The Random San Francisco Craigslist Roommate Circus

I was reading Hannah's blog and was recently reminded (as if I could have forgotten) of all the strange stories that she, Natalie and I collected during our three years living together in Berkeley/Oakland/Alameda. Most of them surrounded the perpetual search for someone to fill the revolving roommate position we always seemed to have open... so with no further ado, let me introduce you to the wacky cast of characters.

S: my first bay area roommate, getting her PhD in Chemistry, who was wonderful, but -- being in the agonizing throes of a dissertation -- spent every evening despondent over her laser that never worked right.

R: R, Natalie, Hannah and I moved into a fun little four-bedroom apartment in South Berkeley (where Hannah kept getting yelled at for being white). Shortly into our move, R's boyfriend broke up with her, while the rest of us were all out of town for the weekend. When we returned, she had redecorated the entire apartment, and then proceeded to "bill" us for everything she didn't want to take with her when she got back together with her boyfriend and moved to LA, whether we wanted it or not.

Tracy: After R moved out, Tracy moved in, and proceeded to complain. About everything. All the time. For eight months straight. She was one of those people that you wanted to love, because you knew she needed it, but you had trouble being in the same room.

After a while, Tracy moved in with her new boyfriend and we found a really cute house in Alameda. Total strange-roommate-free bliss for six months. Then Hannah sublet her room for the summer while she went to Brazil.

Nancy: Nancy was really nice... and liked to talk... alot. She was a Jewish Buddhist who was living with us so she could be closer to her boyfriend while her divorce was finalized. Her husband and her boyfriend helped her move in -- together. She had a little massage practice on the side, and asked me if I minded if she worked on clients in the living room. Let's see... naked people I've never met hanging out in my house? Luckily, she realized how bad of an idea that would be before we had to tell her no. We actually ended up really liking Nancy, and her fun British boyfriend Alan, who lived at the marina down the street, working on his boat. She had this fun paper-mache camel from Africa that would scare Sadie the pug whenever I was dogsitting. Anyway, Nancy left to go sail around the world with Alan, and Hannah decided she needed to live at home to save money while she was in grad school, so it was time for a new roommate.

Hannah put another ad on Craigslist, and we met Humuu, Haystack, and LoveSong (all real names), who all didn't work out for various reasons. Then there was the family of 3 that wanted to move into Hannah's room. Then some guy named Daniel (or something like that) came by. He described himself in his roommate ad as a "sensitive, affectionate guy, with an interest in 'wimmin's studies'." I made Warren come over to meet him with me 'cause it just sounded weird. He drove a big white van, and he kept telling me that he could tell it was going to work out because I "had such good energy." Plus, he was, like, 40, and he described himself as "affectionate," and he was interested in living with two single 20-something women? Uh uh, I don't think so. Natalie and I were not very happy about Daniel, but by this time we were getting desperate and we only needed to make it through three months before our lease was up.

So on the eve of having to say yes to sensitive-ponytail man, Hannah called with one more potential Craigslist roomie. Brian came over to meet us and he was quirky, like the rest, but he was kind of like a little kid and for some reason Natalie and I were a little bit won over (well, especially in the face of the competition). He was a white hip-hop gangster wannabe from Brooklyn who just needed a place to crash for a few months while he figured out where to plant himself in California. "A place to crash" turned out to mean for himself and enough stuff to fill his room AND the three-car garage. He worked on a goat farm in Santa Rosa, and when his license got suspended his friend moved in too, "to drive him around," he said, only she never drove him anywhere 'cause his car was broken down too and I don't think she had one either. He stopped going to work, and shortly thereafter stopped paying rent, and was actually really sad when we told him we weren't going to pay his rent for him and let him stay. This story could go on and on, but the highlights are that he moved out but left all his stuff, moved back in with even more stuff in the middle of the night, and started punching out the guy who was nice enough to rent him a moving truck on the day we were supposed to be out of the house, so once again we enlisted our guy-friends (and the crew of large roofers next door) to come over and watch out for us. In the end, he ended up stealing Natalie's computer, ditching his broken-down car on the street in front, spackling his walls brown so the place had to be repainted, and leaving us with mountains of garbage, which we then had to drive all around Alameda in the middle of the night trying to ditch in dumpsters without getting arrested.

Ahh, the joys of communal living :)