The first thing I noticed when walking around the building to the back where our "front" door hides, was the smell. Old and damp is the name of that smell. Little Italy was established in the late 19th century and most of the buildings are nearly that old. When Presti's, my favorite cafe in Little Italy, hands you your to-go box with your scrumptious pastry safe inside, on the top of the box it has a sticker with a date saying Presti's has been in town since1909. Little Italy is old. So, it is no surprise that this house which has been changed into apartments is also fairly old.
This gets me to a portion of the title of this blog. Squeaky steps. When you walk in the back-front door, red carpet and blue steps are there to greet you to guide you up to the second floor, where our real front door lies. But each blue-gray step sings it's own tune in protest of your weight. When you're inside the apartment and someone is coming up those steps, they sound like they must weigh nearly 300 pounds by the sound of them, but really, it's just the stairs whining and groaning under the weight. Sound structurally sound? Probably not, I think.
Now, for the crooked floors. Our apartment has crooked floors. For example, if you were to spill a cup of water that was sitting peacefully on the kitchen table, the water would immediately roll off the table onto the floor and head towards the door, as if it was fleeing from a terrible fate and racing towards freedom. No exaggeration. That water travels fast through our kitchen whenever it manages to escape! All the floors are slopped. In the bedroom, which The Hilsy and I share, the desk and the dresser touch the wall at the floor, but at the top of the surfaces, they lean nearly 2.5 inches away from the wall. So standing in the doorway (which doesn't actually have a door, by the way) of our bedroom, one can feel slightly off balanced when looking in at the crooked desk and dresser and the mirror on the wall which always seems to be leaning a different direction. If one walks from the bedroom to the kitchen to the bedroom again, vertigo is sure to temporarily slow your progress.
