Somebody...

While Austin is out gallavanting with locals in Grenada of all places, I am stuck in this not-so-hellish hole of NYC. My day was spent delving in the depths of a shithole sublet in Astoria, Queens. Weeks ago I was made aware of a quandary. My good friend was being hassled, to be put lightly, by a cocaine addicted gambler cum derelict landlord. For the past year he has been living in a 100/wk renter on a building that can only be described as a place you always wondered what went on in and you are now most certainly correct about. Drugs, prostitutes and the like were commonplace and he was holed up in his 10x10 room armed only with the creativity of thought and a cheaply made Korean lock that would keep the local dregs at bay. One year was his struggle and a struggle it was. Ensuing insanity below....

The trek started with a parking attendant pulling my rental up to the front of a garage named aptly "The Parking Club" on Pacific Street. The rear window had been smashed so heinously recent that shattered glass littered the back seat. I navigated the Tacoma to 27th Street and 23rd Avenue in Queens without a hitch, for the most part.

Standing on the corner shit in hand . . . it's a smash and grab job. He tells me of undue back rent and incessant harassment. We are to be subtle. As we begin hurriedly moving oversize black garbage bags, cheaply made furniture and the like confrontation is behind every door. A man, 'the uncle'  as he put it, comes midway through the move to assure us things are changing around there. Attempting desperately to assuage my friend's, the tenant, reservations about continuing quarters there. I am walked through the bad to worse conditions of the apartment. A petite Russian girl interrupts politely in poor English, she came across some things in the shower. I am told this was a prostitute, one of many, that has lived there for days.

We drop the first load off fifteen minutes away and head back. The dense air thickens as the night begins to creep ever so slowly across a forgotten corner of nowhere. People are listening to our casual conversation, I could tell. Our chitty type chat is briefly suspended by an encounter with another tenant. An elderly latin women who my friend has actually never seen before and who undoubtedly speaks no English. A window above opens and closes. We shuffle a mattress covered in plastic out the door just as the landlord Mike approaches. In not so many words wants money. "Hold on, hold on, I'll be right back", I jump in the car and start the engine. 

MW has been in Brazil for months and he comes back to this piece of shit living in his room , sleeping in his bed, using his haircare products etc. I never felt better for someone else in my life than helping a friend out of that situation. Best of luck friend.