Los Angeles. Love/hate relationship. Part 3 of series.

Since the first time I had ever rented anywhere to live, I seldom lived in an actual "apartment." and only once in one owned by a large company and it isn't even in the "big 10" in LA (companies like Avalon, Palmer, Equity, etc). My first 2 years of college in Vermont I lived in a dormitory in a school of 500 students. I guess that was a quasi-management situation. There was no other option. I also lived in a dorm in my second year, when I transferred to university at Concordia in Montreal and was among the few as almost all lived off campus. They converted 2 apartment houses into dorms. We only had dorms for a few hundred students in those buildings out of 25,000 students so it was more like an unlikely co-ed fraternity than a managed setting. I left and lived in an apartment briefly with a boyfriend which might have been a "managed building", but it was his lease and I was only there a couple of months. We then rented a 2nd story of a 2 unit building from its owner in Old Montreal.

In San Francisco (round 1), I rented my friend's condo as mentioned in the last piece in this series. When I moved "back east" I lived in a townhouse owned by my Mother's boss in Baltimore, then 2 different townhouses in Washington, DC owned by individuals. Moving to L.A., it was clear to me I wanted to continue this pattern and find a condo or house to rent from an individual. I did outreach to people across the country. Today, that is as simple as a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or other social media post. Back then, it was more involved, though we did have things like AOL chat rooms. I honestly don't remember who gave me the name, but I was told to contact Realtor Ivy Bottini. I think the person mentioned something of her being "special" or an "icon" but really it wasn't until years later I knew all I know now. It was still pre-Google, let alone smart phones, so I didn't quickly look her up before calling this icon of the LGBT movement. Who the hell cares what kind of realtor she was? I was just renting a place...

Ivy was very cordial. She let me know she really did not work West Hollywood and my guess is she could care less about doing a rental property, albeit I was looking to do a lease option or other possible interests and the market was ripe for them at the time. She sent me to Rhoda on the Sunset Strip. Rhoda was a blaze of thunder from the second you called. I remember my ex-boyfriend and I meeting her somewhere in WeHo and she was late, roaring in and parking her white Cutlass Cierra half-assed into a parking space with a custom plate bearing her name. 

We looked at a bunch of properties that afternoon into early evening. We had settled on one on N. West Knoll Drive between Santa Monica and Melrose. I wanted a longer than 12 month lease; I was able to get 18 months and a lease option locked in at a purchase price of something like $125,000, a price that had become market after the riots and the earthquake but had dropped some 50% from years earlier and had not been seen for ages and would never, ever be seen again. Being the relentless negotiator at the time, I asked if there was any room on the rent, which I believe was $1200 for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath with 2 car, side by side parking. Rhoda put her hands on her hips, gave me a motherly stare that still sends chills down my spine. She is at least 5 inches shorter than my Mother and scared me in ways my Mother never could to her dying day. She looked and said "You aren't going to do that to me, after all I've done for you, are you?" Evidently, no I was not.  I retreated into a corner of the kitchen of the soon to be our new apartment (rented condo) like a terrified cat. After a couple moments of reflection, we returned and asked for her to draw up the lease and we signed it and flew back to DC to plan our move.