Thank You To My Group
If we were a reality TV show, our TIC group might be called Three Queens, Two Dykes and a Redneck. We are all such different personalities and yet...
Over the course of eleven years, we've gone from being relatively young, single, starry-eyed, first time San Francisco property owners to a middle-aged, settled-down, jaded-by-the-costs-of-owning-a-100-year-old-building group. We've seen lovers, many lovers, coming and going up and down our terrazzo steps. (And sometimes heard more than we wanted to through the floors and walls.) We've had fights - raging fights. I once didn't talk to someone for almost a year, because she freaked out on me after I took all of the paint cans that she had hidden in a garbage can to the recycling center. (I did not think the City fire inspector, from whom she was trying to hide the paint cans, would look kindly upon this kind of deceit.) We've had someone leave a candle burning in their unit that caused the fire department to break down doors looking for the conflagration. We've battled homeless people break-ins, the million decibel parties of the 20-something renters next door, and another neighbor who tried to make us pay for his cracked 100 year old sewer pipe. And let's not mention the gas leak, which caused us to discover that the old gas pipes in one unit has been capped with a wine cork - causing PGE to cut off gas service until we could find a little Burmese plumber small enough to fit in the ceiling crawl space and take care of that deadly problem. (Of course this happened in winter. Thank Buddha Jesus Goddess for electric heaters.) And let's not forget the year plaster began falling from the 100 year old facade at the top of our building. That was when we discovered that the facade was made from some old time mixture of rock, clay and horsehair which seemed to weigh about 50 pounds a square inch. And the roof above the facade was leaking, and the location of this roof was almost impossible for any contractor to reach, without building some kind of outer space like contraptions. Miraculously the roof was repaired, and no one died - neither the contractors balancing on the contraption nor the innocent people walking the streets below.
But somehow, even with all of this, over the many years of living as TIC partners, we can still show up at a birthday party and have a good time together. We've all still got good, stable jobs. Everyone is smart, and although the choices we've been presented with have not always been the best, we've never made a decision that we truly regretted.
So this is a thank you to my TIC partners, as we enter this condo conversion madness.
Over the course of eleven years, we've gone from being relatively young, single, starry-eyed, first time San Francisco property owners to a middle-aged, settled-down, jaded-by-the-costs-of-owning-a-100-year-old-building group. We've seen lovers, many lovers, coming and going up and down our terrazzo steps. (And sometimes heard more than we wanted to through the floors and walls.) We've had fights - raging fights. I once didn't talk to someone for almost a year, because she freaked out on me after I took all of the paint cans that she had hidden in a garbage can to the recycling center. (I did not think the City fire inspector, from whom she was trying to hide the paint cans, would look kindly upon this kind of deceit.) We've had someone leave a candle burning in their unit that caused the fire department to break down doors looking for the conflagration. We've battled homeless people break-ins, the million decibel parties of the 20-something renters next door, and another neighbor who tried to make us pay for his cracked 100 year old sewer pipe. And let's not mention the gas leak, which caused us to discover that the old gas pipes in one unit has been capped with a wine cork - causing PGE to cut off gas service until we could find a little Burmese plumber small enough to fit in the ceiling crawl space and take care of that deadly problem. (Of course this happened in winter. Thank Buddha Jesus Goddess for electric heaters.) And let's not forget the year plaster began falling from the 100 year old facade at the top of our building. That was when we discovered that the facade was made from some old time mixture of rock, clay and horsehair which seemed to weigh about 50 pounds a square inch. And the roof above the facade was leaking, and the location of this roof was almost impossible for any contractor to reach, without building some kind of outer space like contraptions. Miraculously the roof was repaired, and no one died - neither the contractors balancing on the contraption nor the innocent people walking the streets below.
But somehow, even with all of this, over the many years of living as TIC partners, we can still show up at a birthday party and have a good time together. We've all still got good, stable jobs. Everyone is smart, and although the choices we've been presented with have not always been the best, we've never made a decision that we truly regretted.
So this is a thank you to my TIC partners, as we enter this condo conversion madness.
posted by rp at 8:49 PM
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