We know it’s a hard out there for a renter. Apartments are tiny, landlords are certifiable, and when you finally find that awesome roommate (the one who shares your love of both Survivor Man and Golden Girls reruns, who cooks a huge pot of homemade spaghetti on Sundays, and who is frankly better about refilling the TP roll than your own mother), it’s inevitable that he will decide he suddenly wants to move in with his significant other about seven months before your lease ends. That’s when Craigslist comes in. When you post an ad, you automatically get a tidal wave of unwashed responses, so you try again with a few qualifications (“No Drugs” seriously means “No Drugs” — except for weed, obviously). However, the qualifications listed in this Craigslist post we just found — for a loft in Williamsburg, where else? — are a little bit extreme. In the “my companionship must be extremely repugnant” kind of way.
The listing starts out normal enough, obviously location is the big draw and the posters acknowledge that the “the apartment building is full of units and many neighbors to meet and greet. Some are cool, some are not, some want to be cool, some are fun, some are attractive, and some are douche bag kids that we forbid in our home.” Wait, huh? Forbid? Let’s hope there is some sort of playbook with Polaroids you can study before you move in outlining who is who.
Qualifications like “someone who showers,” “does an occasional dish,” and “you make nasty in the bathroom, you light incense” all seem legitimate enough, and props for the phrasing in a clever way. But what follows then spirals into a list of super specific, quasi-offensive list of qualifications.
• “Your are not a slut, you are not a douche bag.”
• “You are not too old, you are not too young.”
• ” You don’t say you are a writer, you have 6 chapters done and working on number 7.”
• “You have a job with perks we can all use.”
• “You use apple computers and read vice magazine.”
• “The front living room is designed … to check your myspace excessively.”
• “You even bust out the broom and murder some dust bunnies.”
For people so obviously into defining the limitations of being hipper-than-thou, we seem to remember loving MySpace and Vice mag like, uh, five years ago. Let us guess, you’re still doing whippets too, right? And kudos to you for taking your coolness cues from Steve Jobs, way to think outside the iPhone box, Che. For that matter, shouldn’t you be in Bushwick or Astoria or something by now, not down the street from DuMont Burger advocating your bunnycide? And, oh, that ending line, “You are not an asshole,” just strikes us a bit of the pot calling the kettle a hipster, no?
$1100 BIG ROOM IN GIANT LOFT!!! Bedford & N3rd!! [Craigslist]
Earlier: Mrs. Bojangles Needs a Roommate
