YESTERDAY, we began a countdown to the gigantic MISCmedia 15th Anniversary celebratory fete (June 2, all ages, mark your calendars now), with a glimpse of the art show that’ll be part of the festivity–digital pix (presented out of order) of every home yr. web-corresp’n’d’t had lived in. Today, another installment.
#18: The Consulate Apartments, 1619 Belmont Ave. A small but well-preserved studio apartment, with a former Murphy Bed closet.
I lived there from ’84 to ’87, during which I dumped a horrible job, was dreadfully unemployed, reluctantly went back to the horrible job, and finally found a better job. I also got my first Macintosh, ran a short-lived mondo-film screening series, and began the original Misc. print column.
Entering and leaving the building often involved charging through the phalanxes of bums and panhandlers who hung out at Glynn’s Cove tavern down the street (which later became Squid Row, then Tugs Belmont, and is now Kincora).
A Dymo Labelmaker note was stuck inside the Consulate’s back door: “Don’t let strange people in. We have plenty.”
The live-in building manager was a flamboyantly out gay man who loved to go to Chinese restaurants very late at night, a task which involved the ten-minute revving of a motorcycle parked directly beneath my unit. By the time I moved out, he had become very thin, pale and weak, and it wasn’t because of Chinese food.
NEXT: Some more of this.
ELSEWHERE:
