Shootout, Playboy parties, crazy neighbors: Russian woman told how her Hollywood house works
I live in Los Angeles last 8 years, and all this time - in West Hollywood. For me, this is an ideal place, equidistant from the ocean and downtown, with lots of entertainment and people of all nationalities. But given the diversity of areas, the choice of real estate in the Los Angeles market is more than the series on Netflix. Prices start at $ 100 000 and end at around a billion, depending on the location of the house and the size of the plot with it. Given the growth rate of real estate prices in California and low interest rates on loans, a small apartment or house is a reasonable and, in general, affordable investment.
And if you also have money, the selection process becomes almost a spa treatment. Here you can buy a car for an hour and a half and leave on it, and you will need to spend a maximum of a couple of days to buy an apartment, signing only a package of documents and making a bank transfer. In general, in this world of victorious capitalism, they managed to make even the wasting of a huge amount of money a sheer pleasure with all the comforts - the realtor always brings everything and does everything for you, and then sends you a gift with gratitude.
The first three years I lived in a small condo on the first floor - with my own entrance, one bedroom and a few quiet neighbors, which I almost did not see.
When it came time to move, I definitely wanted something similar, so when the realtor brought me to the 12-storeyed skyscraper, I refused to go there. “Well, for my sake!”, Asked almost my own native Ashley.
It turned out that Ashley knows better than me what I like, and after a few days I was sitting in my new apartment on the 9 floor.
In my building of 120 apartments, there is a concierge opening the door for you, security and valet-parking (cars park for you). As a social phobia, at first I was horrified by the number of people I need to smile while I get from my apartment to the car in the garage, but as a screenwriter I quickly realized that the level of insanity in this house surpasses all my wildest expectations.
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Acquaintance with the first neighbors began with a loud knock on the door at 6 on Sunday morning. My neighbor on the contrary was an addict who a few years ago was a big man in the White House with access to the most sensitive information. But then there was a new love, LA - and my main nightmare, which shouted nonstop at any time of the day.
And then everything abruptly subsided. After a couple of days, it became clear to me, who knew his schedule by heart, that the matter was amiss. A week later, a strange smell appeared. After two doors, the FBI agents opened the door - I will never forget how one of them vomited when he saw what had become locked up with his body in two weeks.
Not having time to exhale (literally), I realized that this is only the tip of the iceberg.
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Somehow, reading the local news, I saw a familiar name. Cameron, Cameron - where did I meet this name? Exactly, this is my neighbor, who fully owns the floor with penthouses, where he used to like to organize poker tournaments: everyone came there, from Mark Wahlberg to Scarlett Johanson, who then lived on the fifth floor. Also there were pre-parties of “Playboy”, which invariably shocked our old women, who were not used to girls in lace underwear. Apparently, the parties were very funny, because the furniture from the penthouse on the twelfth floor sometimes reached the pool on the first floor.
And then there was lightning on the news: Cameron was shot twice when he was sitting in his Rolls Royce. In face. Twice. The shooter quickly disappeared on a bicycle. Now Cameron is an exemplary family man, who likes to lecture me about the importance of setting priorities correctly, which I understand with great difficulty, because his left side of his body is completely paralyzed. The desperate cyclist was never found.
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Cherry on the cake of all this madness was a fight at the monthly meeting of tenants. On the floor of 11, Kanye West, a stylist, drove in. She loves to smoke marijuana with friends, which has somewhat knocked out her neighbors - a strange Australian family with a disabled child on the one hand and a gay couple of alcoholics on the other. At first, a completely normal cry for such a meeting arose, and then someone in agitation uttered a word with the letter N (roughly indicating that the stylist Kanye was an African-American), and the fists and threats of judicial reprisals for racism went.
After that, I realized that half measures were not for me, and decided to run for the board of directors at home. The fact is that the house and the entire budget are managed by a council (such as a management company), which is selected in genuine democratic elections with ballots, for Coca-Cola and cookies, for a period of two years. The annual budget is a little more than one and a half million dollars, which is made up of monthly dues of tenants. The Council is responsible for everything that happens in the building, from the plumbing to the fights between the tenants, it is accountable for every penny spent and regulated by the statute and the civil code. The Board makes all decisions on financing, architecture, engineering, landscape and building design, which are overseen by the relevant committees. The council can change the charter, add rules and even decide who will buy property in this building, which, for example, our council does not do, although, as it seems to me, it is high time.
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And if before that I was going to write a comedy series about all this, then now it will most likely be something between the “House of Cards” and the “Hunger Games”.
The campaign went fiercely. We formed two coalitions that started to fight for every vote. Campaigning, meetings with voters, programming, public speeches, populist slogans - everything was real. The path from the car to the apartment instead of a few minutes began to take an hour and a half, because I had to talk with everyone who met on the way, answering a question about the new landscape design, painting the building, repairing the pool and my personal plans for the period if I choose. My main slogan was “I am from Russia, and I smell corruption from afar,” which was incredibly amusing all around.
As a result, my coalition turned out to be more successful, and we victoriously took office with 60% votes. What began afterwards would have seemed terrible even to Trump.
I did not have time to move away from the celebration of victory, when compromising information fell on me from all sides — from anonymous notes to direct accusations from the company's management. Having penetrated into dozens of different emails, documents, laws and rules, my colleague and I, a successful lawyer who was chosen with me, realized that we were playing like pawns. Our third coalition comrade, who was re-elected and became the president of the council, turned out to be an amazing “thought out” who built the whole campaign, pursuing his financial goals. Having picked up the archive of documents, we found out that he made decisions in circumvention of the council and the law in order to complete the construction of his condo as soon as possible, sell it several times more expensive and enter his successful presidency in the summary, which is a serious application. Over the past 10 years, he has done the same thing in several other similar building sites in California and in other states.
Obviously hoping that we will close our eyes to the chaos that he creates, he then miscalculated in one thing. I have seen a lot, an extremely principled person from Russia, who is immediately offended by any violation of the rules, and Arnold is a lawyer who won cases in the Supreme Court.
Coalitions quickly changed, and now we seem to be on the verge of civil war. While we are conducting our own investigation, everyone shouts, drowns each other, spreads rumors, makes dubious statements (“the laws are not always practical”), whisper behind their backs and try to cover up their jambs. Unable to withstand the onslaught, the president began to shout “IT'S A WITCH-HUNT!” - a phrase that you can see in almost every Trump tweet since the onset of suspicion of his collaboration with Russia.
Realizing that we will have enough evidence to call the president to a public hearing, impose huge fines and demand his resignation, yesterday he took me aside and began to cry with the words that this is the most difficult situation in his life.
Looking at a man older than me at 25, in tears, I could not help smiling. What a cool script I get!
In general, of course, against the background of all this, I understood two things: people, regardless of nationality, are archetypical in their desires, they simply use different methods, and politics is still mine.
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