San Francisco living conditions

Yuki warned us it would be like camping indoors. Ed and I both asked if we could stay with her and she agreed. She warned us she would move during our stay from a share in the Sunset to a studio in the Haight. We offered to help.

The first two nights we stayed in the Sunset apartment. Four rooms encircled a small tile courtyard. Yuki's room was next to the kitchen, and her room must have been a living room or dining room before the apartment was partitioned.

For the days we spent in the apartment, we never met her three roommates. We heard them through the walls, talking or walking up and down the stairs, but they seemed to vanish whenever we stepped foot outside her room. On our last night, as we were moving, Yuki knocked on her roommate's door to hand him the keys. I don't remember what he looked like.

Her apartment in the Haight was a vast improvement. The studio is situated on Carl, along the N-Judah. In the mornings, you can hear the weight of the train passing on its steel rails. Windows in the back look out over UCSF.

She had borrowed an air mattress from a friend and bought another one to use for the weekend. Her friend had told her the mattress was a double, but when we inflated it we found it to be twin-sized. At night, we pushed the two mattresses together. To keep them from pulling apart, we put boxes and luggage at the foot of the bed. The first night a mosquito kept us up. We were too tired to get up to kill it and so we tried to sleep and suffered. The mattresses slowly separated.

The second night proved better, if only I was too exhausted to be bothered by anything. But you couldn't beat it for the location or the price. Or, most especially, the company. Posted by eku at August 3, 2004 11:03 PM