just install in the wall but, it looks awesome,
G: Well and, cause our fuckin’ windows open from the top…
S: Yeah.
aL: Yeah, that’s strange..
G: I mean, you don’t have to worry about anything falling out of the windows… I mean, I don’t really want to sit on the window ledge and stare out onto Ashland, it’s not that exciting.
aL: Cool. Is there anything else you guys want to tell me about this place?
S: It’s haunted. No, I’m just kidding.
G: The big white dresser in our room is… we’re using it because we can’t get it out….. ‘cause we had it online to sell, and someone was getting, we had it for $275, and then uh… even though apparently Ikea sells it for like $250… so…
aL: Someone probably emailed you that and was like…
G: We did, no some guy was like “Well despite the fact that you’re over charging for this…” I was like, dude I don’t even know what it is… Oh… this, probably doesn’t need to be on the record, but the, I don’t think we went in the bathroom, which we don’t have to, it’s not the coolest, it’s my least favorite thing about the apartment is the bathroom, cause there’s no natural light. It’s just a dark room… but our landlord previous to us, I guess he travels a lot, for his job, he designed the shower and bathroom after a hotel that he liked… he said he stays there all the time. So it’s the same shower curtain, same like, tile, and the same shower head, he had at some hotel that he loves.
S: Yeah, it’s like a holiday inn or something.
G Yeah it’s their shower head that he’s like, “It’s the greatest shower head!”
aL: Oh jeez, I forgot to ask the most important question… What makes your apartment feel like home?
G: That is a good question… The feel, the plants, the natural light, the view of downtown. It feels like where we are supposed to be right now.
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