Remembering My Years in a Small, $550/Month Chelsea SRO - Curbed NY
During the summer of 1995, I was living in a brown Chevy Caprice Classic that was 16 years old. The back seat of the Caprice was basically like a couch it wasn't quite full-stretch-out length, but it wasn't uncomfortable. The Caprice left most of its exhaust system somewhere on I-95 in Connecticut, and pretty much all of its vital fluids just past the first toll booth heading into Massachusetts. I would drive into the city on Tuesday nights to get a jump on the new apartment listings that came out every Wednesday in the Village Voice. I don't remember if the ad for my new place said it was an SRO apartment, or if it just said the rent: $550 a month. So many people showed up to see it that the landlord ran out of application forms. He showed me the place somewhat defensively, as if to say, " This is it. " There was no room to walk around , nothing to tour. I imagine that, out of the many applications he handed out, not many came back complete. The apartment was a single room, maybe 10 feet long , and narrower than that. The ceilings were 15 feet high. Source: ny.curbed.com
