I See Some Plywood And I Want To Paint It Black

Sep 12, 2005 17:04


Good evening, lords and lassies. I'm starting to suspect my online entries will be written primarily at the library. What with the computer access and rather startling abundance of time on my hands, and all. And especially right now, when my homework demands are somewhat scarce. (And the homework I do have is mostly dependent on a textbook I haven't gotten yet. Sue me for scrounging the net for a better deal than what our bookstore has to offer! I can take it! I can take it!)

Most of you who read my online diary haven't ever seen my apartment, have you. (Jerks.) Basically, I live in a large apartment complex on the corner of 4th and Wabasha, downtown St. Paul. It's a very old building, but also a very historic building-- it used to be called the Hotel Lowry, and as of a 1937 postcard, was apparently "the largest hotel in St. Paul," "absolutely fireproof," with a "private bath and circulating ice water" in every room. Time hasn't exactly been good to the place (much like Seventh Place Apartments, another hotel-cum-apartment complex); it isn't horrible, but hardly a five-star hotel anymore. The carpet's kind of musty, the stairwell area in particular looks a bit war-ravaged, and there's a rather everpresent roach problem, so much so that you'd think they should be splitting the rent. Damn freeloaders. But, things are changing. Slowly. A man named John Rupp, who specializes in rennovating/restoring buildings for place in the national registry, has been working on Lowry Square for some time now. I guess his plan is to convert the lower area into a hot restaurant/nightclub scene, and simultaneously restore the upper-level apartments. This sounds exciting, except for the fact that work is progressing verrrrrry sllllowly. The entire third floor was being rennovated, and ostensibly set aside as a McNally Smith-centric floor, for upcoming students. The idea was to have it ready by August, for the Fall semester. Yeah, didn't happen. Oh, work is certainly progressing, because the fire alarm that forced us all out of bed at 7:30 a couple weeks ago came from the apparently-vacant third floor. But still. It's coming along quite slowly.

The whole time I've been living here, it's looked quite ghetto from the outside. Part of this is because of the very scary-looking people that hang out there at all hours of the day, but the main reason is the plywood covering the large windows on the front level. These windows are large, basically encompass the whole first floor, and they're also numerous, so most of the first floor used to be a glass encasing. Right now, it's a bunch of pieces of plywood. This gives one the impression that the building is rundown, when in actuality, it is. The smart thing is to make it look great on the outside and be crappy inside, or perhaps vice versa. Matching crappy appearance with crappy accomodations, on the other hand, just makes the whole sherade quite crappy. Apparently, the mayor himself is peeved at Rupp for taking his sweet time, and has asked him to do something about the windows in particular.

So, today, they did. Their solution, in the absense of funding or any brighter idea apparently, was to paint the plywood black. I saw the crew this morning, merrily spending time that might have gone towards the actual restoration by painting a bunch of disposable plywood black. So now, at least from a distance, the building will look much better. At closer scrunity, of course, the building will look like it has a lot of black plywood boarding up the old windows and doorways.

I'm not sure what to think about that. I mean, on the one hand, this does give off a better appearance. And apparently, that plywood has been in front of those windows far longer than I've lived there. When we moved in there in April, the general word was that construction would continue through to the end of Summer, and the whole building would be ready by the Fall. I'm not there all that often of course (little pockets of time here and there), but when I am, I never really hear any construction, or more importantly, notice a lot of construction workers. Seems a little sluggish. Not to mention, the fact that they spent a day or two painting all this plywood black seems like a decent indication that this plywood isn't going anywhere any time soon. And that's just not a good sign.

Either way, the rent is cheap, and my apartment itself rocks. Y'all should come see it. Justin's going to. Sunday night boyee, Sufjan Steves at First Ave! Awwww fuck yeah. Okay, I'm gonna go.

Current weather in Guatemala: 73 Degrees. . . and mostly sunny! Holy shit! There's a change of pace for ya. (Of course, it's been very rainy and humid here today. So it's a tradeoff I guess. Minnesota and Guatemala, working in conjunction to cover all possible late Summer weather conditions. Way to go, Minnesota and Guatemala!)
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