what new york looks like

sus

Well-known member
Oxford, along with a few other places such as, I dunno, Chester, maybe York I dunno, is one of those ones where the laws make it slightly harder to cover every single space with advertising and stuff. It's weird when you get a McDonalds or something in some building that has a listed facade and they're not allowed to do what they usually do and put their identikit bland signage on it. They have to kinda compromise and you get some strange olde worlde looking MaccyDs.
Text pollution is a tragedy of the commons
 

sufi

lala
Woke up this morning to find all the water and internet in our building cut off, mrs Kurdistan the neighbour says it reminds her of home x
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
One thing that isn't much of a part of this symbolic world is cars. It's weird, in loads of America the appearance of your car seems to be central, and in enland its like that as well, my mate in Boston drives an enormous truck for no apparent reason except I guess to communicate something. But the cars in nyc are pretty low key, pretty small, practical. I hardly ever notice anyone's car yet the city is full of them. It's a strange exception.
 

luka

Well-known member
Have you hung out with the Puerto Ricans in front of the bodega sexually harassing women Shaka?
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
One thing that isn't much of a part of this symbolic world is cars. It's weird, in loads of America the appearance of your car seems to be central, and in enland its like that as well, my mate in Boston drives an enormous truck for no apparent reason except I guess to communicate something. But the cars in nyc are pretty low key, pretty small, practical. I hardly ever notice anyone's car yet the city is full of them. It's a strange exception.

it's a pain in the arse to have a car in NYC. when we lived there we only knew a few people who had one. if you park outside where you live, you have to move it to the other side of the street on designated days when the street sweepers come through. you have to get up at some ungodly hour, move it across, and then there's a mad scramble to get back to a good spot on the original side you were on.

come to think of it there's a whole episode of How To With John Wilson about securing a good parking spot

some NYC people never use the car except for trips out of town, so it just sits in the good spot - if they've got one - getting dirtier by the day

but yeah in the rest of America - like here in LA - cars are totally part of the social text. I always look at the monster cars with the big tyres, often with just one person, the driver, riding in them, and think 'what are you trying to tell with this unnecessarily massive vehicle that gets something like 11 miles to the gallon?'. just dont' give a fuck about the environment i suppose is one thing but also a more generalised don't give a fuck / don't fuck with me, i can squash you like an ant. any road conflict i will come out it better

personalised license plates are also a fascinating thing -- someone condensing their existence to a single telegraphic attribute or interest

then the shudder that runs through your own whole body when you a license or some kind of sticker on the car in front saying like 'don't tread me' or other Trumpista / Stop the Steal type slogan - like, there ARE Republicans in California, in LA even
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
it's a pain in the arse to have a car in NYC. when we lived there we only knew a few people who had one. if you park outside where you live, you have to move it to the other side of the street on designated days when the street sweepers come through. you have to get up at some ungodly hour, move it across, and then there's a mad scramble to get back to a good spot on the original side you were on.

come to think of it there's a whole episode of How To With John Wilson about securing a good parking spot

some NYC people never use the car except for trips out of town, so it just sits in the good spot - if they've got one - getting dirtier by the day

When I lived in Hackney it was in a gated community. My flat had a parking space with it which added about 15k to the value of the house. I never used it.

One day I got a letter hand posted through the door. This guy had a flash car that he didn't want to park on the street and he was offering £300 per month to anyone who had a space and who would let him park there.

I was broke as always so - kerching! - I quickly emailed him saying something along the lines of "fuck yeah".

I was already spending the money in my head when I got this email from this woman who ran the residents committee. Her name was Tricia and she was an utter cunt. She sent round this group email to all the residents and the guy with the car (I dunno what type it was, a white one) saying something like "You may have received a letter through the door asking to rent your parking space. Giving out the combination to the gate represents a security threat so you are forbidden from doing this".

Fucking hell not this meddling bitch again. And I mean meddling, she didn't even live there, her son had a flat in the block and yet when they had created a residents committee she had somehow stood for a position, got on to it and then become the fucking boss! She'd already blocked me from doing AirBnB and she'd really lost her shit that time when I came home really drunk and kicked my way through this glass door into the foyer of my building. Although arguably I bore some of the responsibility for that one (that was terrible actually, it was about 1am I guess and my key wouldn't open the door - turned out there had been a power cut - and I fucking lost it, started kicking the shit out of the door and all the lights came on in all the buildings and everyone came out and started shouting at me and threatening to call the police and stuff but I'd gone too far to stop by that time so I just kept on kicking - it took fucking ages to get through, double glazing, I finally smashed through one and then it turned out I had to do it again, eventually I'd made a hole that a small dog could perhaps get through if it didn't mind getting its shoulders cut to ribbons as it entered, when someone came out of my block and let me in - to mitigate circumstances I had to invent a story about how I was in a vulnerable state cos one of my close friends had just died). Another time I had a guest who came back when I was out and couldn't get into flat so he crashed out in the stairway and she sent a group email to everyone entitled "Tramps in the lobby"...

Well I'm not gonna go into that, in fact I'm not even gonna scratch the surface, but suffice it to say that his vicious old witch had been making my life a misery for years. And she completely had the whip hand, what with controlling the committee and everything. Like when one of her spies realised that my flatmate had a cat and reported back to her she sent us an email ordering us to get rid of it. My girlfriend looked through the details of the contract and animals weren't forbidden, they could be allowed or otherwise depending on how the committee voted, so my gf queried this and she replied "I've just emailed right now and they unanimously voted for you to get rid of your cat" which was an obvious lie but we couldn't really do anything about it. In the end my flatmate whose cat it was had to move out - and it was run over and killed a few days later cos it was used to living in our lovely safe little area. I'd forgotten about that... oh god she was evil through and through... and the time when her son emailed me to say that my flatmate had had a party and woken him up and "I don't want to alarm you, but I think I smelled drugs". Oh that prick... when he started talking about how much he liked Apex Twin - yes, Apex Twin - I wanted to fucking kick him in his stupid fat face.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, she'd just scotched another of my money making schemes... or so I thought. I assumed that the matter was closed but to my surprise this guy replied to her (and with me copied in - which pissed me off at first, I just wanted to keep my head down and stay as far away as possible from the spiteful despotic old bag) saying something like "Idle Rich has already agreed to give me his space so tough titties" - and then what followed was this massive argument with me copied in.

It was brilliant cos she said that the committee had banned it, but it turned out he was some kind of property lawyer and he had checked in the land registry for the rules of the freehold and it was outsider the powers of a committee of that type (or something similar) to do that. And she kept making up new reasons why he couldn't do it but he had answers to all of them. Finally she just said something "You just can't do it so there".

Looking back on it I feel bad that I was so scared of her I let her intimidate me into backing out of the contract anyway. But they argument thing was fucking priceless. I wonder what she is doing now, I really hope she's dead, or in some kind of persistent vegetative state - ideally knocked down by a car that was swerving to avoid a mysterious cat that looked strangely similar to Mr Bear...
 
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wektor

Well-known member
When I lived in Hackney it was in a gated community. My flat had a parking space with it which added about 15k to the value of the house. I never used it.

One day I got a letter hand posted through the door. This guy had a flash car that he didn't want to park on the street and he was offering £300 per month to anyone who had a space and who would let him park there.

I was broke as always so - kerching! - I quickly emailed him saying something along the lines of "fuck yeah".

I was already spending the money in my head when I got this email from this woman who ran the residents committee. Her name was Tricia and she was an utter cunt. She sent round this group email to all the residents and the guy with the car (I dunno what type it was, a white one) saying something like "You may have received a letter through the door asking to rent your parking space. Giving out the combination to the gate represents a security threat so you are forbidden from doing this".

Fucking hell not this meddling bitch again. And I mean meddling, she didn't even live there, her son had a flat in the block and yet when they had created a residents committee she had somehow stood for a position, got on to it and then become the fucking boss! She'd already blocked me from doing AirBnB and she'd really lost her shit that time when I came home really drunk and kicked my way through this glass door into the foyer of my building. Although arguably I bore some of the responsibility for that one (that was terrible actually, it was about 1am I guess and my key wouldn't open the door - turned out there had been a power cut - and I fucking lost it, started kicking the shit out of the door and all the lights came on in all the buildings and everyone came out and started shouting at me and threatening to call the police and stuff but I'd gone too far to stop by that time so I just kept on kicking - it took fucking ages to get through, double glazing, I finally smashed through one and then it turned out I had to do it again, eventually I'd made a hole that a small dog could perhaps get through if it didn't mind getting its shoulders cut to ribbons as it entered, when someone came out of my block and let me in - to mitigate circumstances I had to invent a story about how I was in a vulnerable state cos one of my close friends had just died). Another time I had a guest who came back when I was out and couldn't get into flat so he crashed out in the stairway and she sent a group email to everyone entitled "Tramps in the lobby"...

Well I'm not gonna go into that, in fact I'm not even gonna scratch the surface, but suffice it to say that his vicious old witch had been making my life a misery for years. And she completely had the whip hand, what with controlling the committee and everything. Like when one of her spies realised that my flatmate had a cat and reported back to her she sent us an email ordering us to get rid of it. My girlfriend looked through the details of the contract and animals weren't forbidden, they could be allowed or otherwise depending on how the committee voted, so my gf queried this and she replied "I've just emailed right now and they unanimously voted for you to get rid of your cat" which was an obvious lie but we couldn't really do anything about it. In the end my flatmate whose cat it was had to move out - and it was run over and killed a few days later cos it was used to living in our lovely safe little area. I'd forgotten about that... oh god she was evil through and through... and the time when her son emailed me to say that my flatmate had had a party and woken him up and "I don't want to alarm you, but I think I smelled drugs". Oh that prick... when he started talking about how much he liked Apex Twin - yes, Apex Twin - I wanted to fucking kick him in his stupid fat face.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, she'd just scotched another of my money making schemes... or so I thought. I assumed that the matter was closed but to my surprise this guy replied to her (and with me copied in - which pissed me off at first, I just wanted to keep my head down and stay as far away as possible from the spiteful despotic old bag) saying something like "Idle Rich has already agreed to give me his space so tough titties" - and then what followed was this massive argument with me copied in.

It was brilliant cos she said that the committee had banned it, but it turned out he was some kind of property lawyer and he had checked in the land registry for the rules of the freehold and it was outsider the powers of a committee of that type (or something similar) to do that. And she kept making up new reasons why he couldn't do it but he had answers to all of them. Finally she just said something "You just can't do it so there".

Looking back on it I feel bad that I was so scared of her I let her intimidate me into backing out of the contract anyway. But they argument thing was fucking priceless. I wonder what she is doing now, I really hope she's dead, or in some kind of persistent vegetative state - ideally knocked down by a car that was swerving to avoid a mysterious cat that looked strangely similar to Mr Bear...
love me some rich storytelling
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I feel that I should in fact clarify a few things and add a couple of addendums... addenda? Whatever.

Firstly, this woman, her surname was Aylesbury, exactly the same as the town, and whenever I saw an email from "Aylesbury" I knew it would be either a complaint or a threat or something "you're spoiling the look of the flats by hanging the washing out of the window" or "You're three thousand pounds behind in service charge fees and we're going to approach your mortgage lender and do some complicated legal process involving them to get that money which means you'll be at risk of losing your house" etc etc and I just grew to hate the name Aylesbury so much and when I would go and visit my girlfriend who lived in Oxford the bus would always pass this sign on the motorway saying turn off here to Aylesbury and that would bring me out in cold sweats... in fact, it still does.

But what kind of person takes over the committee of a block of flats that she doesn't even live in? I guess she owned the house that her bullying progeny inhabited which gave her a tenuous financial interest, but why on earth should she give a fuck if there is washing hanging out the window when she is in fucking Surrey or wherever she lives? How does she even know? Who is reporting that to her so that she can complain?

And best of all, when I finally fucking moved out... she sent me a friend request on facebook!!!! What's going on there? Did she still want to maintain some kind of presence in my life?

Also, @woops was it you who slept in the lobby that time? I have a feeling that it was either you or Iwan that she pretended she thought were some random "tramps" who had somehow penetrated the outer defences, when she knew full well they were my friends. Basically this was a recurring theme with them pretending to think that anybody they didn't recognise who was within the outer wall was a potential criminal who ought to be gunned down on sight. Another occasion was when a friend who was staying with me got home like ten minutes in front of me and I had given them the door key but they had forgotten the combination to the gate so they couldn't get into the grounds to use the key - luckily Simon (which was the name of her walking pussball of a son) was there on the drive and they said "Excuse me mate, we're guests of Richard in flat 6, you probably saw us leave with him, an hour or so back and we have his key here but unfortunately we don't know the combination, so, would you be so kind as to let us through the gate?" and with utter predictability he said "Oh I'm so sorry, I just can't do that, it's too much of a security risk, I'm sure you understand".

This bit from the thing above when I needed an excuse for kicking down the door I actually simplified for brevity (yes Edmund I know)

to mitigate circumstances I had to invent a story about how I was in a vulnerable state cos one of my close friends had just died

In actual fact, I had a friend staying with me who was this weird compulsive liar. He literally had a problem where he just told weird and unnecessary lies all the time. He had come up to visit that day and we had gone on a stupendous drinking session, which was why I was so wankered that I booted the door in instead of remembering that if the electronic key wasn't working, there was a normal key attached to which you could just stick in the keyhole....

Anyhow, while we were out drinking this guy told me that he had a terminal disease and that he would be dead in five or six years. I didn't for one second think that this was true, but it stuck in my head a bit and so when I was trying to explain what had come over me, rather than just saying "I'm a really stupid hooligan who drank far more than he could manage and acted like an absolute bell-end" I thought it would be better to include the fact that I had just, very sadly, discovered that my friend had a terminal illness and would be dead within five years. And I guess it did help, meaning that all I had to do was pay six hundred fucking quid for the door and apologise to a few people and basically it was all forgotten. But the weird irony is, that Mark did die two years ago - admittedly not from early onset Alzheimers as he had predicted but from liver disease due to his chronic alcoholism.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
you know so many mad people man, and i've only started reading your stories since you're using paragraphs, can't imagine all the crazy stuff i missed. one question about the glass door though, you said your key didn't work, but didn't it have a plate of doorbells you could ring and just ask someone to come down or buzz it open?
 

luka

Well-known member
If I had to live like Rich I would have a nervous breakdown within 24 hours I can't stand messy people and their dramas, I can't stand being embroiled in other people's lives. I need my own space.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
you know so many mad people man, and i've only started reading your stories since you're using paragraphs, can't imagine all the crazy stuff i missed. one question about the glass door though, you said your key didn't work, but didn't it have a plate of doorbells you could ring and just ask someone to come down or buzz it open?
Well, if you read the second bit, it's worse than that, it actually had a manual key so I could have just opened it. But the buzzers weren't working cos it was a power cut. The main problem was that I was unbelievably drunk.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
If I had to live like Rich I would have a nervous breakdown within 24 hours I can't stand messy people and their dramas, I can't stand being embroiled in other people's lives. I need my own space.
But the thing is. Well, I guess I do have the odd moment. But you know, my house is super tidy and clean. I like to get as much time to myself as possible, I like to cook and read and so on. Yeah these last few months have been a nightmare of vicious circles all impacting on each other, one of the main ones is that although i have been jabbed, the website says I haven't when i put my SNS number into it and this is a huge problem cos no-one seems able to solve it, i've phoned helplines, i've been to pharmacies, to my local health centre etc etc

On Friday we're going to Porto and we are dj-ing from 11pm until 5am at Ferro Bar and then on Saturday we are DJ-ing from like 9pm until 3am in some other spot and the great thing is...they are putting us up in a nice hotel for free for once... as long as you've got a vax cert....
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
you know so many mad people man, and i've only started reading your stories since you're using paragraphs, can't imagine all the crazy stuff i missed. one question about the glass door though, you said your key didn't work, but didn't it have a plate of doorbells you could ring and just ask someone to come down or buzz it open?
Mad people though? I dunno, I reckon if you thought about it and put together some crazy moments from people you know you would probably find out it was the same.

And also, in London, I knew a lot of the same people as Woops for example. Though with my living arrangements things did get a bit out of hand. We offered for this guy and his girlfriend to move in cos we thought maybe we could help them with their heroin addiction... that didn't really work out. The funny thing is, this guy - as I've mentioned - was in a famous band... but he had no money cos.. well, the pay was shit and he spent all the money he did have on smack. He comes back from being on Letterman, and then goes to his main job which was driving a car for a local dealer. They used his card to rent a car and then they wrote it off in a police chase so he ended up owing the car rental like 10k and any money that went into his account went straight to that. Then our friend found our other flatmate, this guy's girlfriend on this website for prostitutes... we were trying to work out if her boyfriend knew or not but we could tell he must have written the blurb, it said "She puts the ass the class" as an opening line. He and like three other people would wait for her to come in and then she would roll in at like 3am and throw three hundred quid on the bed and thent they are straight on the phone to the dealer and they rinse it all.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I dunno, maybe you're right. I remember telling my mum about our friends in Dusseldorf who were icon painters in the Georgian church who managed to basically get sponsorship from a local millionaire and then kinda hike across Europe and blag their way into the Kunst Aacademy there - and Mum said "You know such interesting people" and that did sort of get me thinking... I dunno. I do just really like people, even though I like my space at home, I do love meeting people and just listening to what they say. If you do that almost everyone is interesting... in 15 minutes I'm gonna go and play squash and I'm playing with two posh guys, a Scottish guy I just met there cos my partner was late one time, and the other guy is this French guy... and I think I said, just the other day we found out that he had been embedded with the FARC for six months or something as a cinematographer and he was telling us about being interviewed by secret police or something when he went back to France... and then he realised he was being followed cos they thought maybe he was a left wing terrorist sympathiser or something. I like this guy Arnaud and everything... but I would have never guessed that... only found out totally by random cos we were talking about something similar and he really had to mention it I guess.
 
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