The Doom Warehouse
Posted on July 28, 2006
In the beginning of the month I ventured to New York with Nick to visit some of his friends and to see the Boredoms rock the house to the highest degree of n possible. While we were puttering around in Nick’s friend Mike’s pimp V-dub we had to run an errand. Mike had a broken iPod for Nick, and wanted to show off his slick new pad. As we drove down a street in Brooklyn around 1am an ominous spire crested the horizon.
“See that smokestack? That’s my house.” This should probably have been our first red flag, but who were we to say a man couldn’t live happily in a building with a 50 foot smokestack? As we pulled up someone asked “Did you bring us here to murder us?” This seemed to be a completely reasonable question. I’m not sure exactly where this place was but if I had to guess I’d say the address was #6 Rape Alley. Then we went inside.
The first thing you notice is the cage around the stairs. I guess this is the equivalent of a doorman in a rational apartment building. Whatever works I guess. Everything is covered in graffiti, sometimes horridly vulgar, sometimes nonsensical. We traversed the hallways filled with garbage, broken TVs, broken filing cabinets and eventually reached Mike’s apartment door.
Inside we found a common room literally full of shit. Guitars lined the walls. A couch was covered in boxes papers and assorted unidentifiable gizmos. A hot plate was the only cooking implement (this being a warehouse it lacked a stove obviously). Beyond the common room was something we like to call “The Penis Room.” What else can I say about that? Oh, there was broken glass on the floor that you can’t see there.
But where are the bedrooms you might ask? Upstairs of course. Up the hand made stairs. Made by the people who “live” in this place and pay $400 a month in addition to the cost of actually converting this warehouse into apartments. Suffice to say they did not instill confidence in the user. Then to get to the rooms themselves you need to walk THE PLANK. This ultra thin narrow piece of wood is all you have to walk on every time you want to get to your room if you live in this bastion of safety. There is a thin metal wire on the right for “moral support” that would no doubt fall like a house of cards if you were to lose your balance or god forbid, be drunk.
I don’t have any pictures of the room itself, because the camera wouldn’t fit in there. Imagine a 4 by 5 room with a twin bed taking up literally half of the room. We gently informed Mike that it was a good thing he had a girlfriend, because it would have been impossible to coax a girl into an abandoned looking graffiti covered warehouse, then across the plank above the penis room into your closet of a bedroom.
Could you imagine living here? Frankly I cannot. It is without exaggeration that I say this is THE worst apartment that I have seen on the face of god’s green Earth. I picture Mike coming home one night and finding the hippies he lives with huddled around a partially destroyed corpse in the penis room, feeding with their faces smeared with blood. This is a cautionary tale. Don’t move in to a warehouse if it is still a warehouse. Otherwise you might find yourself walking the plank matey!
Check out more pictures from the Doom Warehouse in this gallery.
