Some ideas for re-inventing a malfunctioning Queens apartment

Here’s the thing about our Astoria apartment: It’s a converted attic (vel third floor), which is, apparently, already a violation with the Buildings Department of the City of New York. It was erected in 1918, and I’m pretty sure only had one landlady since then— our current one, who lives in Long Island and is conveniently deaf when you try to call her. There is a single electrical circuit, which means that we can only have the hair dryer or the TV on, but not both. That is also a serious fire hazard, apparently.

The temperatures in summer range anywhere between 85 and 105, in winter from 55 to 62 during the day. There’s wind blowing in through our windows, cracks in the walls (no isolation) and electric outlets (the one in my room not working anyway). So we put plastic foil all over windows, which doesn’t really do much, but we can’t really put it all over walls if only because that will make the place look like an alien research laboratory.

There’s a hole in our bathroom floor still from when our substances-abusing super was fixing our leaking bathroom that used to flood the downstairs neighbor.

Now we have new next-door neighbors. They’re drug dealers.

When we’ve moved in, an old lady died in the ground floor apartment, and we really wish this place was at least haunted, or at least for something to haunt our drunkard super that has been non-fixing our front door doorknob (it falls out every time) for the past five months.

So how do you live in a place like this and not go mad?
There are several possible options:

- You convert your bedroom into an alien research laboratory
- You keep your sister’s bike there together with food and you plug off the fridge
- You smash all the windows (they’re useless anyway), cover the frames with candy wraps and make a performance art piece of your entire apartment
- You build a big fire place in the middle of your kitchen and use it
- You convert your bathroom into sauna (need to install a stove)
- You rent out the freezing bed-room as an electrical equipment storage
- You make your place an everyday open house and try to get as many people in daily as possible. It’s scientifically proven that humans can raise the place’s temperature. The more of them the warmer. Write in the invite there’s free wine then say you ran out of it.
- Report your trashy super and land lady to CIA for an international crime they haven’t committed
- Invite some trashy TV show over, if they find it newsworthy enough. If not, say that the super raped your cat.
- Start selling drugs
- Sleep in the staircase. To improve the effect, stop showering, build a carton box house next to your super’s door and do all the cooking there
- Pitch your place to Christo as a thing to wrap
- Open a brothel
- Open a speakeasy
- infest the building with bed bugs (only if you’re willing to suffer them yourself)
- Do go mad, kill every tenant with a fork which you then stick into the outlet in your room causing the whole thing to burn in a bright, Hollywood-style blaze...

If you have any other ideas, please, by all means, e-mail me.