Category — Landlord Biz

Pre-kids, my wife, Alice, and I ate out a lot.  We mostly went to dives. That was our hobby.  Dives as low as Krisplee on East 82^nd Street and Euclid Avenue, and Albino’s at West 44^th Street and Lorain Avenue.

At home, Alice cooked a lot of tofu.  That’s why we ate out a lot.

We don’t go out much now.  I can’t stand the long waits, the so-s0 food, the noise.  I’m my dad.

Alice published a restaurant guidebook, Alice’s Restaurants, in 1981.  The book sold particularly well at the airport bookstore.  Alice’s oddest recommendation was the cafeteria at Metro General Hospital.  She liked the beef stroganoff and Viennese tort there.  (Alice was a nursing student.)

I liked Draeger’s, an ice cream place at Van Aken.  I wasn’t into balanced meals.

Here are a couple recommendations from the book:

Alice, 1977

(Still around)  Balaton, Corky & Lenny’s, Flat Iron Cafe, Mad Greek, Mamma Santa’s, Hot Dog Inn.

(Dead)  Zosia’s, Gerome’s, Art’s Seafood, It’s It Deli, Vegetaria, Radu’s, Aurora, Draeger’s, El Charro.

When we had our first child,  our eating out petered out.  Alice wrote a baby book, but never published it.  I can’t remember what the book was about, other than babies.  Oh, it was The Bye, Bye Book — how to  prepare your kid psychologically if you left town for a day or two.

Our kids — now grown — became foodies.  Maybe we left them home too much.  A lot of 20-somethings became foodies.  A baby-boom friend described his grown kids’ religion as Foodism.

Alice in stains

Alice — the original Foodist — sold street food.  She never made a dime, but she made a name for herself.  In the mid-1980s, Alice was the first to sell sushi rolls in Cleveland.  This was at the Coventry Street Fair.  Few locals knew what sushi was.  Alice made vegetable rolls.  She grossed well, but her expenses were high.  She paid a Korean-American friend, Mike, to help.  Mike lent an air of authenticity — not that he knew anything about sushi.

Alice did tabouli at the East 115^th Street Fair.  Tabouli was a loser.  Why?  It wasn’t that good.   And a Cadillac with musicians playing in the trunk  —  next to Alice’s booth — was a lot more entertaining.

Alice sold falafel at the Coventry fair.  She called that operation Queen Alice’s Falafel.  We ate a lot of falafel because she was always tweaking the recipe.  She did falafels for a couple years.

Alice is talking tacos lately.  Our son Teddy is talking pad Thai.

Foodists.

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SIDE B

THE JEW OF HOME DEPOT

Carl Goldstein, a landlord friend of mine, wants to be a docent at Home Depot when he retires. He goes to Home Depot at least twice a day, six days a week. That’s more than 600 Home Depots visits per year. Carl owns and manages double houses on the East Side of Cleveland.

Carl Goldstein, 2011

He said, “Home Depot saved my life. Before they came to town, I used to go out to Builders Square on Wilson Mills. That was the ruination of my life. After Builders Square, I would take the freeway to DIY on Chagrin, and then to Seitz-Agin [hardware] on Lee. And I still wouldn’t have everything I needed!”

Carl worked at a plumbing supply store for seven years; he sold hot water tanks, boilers, Flushmates and plumbers dope. Carl’s father was a plumber in Flint, Michigan. Carl has a collection of Corky toilet flappers and other odds and ends in his truck. He gave me a Niagara water-saving shower head. ($5.13 from Woodhill Supply. Too specialized for Home Depot.)

I bought more Niagaras. I have about fifty now. I switch shower heads when tenants move out. (Bad business to switch shower heads on current tenants.)

Carl wants Home Depot to hold a storewide scavenger hunt. The first contestant through the Home Depot check-out line with all the correct items wins. “I’m a shoo-in,” Carl said. “Second place would be Marc Apple.”

“Marc Apple?”

“He’s a Cleveland Heights contractor,” Carl said.

There are two Jews of Home Depot in Cleveland.

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Read Max Apple’s The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories. (Max Apple is not related to Marc Apple.)

Next: The Jews of Home Depot (Atlanta): Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank.

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I wrote about Alice, hot weather and money at today’s CoolCleveland website.

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Alice and dance leader Daniel Ducoff on the front page of the Cleveland Heights Sun Press, 7/12/12.  (Well-written article about Yiddishe Cup by Ed Wittenberg. Photo by Jim Olexa.)

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I had a custodian who couldn’t change a light bulb.  She didn’t know how far to screw the bulb in. She was from Russia and liked to “dress” — put on sharp clothes and wear heavy makeup.

I hadn’t hired her. I had hired her husband, but her husband skipped (went to Philadelphia) and I didn’t want to fire her, because she had two young boys.

She improved just slightly.  She learned how to apply porcelain touch-up paint to chipped bathtubs.  Like doing her nails.

I’ve had worse employees.  I had a custodian who showed too much butt cleft when he waxed floors, alienating some of the tenants. I had a custodian who drove too often to Detroit.  This was before cell phones.  I couldn’t reach him.

I had a custodian from the Hough neighborhood who was snooty.  Her family had boarded Nap Lajoie, the Hall of Fame baseball player, when Hough was a fancy neighborhood.  The custodian said to me, “We had the elite in my neighborhood.  No mongrels, like from P.A.”  Her husband was from P.A.

I had a building manager who rarely cleaned. A tenant taped a note in the hallway: “This building is a mess.” Other tenants added to the note: “Vacuum the halls” . . . “Take the tree down, Christmas is over!” . . . “Trim the shrubs.”

I had a custodian whose vacuum sweeper was always outside her door but she never vacuumed.

Hoover don't move her

I had a custodian who threatened to kill me.  He was dating a black transvestite prostitute from apartment 200. I didn’t like him fraternizing with tenants.   He said he would hunt me down.  Luckily, he didn’t know his way around the East Side, where I live. The East Side has curved streets.

I had a custodian who asked for loans regularly because her husband took all her money, she said.  I liked the husband.  He went to the racetrack a lot, but he was a hard worker and had a good day job.

I had a building manager whose kids were thieves. I once asked where her son was, and the manager said, “He stepped out to shop.”

“Where?”

“Marion,” she said.   The Marion (Ohio) Correctional Institution.

He came back from Marion and broke into an apartment.

Bad.

—

Footnote:
For the record, I’ve had plenty good managers.

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Lakewood International News, a magazine store, carried the Paris Review, Partisan Review, Kenyon Review and porn.  About half the store was porn.

The proprietor, Gil, was a part-time railroader.  He and several railroad buddies manned the elevated counter, which was a lookout tower for nailing shoplifters and pervs.

I went to Lakewood News.

Where else could I read an interview of William Styron in the Partisan Review, and Bustin’ Out in the same visit?

Gil lost his lease.  (I wasn’t Gil’s landlord.)  I had a vacant store.  Maybe Gil and I could do business together.  A bank tenant had bailed on me down the street.  I thought I was good for 30 years with the bank, but then all banks in the world started merging in the late 1980s.

The bank owed me rent until the bank was re-leased.  The bank, through back channels, quickly found a new tenant — the city.  The city planned to open a health-department annex.  Fine.  Cockroach inspectors would be my new tenants.

Except the city didn’t move very fast.  There were various “readings” at various city council meetings.  Meanwhile, Gil, the magazine store owner, told a couple people he was getting the bank store.  A Plain Dealer reporter called me.

Possible PD headline: “Stratton New Porn Czar.”

The old porn czar was Reuben Sturman, a local-boy-made-good and the nation’s largest porn distributor.

I got scared.  I hand-delivered a media package to the Plain Dealer reporter.  I did a Q&A with myself.  I answered: “I believe in the First Amendment and the bookstore would be an asset.  It isn’t just porn.  Ever heard of the Paris Review? I’ll rent to the magazine store.”  I wanted the city to hurry up, so I had created a little tension, via the press.

Plain Dealer, June 21, 1989. See text below.

The Plain Dealer story came out.  (Nothing too horrible.)  But suddenly the city fast-tracked the legislation and rented the space.

That was the only time I ever spun the press.

Don’t believe half what you read in the papers.  For the real story, go to the memoirs 20 years later.

But by then, you probably won’t care.  But maybe you care in this instance; you read this.
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Here’s the beginning of “Adult store’s Detroit Ave. move thwarted” by Paul Shepard, Plain Dealer, 6/21/89:

“My only goal is to rent the store.  Whoever signs a lease first gets it, but I think both would be fine tenants for me.”

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I wrote an op-ed, “The Old Seder Table,” for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, online, Friday (4/6/12).  The op-ed is the only Passover story ever to mention Yazoo City, Mississippi.

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Retirees usually make good tenants.  Unfortunately, I don’t get many retiree tenants, because most old folks don’t want to live in pre-war hardwood-floor apartments with no dishwasher or A/C.   Been there, done that.

I had an application from Joe, 71, a retired factory worker.
He made $1600/month.

Welcome, Joe.

I ran a criminal search on him as a formality. Aggravated arson, forgery and sexual battery.

Pre-Internet, I would have rented to him.  Pre-Internet,  it was hard to run background checks.  I once rented to a rapist/murderer because I wasn’t schlepping to county records, and the rapist wasn’t volunteering he was a rapist/ murderer.  (The man got picked up on a parole violation and moved out of my apartment without killing or raping.)

I rented to a retired nurse whose previous landlord followed her to my place.  He told me the old lady was a forger and felon.

But she already had the keys to my place!  My building manager had given her the keys in exchange for a dime store ring.

My custodian, Buck, always subverted me.  For example, he thought junk mail should stay in perpetuity; watering outdoor plants was ridiculous; and accepting fake rings was part of the job.

I helped Buck move the retired nurse’s belongings into the basement.  I locked the basement door.

“Give me my meds!” she said.

She had a point.

I gave her meds, plus her toothbrush.

This cost me.

I was young.  I learned two things: a) Don’t ever do a “self-help” eviction.  Lawyers love self-help evictions.  b) Screen all tenants like crazy on the way in.

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Louise Stevenson, an elderly tenant, plastered 3- and 4-cent stamps on her rent envelope.  This was in the 1980s.

Miss Stevenson was an old maid and very old school.  She patrolled the building  in a nightgown — a house coat — whatever women wore in the 1950s.  My mom wore one too.  Yes, a house coat.

Miss Stevenson didn’t like the custodians.  These workers never met her standards.  One custodian showed off too much butt crack when he scrubbed the floors.  Another manager supposedly broke into Miss Stevenson’s apartment and stole a book.  A third custodian went barefoot “like a hillbilly” in the hallway.

Miss Stevenson could guess whenever I was coming by; she stood guard by the building’s front door.  I listened to a lot of her diatribes about the decline of the West (Side).

I had a stamp collection too.  I should have talked stamps with her.  But I didn’t.  Miss Stevenson was a bit frightening, and my dad had always taught me: Don’t get personal with the tenants.

Miss Stevenson claimed she was related to Robert Louis Stevenson.  (The stolen book was an autographed Stevenson, she said.)

She carried a shopping bag and took the bus downtown every day, wearing her house coat.

Miss Stevenson died in 1992.   That year a first-class letter was 29 cents.

I hope I get a letter today with eleven 4-cent Lincolns on it.  I won’t, unless Miss Stevenson sends this . . .

—

Postage goes to 45 cents Sunday (January 22).  Add:

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An Asian Indian asked me if he should buy a motel.

Why ask me?  Why not ask Patel? I thought.  Forty percent of American hotels are owned by Indians, and many are Patels.

The Asian Indian was a tennis pro who had invested in Cleveland real estate and lost money.  He thought maybe I knew some tricks about investing.

I knew this: Most everybody in the real estate biz in the 2000s was not hitting the long ball.

He asked me about stocks.

This is what I knew:  My late father, who was a stock broker for about six months in the 1950s, taught me the market is legalized gambling.  John Bogle, former chairman of the Vanguard Group, said, “The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain.”  You have to be lucky twice with stocks: when you buy and when you sell.

In March 2009 the New York Times business-page headline was “Are We There Yet?”  There meant the stock market’s bottom.

In March 2009 the price/earnings ratio was at its lowest in more than 20 years: 13.  (Trailing 10-years figure.)  The worldwide P/E was even lower, down to 10.  It was a good time to invest, but scary.

***

My Uncle Lou and Uncle Al drove a truck, delivering wholesale items to stores.  They offered me a carton of baseball cards — 24 packs — at deep discount.  I was in.  I immediately ripped open all the packs.  I was 9.  This was my first speculative investment.  I got a lot of Humberto Robinsons (an Indians relief pitcher) and no Mickey Mantles.  Maybe my uncles were teaching me dollar-cost averaging: better to buy a pack a week (i.e., dollar-cost averaging) than go all in.

The Asian tennis pro moved to Florida.  His wife and kids couldn’t stand Cleveland winters, for one thing.  He didn’t have a job down there.  He didn’t have a house.  I hope he knew Patel.

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Here’s “Beer and Coconut Bars,” which I wrote for the CoolCleveland website.  Went up a week ago.  The story is definitely full Cleveland, if not cool Cleveland.

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I went easy on a tenant, rent-wise, because he called the police on a leaded-glass thief, who had stolen windows from the apartment building’s entrance.  (The windows were sidelights.)

Ex. Two sidelights flanking main entrance

The cops asked my tenant, “Would you be a witness?”  My guy — Bill Livingstone — said yes.   I appreciated his civic involvement.

Livingstone was nosy.  That was a good thing.  Livingstone, a poodle groomer, stayed at the building 23 years.

***

A vandal scrawled graffiti on a front door.  Livingstone wasn’t around. (Different building.)

The building manager knew the graffiti “artist.”  She even knew his phone number.  My custodian personally knows this derelict?  The graffiti “artist” was a friend of a friend of the custodian.  The “artist” hung out at a skaters coffeehouse and had a recognizable tag.  My custodian,  a lesbian brakeman with multiple piercings, knew the scene.

I phoned the graffiti kid.  What if he was nuts?  I hung up.  Let the cops handle it.

The kid called me.  “You just called my cell.”

I hate that.

The cops found him and made him clean up the doors.   His mom even helped.  The kid was in high school.  I didn’t press charges because he cleaned the door.

***

Re: the leaded-glass sidelights thief.  That guy was caught due to Bill Livingstone’s accurate ID of the man.  (The thief sold the windows to an antiques store.)  The man was charged with aggravated burglary and grand theft.

He didn’t do any jail time.  He made restitution to me over a couple years.

I’ve been fortunate. Thanks to Bill Livingstone, tuned-in building managers and persistent police detectives.

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I rented to a commercial photographer who moved out after 23 years and left a store full of manila folders, invoices, developing trays and chemicals.  Three dumpsters’ worth.  He shouldn’t have done that.  I had never hassled him about late fees.

Down the street, the Armed Forces Recruiting Center moved out after 40 years and left a punching bag, three couches, 27 chairs, a lot of  “Army of One” promotional material and a 1970s stereo system.  That wasn’t the half of it.

The good news: the government — unlike the photographer — paid for the clean-up.  Also, I got $75 for the Armed Forces sign on Craigslist.  (I thought the sign would go for more.)

Perfume bottle doubling as a pen holder

I’m sitting on about 3,000 perfume bottles.  I’m not totally sure they are perfume bottles.  Martha’s Beauty Salon left the bottles in the basement.  The bottles are packed in cartons with zone numbers on them, not zip codes. (Pre-1963.)

Every month I serve an eviction notice on a lawyer.   Every single month.  Then I file an eviction on him.

The lawyer rents a storefront office.  I pay the $85 eviction filing fee and get a court date.

The day before the court hearing, the lawyer pays the rent, including the legal fees.  Like clockwork.

Until he doesn’t.

At eviction court he said to me, “I’m broke.”  No tears, no dough.  “You’re in business.  You understand,” he said.  “I don’t have the money.  I’m moving out.”

He turned in the keys and cleaned the place.

He stole money from his clients.  He was disbarred in April and convicted of grand theft in June.  Sentencing is next month.

Note to the probation department: he left the store clean.

—-

As my dad used to say . . .

Meaning: Pay the rent.  We aren’t a loan company.

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A tenant peed in the heating ducts and poured aquarium gravel into the toilet.  Several other residents used the cheap hollow-core doors for karate practice.  The apartment building looked genteel, but it wasn’t.   Jamestown Village, on the West Side, was a post-war, modern apartment complex.

Many tenants lived beyond their means; they liked the swimming pool, the playground and A/C, but couldn’t really afford these amenities. There were a lot of evictions.

The complex was garden-style, low-rise buildings set around a pool.  All the buildings had mansard roofs like McDonald’s.  My father kept a sketch of Jamestown Village in our family room.

A high school wrestling coach, who was also a big-time real estate investor, bought the complex and converted it to condos in 1976.  That worked out well for the coach and my dad.  As my dad’s banker said, “You made your money, and  he made his.”

I worked on the Jamestown Village roof, replacing lids to vents.  The lids were called jap caps because they looked like coolie hats.

There was no better place than a roof top — at least a flat roof. You could see everybody, and nobody could see you.  That’s why cops in The Wire go on roofs so often.

But it wasn’t all fun and games on the roof.  There was some work too:

Lesson 1:  Modified bitumen membrane is the basic black roof, usually applied with a blow torch.

Lesson 2:  Thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) roofs look like white pool liner.  Your roof  is reflective.  Cleveland has more “heat” days than “cool” days, which means white roofs (TPOs) are great in Dallas, but not so great in Cleveland.

Lesson 3: Summer is the best time to put on a roof.  I had a roof installed in April and it rained constantly, and the job was a mess; we had leaks into the apartments below.

Lesson 4:  Consider vacationing on a roof.  There might be an old longue chair up there, left by a rebellious tenant who sneaked up for sunbathing and serious drinking.  People want to be on roofs badly.

There is usually an empty tar bucket for your guest to sit on.

Roof & Relaxation

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The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an op-ed of mine yesterday.  Something about baseball cards.  Gotta write about baseball if you want to be in the big leagues: “Investment Home Run.”

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The first three digits in your Social Security number mean something. For instance, 545-573 and 602-626 indicate you are a native Californian. 268-302, an Ohioan.

That’s history. Effective Saturday, newly issued Social Security numbers (SSNs) will have no geographical significance. The “Social Security Number Randomization” policy hits.

New Gavins, Emmas and Destinys will get random SSNs.

I read about the randomization policy in the Social Security Administration/IRS quarterly newsletter to employers.

I look at Social Security numbers a lot because I’m a landlord. One apartment applicant wrote his SSN as 900-. There are no 900-999s. I turned him down on the spot. Likewise, there are no 000s-. And I don’t rent to 666-; that’s the devil’s number, and the Social Security Administration (SSA) doesn’t stock it.

The SSA website says, “If your [SSN] concerns are firmly rooted in your religious beliefs or cultural traditions, Social Security will review your request.”

The new randomization policy will extend the number of available SSNs. There are 435 million unused numbers. Dead people’s numbers go to the grave with them.

What about a vanity SSN? Are the feds thinking of that?

They should. Parents might pay $100 for a snazzy SSN — say, a 999-. Something that would stand out on Baby Emma’s college application 17 years from now.

Just say no to randomization.

Baby Emma is not a random number. And Gavin is an Ohioan — a proud Buckeye. Destiny, she is a California girl (602-).

Joe Buckeye

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Due to a computer glitch, this post (“Just Say No to Randomization”) didn’t go up on Wednesday June 22. It went up today, Saturday June 25.

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Here’s an op-ed I wrote for the Cleveland Plain Dealer last Sunday. “Harvey Pekar’s Hollywood Hustle.”

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I write “landlord/bandleader” for occupation on my taxes.

“Real estate/musician” would be too boring.  I want the IRS to think of me as more than just another number.

QUALIFIED DIVIDENDS.  Every year I try to remember what qualified dividends are.  They are qualified for lower capital-gains tax rates.

ALIMONY.  My lazy ex-wife thinks I’m her personal ATM.  Alimony shouldn’t be on the tax form.  It’s a big distraction.  (I don’t have an ex-wife — lazy or otherwise — but still, the thought of it is scary.)

SCHEDULE C. Business income. The government looks closely at artists’ expenses on this schedule.  In the band biz, how does one list the candy bars for the band’s sleep-deprived, van-driving keyboard player? Is the MilkyWay a “meal”?  The MilkyWay seems more like “maintenance.” The MilkyWay is not a “meal.”

SCHEDULE D. Capital gains (losses). When I met my wife-to-be, Alice, she owned a mutual fund. Nobody except John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, owned a mutual fund in 1977.  Smart move — my marrying Alice.

SCHEDULE E. Income from royalties.  Yiddishe Cup sells CDs from the trunk of a car, so to speak.  That’s not a big royalty situation.  But now that Yiddishe Cup is on Sony Germany’s Balkan Basics World Tour II CD, maybe we’ll get some royalties.   Royalty checks are often a joke, I’m told.  Like $0.31.  Still, I’d like one.

IRS Climbing Wall

DEPRECIATION. Form 4562.  Buildings have lives.   For instance, apartment buildings live  27½ years.  Buildings-with-stores last 31 years or 39 years; the laws keep changing. And buildings on the Alternative Minimum Tax form last 40 years.

SELF-EMPLOYMENT TAX.  Schedule SE. The Social Security and Medicare tax is effectively 14.13 percent for a self-employed person.  A salaried person pays only 7.65 percent.  That’s worth knowing if you’re starting a business.  (For 2011 only: reduce the above figures by 2 percent.)

THE FLAT TAX.  There is a 31 percent tax on 31-year-old buildings; a 23 percent tax on 23-year-old sons; and no tax on klezmer bands, which the president has declared national treasures.
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Happy Passover!  Here’s a funny Klezmer Guy video, “Irregular Passover Humor” . . .

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The florist, who had a shop in Linesville, Pennsylvania, said he knew the DeBartolo family of Youngstown and had provided flowers for Clint Eastwood’s godfather’s funeral.

I know machers too, man! I felt like saying. I know, through gigs, the family that wants to rebuild Brooklyn and move in the New Jersey Nets. The boss of that family likes to hear “Oyfn Pripetchik” (On the Hearth).  I play that tune even before the boss can request it.

I’ve done a lot of fancy gigs (by Cleveland standards), Mr. Linesville Florist.  I did one where the bride’s dad bulldozed his back yard to put up three tents.  Then he put in a quarter-mile road to his front door.  Yiddishe Cup played for 15 minutes, after which a Nashville band took over.

I’ve seen clients back up A/C trucks to the old federal building to cool off guests.

I haven’t seen that sort of extravagance lately.

The florist considered renting a store from me.

He liked to talk, and not about utilities or lease terms.  He talked about Clint Eastwood’s godfather — “a simple western P.A. man whose coffin had a flower spray that floated on Styrofoam over the casket.”

The florist said he had spent the past 30 years in Linesville, where ducks walk on carp at the Pymatuning Reservoir spillway.  “That is the second biggest tourist attraction, to the Liberty Bell, in Pennsylvania,” he said.

He showed me the bee stings on his arms. “There are a lot of yellow jackets because I live out in the country,” he said.

The florist wanted to move back to the city, he said.  He winked at me. “We are going to be partners in crime!”

He began talking about the DeBartolos of San Francisco. Then Clint Eastwood’s floating  sprig again.  Maybe the florist had talked only to ducks and carp in 30 years and was lonely.

After a half hour, I interrupted, “Give me a call when you’re ready to put down a deposit.  I have to go.”

“You’ll be hearing from me!”

I didn’t.

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I had a custodian who enjoyed the Weather Channel and thought the end of the world was coming every day, via hurricanes or snowstorms. I don’t think she ever went outside.

Another employee was also fixated on the weather. He did a lot of indoor apartment painting and wanted every day to be 74 degrees like Costa Rica, so he wouldn’t sweat.

A neighbor of mine asked if I had a winter place in Florida.

I was surprised. I’m not there yet — retirement in Florida.

But I know a klezmer musician — a bushy-haired baby-boomer clarinetist — who is moving to Florida and taking up golf.  So anything is possible.

Maybe my friend will play a freylekhs (hora) by the water fountain on the 16^th hole.  (Mickey Katz did that.  His band got paid to surprise a golfer on his birthday.)

Some Clevelanders complain about the cold. Arizona versus Florida.  That is the discussion.

My wife, Alice, and I went to a wedding in Florida last spring, and a guest asked Alice, “Are you still in Cleveland?” Meaning “Are you nuts?  Do you like gray skies, slush and potholes?”

Another Cleveland woman at the wedding said, “The day I hit sixty-two I had to leave.”  She spends the winters in Scottsdale, Ariz.  A third Clevelander, originally from South Africa, preferred Florida over Arizona.  “I like the ocean,” she said.

Last month at a gig in Florida, I ran into a waiter who had lived in Florida and Arizona.  He said summer in Arizona is unbearable. Florida is bearable.

What about Ohio?  Ohio-with-layers in the winter and pleasant the rest of the year.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s new.   And check out this  video, “Albert Stratton Practicing his Comeback.” The clip is  an Ann Arbor song, taped at The Ark this month.

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To report an odor of gas, please call the East Ohio Gas Company (EOG).

Question: Has anybody ever donated to EOG?  On the monthly EOG bill, there is a space for voluntary contributions. Who gives to EOG?  EOG has an ego problem.

I give to EOG.  And it hurts.  I don’t give charity; I give dollars for heat.  Not-news  department . . . Cleveland has long cold winters.

Emily, a former tenant, asked if I would pay her $66.24 EOG bill, because she had moved and the gas company was still billing her for stove gas.

I wasn’t going to pay Emily’s bill.  I pay the apartment gas bill but typically not the tenants’ individual stove bills. I volunteered to call EOG for Emily.

EOG wouldn’t talk to me because I wasn’t Emily.  Fine.  I don’t enjoy talking to EOG.   This dispute was between EOG and Emily, EOG said.

Or maybe the dispute was between Emily and my new tenant, Elizabeth, who was possibly using Emily’s stove gas.

I told Emily I would call Elizabeth.

Elizabeth — the new tenant — said to me, “I’m in this apartment only three days a week. I use the toaster-oven and microwave.  I don’t even use the stove!  It’s off.”

Impossible, Emily told me.  And she added, “Somebody incurred a sixty-six dollar bill. It wasn’t me!”

But you can incur a $66.24 gas bill just by glancing at your stove, Emily.  There is something called a “basic monthly charge.”  Right now that charge is $19.63.

Emily wrote me several letters, the last one ending: “See you soon in court.”

I smelled an odor of gas.

I received a 25-page small-claims lawsuit.  Emily wanted her gas money back, plus double her security deposit, for a total of $1,150.71.

The magistrate, plus Emily, Emily’s dad and I, met in a hearing room at city hall.  The dad was OK; he parked next to me and didn’t “key” my car.

I had a letter from EOG, explaining who had service when and in who’s name.  I won because of that letter.  An EOG secretary  had done me a favor.  Her letter was not from the pre-approved letters’ templates, she explained.

Thank you, EOG.  I  pledge $___.  

How much should I give?  Double chai?

—

[Goys only: Chai (life) equals 18.  Double chai is 36.]

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Please see the post below too.  It’s fresh.

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This insurance agency used to be a witch’s store.  Before that, it was a deli.

Here’s the store’s story, as told by Mr. Landlord. [Please click on the video to continue.]

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A modern apartment is easy to paint. You just roll the drywall.

Prewar apartments, however, can take two days or more.  You need to cut-in at the baseboards and at the mullions, and sometimes it’s smart to use two shades of white to contrast the woodwork and the walls.

sSteve — a West Side apartment painter — has more words for white than Jews have for fool. Steve talks about antique white, Navajo white, pearl white, bone white and pure white (a.k.a. hospital white). [Fool in Yiddish: nar, shlemiel, shmendrik, shmegege, yold.]

The big question at Lakewood Paint and Wallpaper was “Oil or latex?”  Another pertinent question was:  “Is Dutch Standard the same as Dutch Boy?”  No, Dutch Standard is from Canton, Ohio.  Dutch Boy is the nationally known subsidiary from Sherwin-Williams, Cleveland.

Bill, a paint salesman, made regular calls at Lakewood Paint.  He said, “I would stick with an alkyd [oil].  You kids will try anything.”  He looked at me.  “Let me ask you something.  Are you a Yehudi?  That’s a word only one of us would know.  What’re you doing here?”  (On the West Side.)

“I work for my old man.”  (I was 26.)

“Four years of fun and game at college,” Bill said. “Now look!”  He studied my painter’s clothes.  “There are only two Yehudis at Dutch Standard.  Me and another guy.”

. . . Yehudi Ha-Rishon (The First Jew).  That was a Hebrew school primer about Abraham.

Yehudi Ha-Shayni (The Second Jew).  That was Bill, who wandered the Northeast Ohio paint-store circuit in the 1970s.

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A man with a strong Israeli accent called. I thought he wanted to rent a store.  A lot of prospective store renters have foreign accents, particularly Middle Eastern.

But the Israeli wanted to talk music. He wanted to sell me a Yiddishe Cup ringtone.

Then I got a call from Elias, who wanted to open a bakery.

“You would be my second Elias!” I said.

This Elias – like the first Elias — was Lebanese.

I’ve also rented to Eli, a driving school operator.

Christian Arabs are often Eli, Elias, or Mike. Or Sammy.

I rented to Shaukat Ali.  Not a Jew.  (Not a Christian either.)  Ali was a Pakistani computer repairman.  He began wearing all white, growing a beard and praying in his store.  He lost some business.

Widad called.   I asked Widad if that was her first name.  Yes.  She wanted to open an Arab restaurant.  She said, “Have you ever been to the Middle East?”

“Israel,”  I said.

No biggie.  Most Arab store owners are just trying to make a living.

I once attempted to talk Middle East politics with an Arab tenant.  He said, “That’s over there.  I’m here.”

Wadid wanted to sign the lease right then.  I said, “Whoa, Widad” (to myself).   I said, “You’ll need about $100,000 for grease traps, exhaust hoods, upgraded electrical service, architectural drawings, two ADA-approved bathrooms and a fire extinguisher system.”

The restaurant didn’t happen.

***

There were two Ivans, both Croatian shoe repairmen. One was small and friendly, and the other was terrible.  He banged so relentlessly on his anvil he nearly drove the photographer next-door nuts.  I had the walls soundproofed.

But we purposefully did a shoemaker (a lousy job) on soundproofing the shoe repair store.  To soundproof a room correctly, you have to float a new wall and stuff the crawl space with fiberglass, and it still won’t work.

A friend considered opening a cupcake shop.

Cleveland is not cupcakeville, I thought.  I said, “You can go broke with a trendy concept in Cleveland.”

You don’t need cupcakes.

But if you do, there is an excellent Hungarian bakery. You drive by this place for years and don’t even notice it.  Tommy’s Pastries, Madison Avenue, West Side.  There is nothing in the display windows.  Tommy’s makes a zserbó, a chocolate/walnut/apricot dessert.

Zserbó is the Cleveland cupcake.

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Bandleader Walt Mahovlich told me about Tommy’s and zserbó.    (Pronounced ZHAIR-boh.)
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Here’s an amusing new video — and free singing lesson — from Yiddishe Cup’s alternate drummer:

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Please see the post below too.  It’s fresh goods.

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The tenant — a poet — said she liked the way the sunlight glinted through her living room blinds onto the hardwood floor.

“But what really got me,” she said, “was your company’s Craigslist ad about ‘a closet big enough to park a Mini Cooper in.'”

I liked her. She liked my copy writing.  She thanked me for “two wonderful years.”

Another tenant — a waitress — interrupted the landlord-poet lovefest. The waitress, standing at the poet’s door, said another tenant — a third person — had just stolen the waitress’ skirt from the laundry room dryer and was wearing it.

“Wearing it in the building?” I said.

“Yes.”

The skirt was a full-length, tie-dyed orange, green and red hippie shmate.  The skirt’s owner — the waitress — was  26.

The thief was a middle-aged black woman who wouldn’t answer her door. Not even when the cops showed up.

Meanwhile, I was also dealing with a drunk who had run her faucet all night, on purpose, and had called my manager a “pig.”

That woman got an eviction notice right then.

I decided to phone the black woman about the tie-dyed skirt.  I got her boyfriend.  Good.  He was on the lease; she wasn’t.  I told him the skirt thief had to be out in three days.

“Don’t put me out!  She’ll go,” he said.  He was a solid tenant, other than he left cigarette butts all over.   He was 69 and “country” — from Tennessee.    On his rent checks he wrote rant instead of rent in the memo line. (Another poet?)

“She can’t stay more than three days,” I said.

“Can I ask, sir, why is that?'”

“I rented to you, not her.  The woman is not on the lease.”

I didn’t bring up the stolen skirt matter; that would have complicated things. But I wanted to say: “The next time your lady friend steals clothes from the laundry room, tell her not to wear the skirt in the building!”  Out in three days.

My poet tenant enclosed a poem with her final rent payment.  It began:

The way the forecast told of dark clouds,
drizzle, seemed more true than the way
the sun lit hills of trees, dull golds, rusts.

[by Karen Schubert]

I read that poem about 10 times.  I concluded it was a “winter is a-comin in” poem.   The drunks and skirt thieves were a comin’ in for the winter.

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Reminder: This blog is updated twice a week: Wednesday and Friday mornings.  Please see the post below too.  It’s kind of  fresh.

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This is the most acclaimed animation yet from the guys over at Challah-Barbaric.  This movie may appear like a navel-gazing indulgence, but it’s not.  It’s magical.

Should I rent to a Stripper? is the lost collaboration between Fred Flintstone and Maimonides. It is a guide for the perplexed landlord and tenant.

The two main characters — a sleazy guy from Yiddishe Cup LLC and a bug-eyed naïf — turn the nasty, grim, cutthroat real estate world into something even grimmer — and very robotic.

The landlord is so pompous at first.  Then he’s more so. But the young lady draws forth a bit of the landlord’s humanity and even a Chanukah song lyric.

After the movie, the couple goes for drinks and has an affair.

2:57 minutes. United States, 2010
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[The first paragraph in the capsule movie review (above) is lifted, in part, from John Ewing’s Cleveland Cinematheque calendar.]
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This blog is updated every Wednesday and Friday morning.  Please check out the post below. It is recently hatched.

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Before I hire a building manager, I interview the candidate at his residence.

One man’s house had no front stoop, and he had four dogs in the living room.  There was hardly any non-dog space in that house.  We wound up in a bedroom on the third floor.  There was a big bird up there.

How about a doormat that says “Got beer?”

I once hired a woman with that doormat and she worked out well. She was a steady worker and controlled her drinking.

Ethnic factory workers are usually solid too.   Too bad they don’t exist anymore.

Ethnics or factories?

Both.

Benny Artino, a building manager, worked the day shift at Eaton Axle. His wife, Betty, was the world’s best cleaner.  She wanted to be buried with a can of Comet.  I gave Betty an unlimited cleaning budget.  She liked to vacuum the halls every day.  I didn’t try to stop her.  Why would I?

When the Artinos’ son Paisan bought an apartment building in Tampa, he asked my advice, and I said: “Buy the biggest building you can afford.  You might have one boiler and one roof for multi-suites, or you can have the same  one boiler and one roof for a double house.”

One of my worst hires was a cocaine addict. She ran up my Home Depot account with charges for an air compressor and tool box.  The gift certificate $50 was over the top.   She fenced the items.

After I fired her, I went to Taco Bell to reconsider.  My father had given an employee a second chance after she had ripped him off, and she had repaid my dad and stayed on the job.

But my custodian — the coke head — had told me, “I have a few shopliftings but I never stole from people.”  Was I not people?

I stuck with fired. I didn’t say, “You’re fired.”  I said, “If you turn in the keys this weekend, I’ll pay your moving expenses and give you four-hundred dollars, and I won’t call the cops.”  Sometimes it pays to pay people to move.

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My favorite manager, at least to listen to, was  “Roy Hamilton,” circa 1978.  (“Roy Hamilton” is a composite of  several former building managers.*) . . .

Bert, little bitty buddy, I’ll tell you one thing I done: I had this old car, couldn’t get it to do nothing.  I pushed and pulled and beat on it.  Then I throwed it over a cliff by the Rapid ravine. I said, “Let’s throw over a car.”  Me and my boys done it.

My old lady was against it.  She was the biggest woman for churchgoing you ever seen.  She thought she was better than me.

She was skinnier than a stick. Totally emancipated.   And ornery.  When she got money, that heifer, watch out.    Man, I didn’t dig her.

She’s still here, on Madison,  over a jukebox.  She breaks 100 on a good night at Mahall’s [bowling alley].   She came at me with a mouth full of beer.  Got all over the floor and balls.

She’s got claws. They all do.  Bert, there’s a lot of good-looking heads out there just waiting to nail you to the cross.

She makes me sick. Ferocious of the liver.  That’s a situation.  Nobody comes between me and my beer, but that broad somehow does.

It’s all in the numbers.   Course it is.  I ain’t asking for much.  This upcoming  repression is going to be  so bad it’ll shake your teeth loose.  I  just want to be reborn the poodle of a rich lady.  That’s my next life.

Little bitty buddy, you got a number?  Ain’t nothing but 1, 2, 3.   Give me a number.   What’s the new rent on apartment 34?  $235?   That’s my number.  You just gave me a number!

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* “Roy Hamilton”  is mostly the real Roy Hamilton, a Tennessee-born building manager who was a painter at Midland Steel (Cleveland). He died in 1984.   Note:  I lifted several lines (in the first two paragraphs of this “Roy Hamilton” saga ) from Arkansas writer Charles Portis, to get in  gear.

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1 of 2 posts for 10/20/10.  Please see the post below too (which was technically put up yesterday).

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