Nixta Sinks

This lovely apartment complex in which I live was completed shortly after World War II. There are apparently about 11,000 apartments here, and the whole place covers some 21+ Manhattan blocks. It's a nice, isolated place recently taken over by a large bastard corporation whose business it is to negotiate money out of people's pockets in the name of investing it in exchange for knowing that when your spouse dies suddenly, you'll have enough money to bury them and throw one hell of a party (that link smacks of excellent parenting, btw). Unlike shoddy private Denver/Queens/L.E.S landlords who bicker and squabble about every little piece of chipped lead paint in your dinner and running water down your walls, these people fix problems with the greatest of speed and professionalism. It's quite a treat.

When we moved into this apartment from one around the corner in the same complex, we found that the communal garbage chute door was a little loose-fitting (beaten up). During hot spells the 9th floor hallways smelt very slightly of rotting cabbage, but I didn't know how much of that might be caused by being on the 9th floor vs the ground floor and how much was on account of the loose-fitting door or whether it was all down to the peculiar cooking habits of others. The door itself had a home-made label on it with the words

"Please push the door closed to minimize the smell. Thanks. Your 9th floor neighbours"

so I assumed that my "9th floor neighbours" had asked to have it fixed and for some reason it wasn't possible to repair. I don't have much experience repairing garbage chutes (it's not something my father typically had a need to design into his buildings), so I assumed there was some good reason I was being subjected to the malodour whilst waiting for the lift. Then there's the struggle to open and close the chute door when depositing rubbish. It seems that at some point someone spent some time battling the inside of the mechanism with a crowbar as it was entirely bent out of shape, and not outwards either. All in all, very odd.

Last week, after years of battering and bending, slamming and tugging, the poor handle on the chute finally lost its last screw. Some enterprising 9th floor neighbour attached a wire hanger to the door to use as a handle. It didn't work. It was the last straw and I called the landlords who apologised profusely. I explained that there probably was a call in already from the wire hanger DIY specialist, but there was none. I wondered why.

The next morning there was rattling, radio, and whistling in the hallway, and 45 minutes later we had a brand new firmly closing smoothly hinged clean garbage chute door. For a full year, I had been grappling with filth and muck and poisonous odours, slamming and bending a 50 year old door, swearing as rubbish had to be pushed by hand past the crooked and stained inner crowbarred walls of the door, purely because my 9th floor retarded fuckwad tosser "neighbours" had never fucking called resident services (well, and because I was stupid enough to place faith in people I'd never met).

Why did they not call? Are they 3 years old? Have they all, to a man, murdered the real tenants and are living there illegally? Do they all have pets in their apartments? I know that the bastard the other side of our thin internal walls is a bookie. That's illegal over here, and I have to listen to him screaming all day at bad debtors. He's short and Brooklyn through and through. He looks like some reject off the Sopranos and seems to be hard of hearing or mildly retarded (otherwise he'd better have quite an excuse for talking so loudly in the hallway). And to top it all off he seems to act as babysitter in the evenings for the numerous violent children on this floor. He does this with a glee and fervour suitable only for a certified child molester. Still, contrasting the devilish screaming of the children in both the hallway and in their own homes with the whoops of glee as they cavort around Joey's Buttafuckwit's apartment next door, they must be infinitely happier in his care than elsewhere.

Their parents though... their parents must have grown up on a diet of lead to be posting instructions on and tying wire hangers to long-decrepit garbage chute doors when a free phone call could have it fixed (remember, you Brits, free local calls in this country), though it does indeed seem that many of them leave home in the morning to wait for the tiny bus to Stupid Town. What a fucking motley crew of half-breeds I have to count as my neighbours.

You'll be glad to read that the new door facilitated an efficient and non-revolting disposal of the cast-offs of Dani's excellent Thanksgiving cooking enterprise. Wire hangers. Gah!