The other day Nico was sitting on the stoop admiring our new Brooklyn neighborhood when someone walked by, stopped to look at our building, and said, “Wow…that used to be the drug building.  Crazy…”

AND SO IT BEGINS!!!!!!!!

Apologies, my iLL-internetlings, for the sparse number of posts in the past couple of weeks.  Rest assured that big teeeengs are headed this way.  As of last Monday our days have been filled with endless visits to Ikea, Home Depot, and Target.  I now despise them all.  If I see another Trones cabinet, I will hit somebody.

Ahhhh, the sweet smell of gentrification.  In our block people still get their chain snatched in broad daylight, but it gets to happen in front of a wine bar amidst people with berets and pugs.  About 25% of our meals have come to consist of Jamaican patties and Jameson, and we have collectively spent over 30 hours in department stores deciding on what kind of sponge to buy.

Meanwhile, our apartment, which was supposed to be finished on the 10th, continues to welcome construction workers at 7am to drill holes in the wall while we try to get past our hangovers (they’re only seldom).  If there’s any advice I can give you as a new New York tenant, it’s don’t pay the landlords ANYTHING until they’ve installed toiletseats in all the bathrooms.  If there’s any other advice I can give you as a new New York tenant, it’s don’t talk shit about your landlords on a high-traffic blog that everyone has access to.  Poof.

Oh, the things we do to save money.  In order to pay the least for shipping our stuff from Cali to NY, we packed all of our lives into a Uhaul in Oakland, drove it to Sacramento to pick up Dahlak’s stuff, and packed it at the pod company’s terminal, which was shipped to Brooklyn while we were at Bumbershoot.  When we got to NYC, we packed up all that shit into another Uhaul, and drove it to our spot, where we were met with the fun challenge of figuring out how to get our mattresses and boxsprings down the narrow stairway.

I don’t know how or why we thought moving into a new apartment would be as simple as shipping a few boxes of clothes and buying a toaster when we got there.  Our apartment is by no means run-down or shabby, but it’s ridiculously stripped down.  Like, no toilet paper rollers stripped down.  Like, exposed wires that have been painted over stripped down.  But alas, it’s the quiet of the storm before we release our music and go on tour, so we’ve been spending the past week getting our Martha Stewart on.  Here’s a picture of Nico post-hit-his-head-on-the-corner-of-the-cabinet.

While we waited for our rooms to get set up, we positioned our mattresses along the floor of the downstairs area (where our studio will be) like a slumber party.  A sawdust-filled, dusty-bedsheeted, 3-hours-of-sleep-per-night slumber party.  Wheeeeee!

Jumping on mattresses with open circuits sticking out of the ceiling = fun.

I don’t remember where or how I took the following picture, but we no longer have that mirror.  Or that guitar.  Or that bottle.

If there’s yet more advice I can give you as a new New York tenant, it’s don’t put one in the air before going to the Atlantic Mall for the first time ever, or else you might end up getting lost in this hallway:

So with the apartment filled with cardboard and bubble wrap, we begin to make home.  I’ll post pix when we’re done!

Come home Dahlak!  Weee meeeeeess youuuuu!  And also, we don’t want to move your boxes around anymore.  I tried to use one of your bins as a stepping stool and I broke it.  Sorry.*

*I’m not buying you a new one.

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