Category — Landlord Biz

Brittany, a tenant, said she saw five rats in her kitchen.  She hightailed it to her parents’ house in Sandusky, Ohio, and called me. “I’m tired,” she said.  “I have to drive in from Sandusky now every day for work.”

“You saw five rats at once?” I said.

“Yes. Your custodian said they were rats,” she said.

“They were probably mice,” I said.  I also told her to take $200 off her rent, and we would bring in a professional exterminator.

She said the rats crawled in her bed.

I paid the exterminator $102.  He sealed the apartment with caulk and put in mouse traps that looked like miniature tinted-glass limos.  Mice crawled into the limos and died. The mice were ready for the mouse funeral parlor.

Brittany showed me a cell phone pic, taken in her kitchen, of a dead rat.

I said, “Mouse.”

“That’s a rat,” she said.

I’ve seen maybe 50 trapped  mice and two trapped rats.  Rats are much bigger than mice.  Rats rip things up.  They’re like raccoons in your kitchen.  Rats rip bags to shreds.  Rats eat through concrete.

“You had a mouse,” I said.

“Rats.”

“Please don’t say rats,” I said.

“OK, rodents.”

Yes! Success.

She moved out.

Rats.

***

Drug Mart has a new mouse trap with an extra-wide feeding plate.  I’m not sure it’s a better mouse trap; I haven’t bought one.

My favorite traps are traditional spring-loaded Victors, from Lititz, Pennsylvania.

Drug Mart was out of Victors. I got the Chinese knock-offs. The instructions on the Chinese traps read: Ne pas mettre les doigts dans la trappe. Drug Mart must have gotten the traps from a Canadian buyout. Recommended bait: fromage, saucisson, jambon, beurre de cachuetes.  I figured all that out, except saucisson.

I looked up saucisson: French hard salami.

Mice live well in Canada.

I don’t blame my tenant, Brittany,  for moving out.  A rodent — a mouse or rat –- crawling in your bed is serious.  Rodents should stay in the kitchen, where they belong.

—

SIDE B

This will take your mind off rats.

MURKY

A Yiddishe Cup musician sent this pic from a gig to his friends. (My sidemen are always taking pictures.)

The pic was murky and scary. The musician captioned the photo: “Wildest gig ever. Upside-down acrobat pouring champagne for the guests.”

Another musician – not at the gig – wrote back: “Wild Gig? What did I miss!”

The absent musician missed the upside-down acrobat. Compared to a bar mitzvah, it was a wild gig.

The event was a fundraiser for a community college.

Not salacious enough for you. Right.

—-

Yiddishe Cup plays 6:15-7:45 p.m Mon., April 15, at Landerhaven for Cleveland’s community-wide Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration.  Free.  David Broza is on at 8 p.m.

—

The Klezmer Guy trio plays 7 p.m. Tues., April 23, at Nighttown, Cleveland Hts.  $10.  More info here.

Alan Douglass (L), Bert Stratton, Tamar Gray. (Photo by Ralph Solonitz)

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I interviewed for a position on the library board.

I like to read, and I know two people who have been on the board and liked it.

I wondered, “Will the school board ask me what books I’m reading?” (The school board oversees the library board.)

In 1967 at Johns Hopkins’ admissions office, I talked about my Holocaust reading. The Holocaust wasn’t yet the “Holocaust.”  I made a good impression in Baltimore, I think. (I was pre-med.)

Re: the library board interview. I recently read How Music Works by David Byrne and Shit my Dad Says by Justin Halpern. I have also read to page 100 in Malamud’s A New Life, a novel about a college instructor. For the first fifty pages, I was interested in the goings-on of a 1950s college English department. Then less so.

Nevertheless, “I’m reading Malamud” might be the ticket.

The members of the school board sat on a dais at the board of education building, and I took the “witness stand” in the center of the room. Only three school board members — out of five — showed up. One MIA board member was a playwright; the other, a guy from my synagogue. My A-team was absent!

Question 1: How would you make the library better for students?

Students?  They are the species who play computer games and horse around in the teen room? I’ve been in that room, like, never. “I would maintain the library as a first-class multicultural, multimedia center,” I said.

Question 2: What do you do at the library besides take out books?

Not much! “I was at the dedication of the Harvey Pekar statue,” I said.

Question 3: What would you do to help the library’s finances?

“I vote for the levies.” What about Malamud?

Question 4: Are you willing to commit to a seven-year position?

“Yes, but actuarially speaking, who knows.”

A chemist beat me out for the job. In an email, the library director thanked me for applying and encouraged me to apply again.

First I need to walk through the teen room and get a better feel for the young adults’ needs. I’ll do that right after I finish Malamud’s A New Life.

—

Side B

MR. OO

I got a call from Oo (rhymes with “boo”), looking to open an Asian food market.

I said, “How do you spell that?”

“O, O.”

“O, O, 7?”

“Yes.  Hah-hah.”

“Is Oo your first name.”

“No, that’s Kyawswar.”

“You Chinese?”

“No, I’m from Burma.”

“Close enough,” I said.

“Yes, very close.”

“Is this going to be an American mini-market or an Asian market?” I said. “I don’t want 40-ounce malt liquor and cigarettes.”

“Asian market, sir.  Our people like rice, the vegetables, avocados.  Maybe cigarettes. The high school boys from the school [across the street] buy the fruit juices.”

Oo rented the store. He’s  industrious.  He owns two sushi stands at Giant Eagles.  That’s not all . . .

I told my wife, “Oo had a nail salon.”

“Who?” she said.

“Oo.”

—
Footnote: Consider “U Thant,” the former UN secretary general from Burma. Thanks to Ted Stratton for this  U/Oo connection.

—
Byliner chose my essay “The Landlord’s Tale” (City Journal) as one of the top 102 nonfiction journalism pieces  of 2012.  Read the essay here.

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Charlie Chaplin brings me to tears.  Louis Armstrong and Beethoven do too.  T.S. Eliot — yes, I know he didn’t like Jews — but you can’t deny his greatness.  For instance, “Humankind can not bear too much reality.”

Yes, reality blows — as we used to say in junior high. (We said the “blows” part.)

Art?

I escape to the arts.  I escape to this:

Fire escapes have to be painted every year in Cleveland, or they rust.

I used to be shallower, vainer, younger and facetious.  Now I’m all that, and older.

I’m thinking of getting elevator shoes. A couple inches might change my life.

I don’t like ferrets.

Go ahead, indict me.

Indict me on this too: Anglomania, Jewmania and prickliness.

Downton Abbey — the TV show — is terrific.  Everybody is so taciturn and proper.  Nobody runs his or her mouth.

Who’s a Jew?  That’s my second obsession.  I annually debate whether Brubeck was a Jew.  He wasn’t.   Or was Chaplin Jewish?  No,  he wasn’t.

Prickliness, that’s a universal trait.  I cut off a man’s position in the check-out line at Dave’s supermarket. The man said,  “What you doin’?”

“I’m ahead of you.”

“No, you ain’t. You moved!”

I had moved for a second!  I had left my cart in one line and walked to another line to see which was shorter.

I said “you win” to the man, and let him in front. He got out of the store before me!

I’m looking for elevator shoes.

I cry a lot.

—
SIDE B

This one is real.  The above post is half real.

FIRING SABINA

It’s easy to fire a drunken building manager, or a thieving one, but it’s hard to fire a manager who is only lousy.

For instance, he doesn’t answer the phone quickly enough, or he doesn’t clean enough.

I thought about firing Sabina; I had hired her husband, not her, and her husband had skipped out on her. She was shoveling snow, cutting grass, and climbing ladders. It wasn’t her strong suit; she had majored in Russian lit at a Russian university.

My tenants reported negative things about her.

That helped — me.

I asked a tenant how the manager was performing, and he said, “I hate her.”

“Do you hate me too?” I said, trying to establish a baseline on his “hate.”

He didn’t hate me. “She doesn’t clean, she has her kids cutting the grass, and she doesn’t tell us anything — when anything is going to get fixed.”

I fired her.

Then I rehired her. She couldn’t get welfare because she had no green card. I let her stay.

Avon calling

She found a boyfriend – a guy in Avon Lake – and moved out.

I owe that guy in Avon Lake.

—
“Sabina” is a pseudonym.

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Merjeme Haxhiraj, a tenant, tried to get her rent reduced. She wrote, “Mr. Albert, I wish you will only rise the rent to $470/month.  I think you will fulfill my wish.”

She wrote this letter annually (changing only the dollar figure).  I knocked her rent down to $490 from $500 the last time.

Ms. Haxhiraj was Albanian, worked in a nursing home, and had cancer.

After 10 years, she said she was moving.  I couldn’t figure out where to.  New York? Albania?   Some place where I couldn’t find her, I bet.

She didn’t want to pay the final month’s rent.  She wrote, “I am leaving country and will not have forwarding address. Please keep the security deposit.”

Wait a minute, Ms. Haxhiraj, the tenant has to pay the final month’s rent! I knocked on her door and said, “We need the final month’s rent, Ms. Haxhiraj. That’s the rule.”  (I said Hacks-er-aj.  Totally wrong no doubt. Loved the x.)

“I am old woman.  I no work for three years.”  And don’t forget the cancer.

I walked through her apartment.  “OK, but don’t leave anything,” I said. “Take everything.” I pointed to the hangers in the closet. “Even the hangers.”

“Everything go,” she said.

“Not that it matters, but are you Christian or Muslim?” I asked.

“Muslim.”

I was curious.  That’s all.  I try to make my job as interesting as possible.

When Ms. Haxhiraj moved, she left a bed, five chairs, a sofa, handbags, four bags of garbage, many oranges, several chocolate bars and a lot of hangers.  No gym bag.  I needed a gym bag.

The little old lady from Albania, Albania . . .

I didn’t  get the chocolates.  The building manager beat me to them.

I got the hauler’s bill.

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1. THE BUG MAN

Drain flies aren’t bad.  Roaches aren’t bad. Mice are nothing.

Two-hundred dead flies in an apartment — that’s bad. I saw 20 in the bathtub alone.  The building manager said, “I killed them with spray.”

I said, “Where are you hiding the body?”  I meant the dead body.

Swarma

Another 50 dead flies were by the window in the living room. The apartment was vacant.

I called
the pro exterminator. The bug man’s secretary said, “Are they metallic – the flies?”

“What do you mean by metallic?”

“Blue or green?”

“They’re big flies,” I said “You see them all the time, like on horses.”

“Oh, excuse the expression — they’re shit flies.”

“Yes. My manager says he has 500 dead ones in his vacuum cleaner. I need you over here.”

The flies were officially called blow flies, and are attracted to carrion and excrement.  The bug man found a nook above the drop ceiling in the bathroom that we had missed.  He hit it.

The flies are gone now.  I wonder what was up there.  I didn’t look.

2. THE SCRAPPER

I was looking for a scrapper to take a dilapidated, nonfunctioning boiler out of an apartment-building basement. The boiler was sitting in the basement, minding its own business, but the city inspector said it had to go.

I called a heating company, which suggested I hire them and an asbestos-removal company to remove the old unit.

Instead, I contacted Charles the scrapper and said,  “What are the chances of you doing this job and just taking the good stuff — the metal — and leaving behind a mess?”

“I don’t do it that way.  I’ve been doing this all day — all my life – and I do it right,” he said.

The boiler consisted of eight cast-iron sections, each about 200 pounds.  And it was down a flight of steps.  The boiler was the size of a VW bus.

“That’s what I do,” Charles said.  “Get rid of it.”

But I didn’t use Charles.  I used Daryl, another freelance scrapper. Daryl got to the job site long before Charles and gave me a good price: free. “I’m here and I’m ready,” Daryl said.  That counted for something.

—
I wrote this one,  “The Nostalgia Vortex,” for today’s CoolCleveland.com.  I was raised by a village — Norge Village.

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1.

My dad, Toby, and I hired Charles Tuncle for kitchen-floor lino jobs.  Tunkl means dark in Yiddish, which my dad never failed to point out.  Tuncle — the man — was black. Also, he was a killer. He shot a man in a bar.

Armstrong no-wax. Tuncle, 1984. (2010 photo)

When Tuncle was sent to prison, my dad wrote the parole board about Tuncle’s quality vinyl-floor work, and Tuncle got out early.  My father never told the tenants — or our building managers — about Tuncle’s record.  My dad never said:  “You see that guy over there with the utility knife?  He’s a killer.”

***

My dad called our business Reliable Management Co.

We should have hauled garbage with a name like that.

When I started an offshoot company, Acorn Management Co., my dad said, “What the hell does ‘Acorn’ have to do with anything?”

“Dad, I live on Oak Road.  That’s why.”  It was 1976.  Environmentalism was the next big thing.

“Nobody is going to understand ‘Acorn,’” he said.

I sometimes call my company “Reliable + Acorn Management companies” now.  That makes me feel like a Danish architecture firm.

***

I hired Standard Roofing for a roof tear-off.  Standard Roofing went under.  Too standard?

My electrician is Jack Kuhl, pronounced “Jack Cool.”

I knew Emin Lyutfalibekov, a handyman.  I told him to shorten his name, and he said no way; he was offended.  He said he was royalty back in Azerbaijan.

Napoli Construction is a bricklaying firm. Art Gallo, chief mason.

I use Donnelly Heating once in a while.  Dan Donnelly.  There are four Donnelly heating companies on the West Side: Dan, Tom, William and Original.  They must have large Seders.

Lawrence Christopher Construction — that was Larry Vesely.   He filled a hole for me for $9,000 — a coal bin that had collapsed beneath a parking lot.  The city wouldn’t allow me to fill the hole with plain gravel. The city wanted a reconstructed coal bin that could practically double as a bomb shelter, complete with beams and concrete.  Larry said the job would cost $3,000 and take several weeks.

The final bill was $9,000 and the job took nine months.  One delay and complication after another.

I could not charge higher rents just because I had a nice coal bin.  No tenant cared I had a bomb shelter.

I paid Larry back in nine monthly installments, just to get slightly back at him.

***

Tuncle the floor guy — I miss him.  He died at 84 in 2008.  A nice guy, except for that night in the bar.  He didn’t have any other criminal record.

2.

I was at a gathering of Jewish landed gentry — a landlords’ shabbat — in Pepper Pike.

Landlord A — to my right — owned a 17-suiter which her late father had bought in 1955.

Landlord B owned a building his father bought in 1936.

Buy and hold, chaverim.  Shabbat shalom.

I owned (with my sister) a building my dad bought in 1965.

In real estate — as in many fields — it’s good to pick the right father.

In college Donald Trump bought his first building, using his father’s money: a 1,200-unit apartment complex in Cincinnati.   Trump’s dad owned property in  New York’s outer boroughs.  Trump’s net worth upon graduating college in 1965 was $1.4 million, in today’s dollars.  [Trump, The Art of the Deal.]

Suites, a local real estate mag, did a profile on Marty Cohen, a Cleveland  landlord.  The article said Marty “couldn’t shake his interest in property management.”  Marty worked at a bank for a while, but that wasn’t a good fit.  His family owned a 150-unit Parma apartment complex.  Maybe that had something to do with Marty finding a good fit in real estate.

Buy and hold, brothers and sisters. Pass the strudel.

3.

Griffith, the state boiler inspector,  called.

I said to him, “You’ve been around as long as me!”

“Yes, sir,” he said.  “I was around even when your dad was still around!   You know, your father was a kinda guy.  A good dude.  I miss your dad.  He was hoping you’d take over the business.  And you did!”  (My father died in 1986.)

“How long you been around, Griffith?”

“Since 1972.  You were just a kid.  You were in high school.” (I was in college, Griffith!)    “Your dad was a little worried about you, I’ll be honest with you. I hope you don’t take this personally, he thought you didn’t have the fire.  You know, he had went through some things that weren’t easy, and he wanted to leave the buildings to somebody who would appreciate them.”

“I gave my father some things to think about, I guess.”

“I’m proud of you.  You come around.  If he was around, I’d tell him how good you’re doing.”

I didn’t run the family biz totally into the ground.

My epitaph — if I’m lucky: I’m in the Ground But My Business Ain’t.

—

Next week’s post will be on Thursday, not Wednesday, due to Yom Kippur.
—
Here’s an op-ed I wrote for the Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer  (9/16/12). “High Holidays beckon twice-a-year worshipers.”

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“58% of commuters have experienced road rage while driving to work, and 9% have gotten into a fight with another driver.”
— Wall Street Journal, 8/15/12

Fifty-eight percent seems kind of low.

I was doing the speed limit, 35 mph, on North Park Boulevard at North Woodland in Cleveland Heights.  A guy in a red sports car tailgated me.

Not only did I give the guy the finger, I jumped out of my car at the light and yelled, “Thirty-five!  The speed limit is thirty-five!”

I’m not sure the guy in the car was a guy; it was somebody with tinted windows and vanity plates 1KAP, and the driver was aggressively tailgating me.

Whoever it was, was nice, aside from being a bad driver.  The person didn’t jump out of the red car and come after me.

Maybe I looked threatening.  I had on shades!

I hesitated telling my wife about the incident.  I knew she would get mad.  She would call me hostile.  Correct.

I had never jumped out of my car before and yelled at a driver.  Do I have any explanation for my behavior?

My best explanation is I was on my way to visit Michelle, my number-one employee, who was dying of cancer at 40. She couldn’t talk, and she was on all kinds of tubes.

I’m not sure who I was mad at.

—

SIDE B

MICHELLE

My top building manager was Michelle Orozco.  I’d visit her first. She was always upbeat and set the mood for the day. She had problems — a lot of physical ailments, but she didn’t complain much.  She was my assistant.  That was an official title.  She got paid a little extra. She had grown up in Los Angeles and dropped out of high school.

Michelle Orozco

She was a School of Hard Knocks honor student. When the city said I needed to cough up the names of all my tenants and their move-in dates for my annual housing license, I thought, “What’s that about? Big Brother?” That’s what I thought.  Michelle said, “They want the names for RITA.”  The Regional Income Tax Agency.

I paid Michelle to supervise my newer custodians.  She showed them how to do evictions notices, how Tarnite was better than Brasso.

Michelle moved back to California and left me. She wanted to try her hometown again, the Golden State and all that.

She came back, because California was too expensive. She moved into one of my buildings as a tenant.  I said, “I’m not promising you a job.  And whatever you do, don’t undermine the custodians in here now.” (I’ve had ex-custodians who stuck around and pestered the new custodians.  The ex-custodian would call me and say, “The new guy isn’t cleaning.  He’s drunk.  He’s swearing at the tenants.”)

Michelle — and her husband, Manuel — kept to themselves.  They waited and eventually got their job back.

She was my spy. I wondered if  other custodians checked their boilers regularly in the winter.  Did they “blow down” the valves?  I asked Michelle, “How do we know they’re doing it regularly.”

She said, “They’ll do it because it’s more of a hassle to have the boiler go out than blow it down.”

I hired Michelle when she was 25.  Her mother worked for me. I hired Michelle’s niece, also from California.  I hired Michelle’s sister.

Michelle didn’t steal or lie.  She was a good cleaner.  She could rent apartments.  Sounds basic, but it’s not.

She called just-looking apartment seekers “looky-loos.” I never did understand that.   I heard it as “Lucky Lous.” She called air fresheners “smellies.”

Michelle knew the ways of Home Depot rental trucks, and how to access the junk yard with proper ID.  More basics, but again, somewhat tricky. And which apartment buildings I allowed satellite dishes, and which I didn’t.

She was an optimist. She had a bright personality. She kept things on the sunny side — no small feat in the real estate biz.

Michelle Orozco, 1971-2012.

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Pre-kids, my wife, Alice, and I ate out a lot.  We mostly went to dives. That was our hobby.  Dives as low as Krisplee on East 82^nd Street and Euclid Avenue, and Albino’s at West 44^th Street and Lorain Avenue.

At home, Alice cooked a lot of tofu.  That’s why we ate out a lot.

We don’t go out much now.  I can’t stand the long waits, the so-s0 food, the noise.  I’m my dad.

Alice published a restaurant guidebook, Alice’s Restaurants, in 1981.  The book sold particularly well at the airport bookstore.  Alice’s oddest recommendation was the cafeteria at Metro General Hospital.  She liked the beef stroganoff and Viennese tort there.  (Alice was a nursing student.)

I liked Draeger’s, an ice cream place at Van Aken.  I wasn’t into balanced meals.

Here are a couple recommendations from the book:

Alice, 1977

(Still around)  Balaton, Corky & Lenny’s, Flat Iron Cafe, Mad Greek, Mamma Santa’s, Hot Dog Inn.

(Dead)  Zosia’s, Gerome’s, Art’s Seafood, It’s It Deli, Vegetaria, Radu’s, Aurora, Draeger’s, El Charro.

When we had our first child,  our eating out petered out.  Alice wrote a baby book, but never published it.  I can’t remember what the book was about, other than babies.  Oh, it was The Bye, Bye Book — how to  prepare your kid psychologically if you left town for a day or two.

Our kids — now grown — became foodies.  Maybe we left them home too much.  A lot of 20-somethings became foodies.  A baby-boom friend described his grown kids’ religion as Foodism.

Alice in stains

Alice — the original Foodist — sold street food.  She never made a dime, but she made a name for herself.  In the mid-1980s, Alice was the first to sell sushi rolls in Cleveland.  This was at the Coventry Street Fair.  Few locals knew what sushi was.  Alice made vegetable rolls.  She grossed well, but her expenses were high.  She paid a Korean-American friend, Mike, to help.  Mike lent an air of authenticity — not that he knew anything about sushi.

Alice did tabouli at the East 115^th Street Fair.  Tabouli was a loser.  Why?  It wasn’t that good.   And a Cadillac with musicians playing in the trunk  —  next to Alice’s booth — was a lot more entertaining.

Alice sold falafel at the Coventry fair.  She called that operation Queen Alice’s Falafel.  We ate a lot of falafel because she was always tweaking the recipe.  She did falafels for a couple years.

Alice is talking tacos lately.  Our son Teddy is talking pad Thai.

Foodists.

—-

SIDE B

THE JEW OF HOME DEPOT

Carl Goldstein, a landlord friend of mine, wants to be a docent at Home Depot when he retires. He goes to Home Depot at least twice a day, six days a week. That’s more than 600 Home Depots visits per year. Carl owns and manages double houses on the East Side of Cleveland.

Carl Goldstein, 2011

He said, “Home Depot saved my life. Before they came to town, I used to go out to Builders Square on Wilson Mills. That was the ruination of my life. After Builders Square, I would take the freeway to DIY on Chagrin, and then to Seitz-Agin [hardware] on Lee. And I still wouldn’t have everything I needed!”

Carl worked at a plumbing supply store for seven years; he sold hot water tanks, boilers, Flushmates and plumbers dope. Carl’s father was a plumber in Flint, Michigan. Carl has a collection of Corky toilet flappers and other odds and ends in his truck. He gave me a Niagara water-saving shower head. ($5.13 from Woodhill Supply. Too specialized for Home Depot.)

I bought more Niagaras. I have about fifty now. I switch shower heads when tenants move out. (Bad business to switch shower heads on current tenants.)

Carl wants Home Depot to hold a storewide scavenger hunt. The first contestant through the Home Depot check-out line with all the correct items wins. “I’m a shoo-in,” Carl said. “Second place would be Marc Apple.”

“Marc Apple?”

“He’s a Cleveland Heights contractor,” Carl said.

There are two Jews of Home Depot in Cleveland.

—-
Read Max Apple’s The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories. (Max Apple is not related to Marc Apple.)

Next: The Jews of Home Depot (Atlanta): Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank.

—
I wrote about Alice, hot weather and money at today’s CoolCleveland website.

—
Alice and dance leader Daniel Ducoff on the front page of the Cleveland Heights Sun Press, 7/12/12.  (Well-written article about Yiddishe Cup by Ed Wittenberg. Photo by Jim Olexa.)

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I had a custodian who couldn’t change a light bulb.  She didn’t know how far to screw the bulb in. She was from Russia and liked to “dress” — put on sharp clothes and wear heavy makeup.

I hadn’t hired her. I had hired her husband, but her husband skipped (went to Philadelphia) and I didn’t want to fire her, because she had two young boys.

She improved just slightly.  She learned how to apply porcelain touch-up paint to chipped bathtubs.  Like doing her nails.

I’ve had worse employees.  I had a custodian who showed too much butt cleft when he waxed floors, alienating some of the tenants. I had a custodian who drove too often to Detroit.  This was before cell phones.  I couldn’t reach him.

I had a custodian from the Hough neighborhood who was snooty.  Her family had boarded Nap Lajoie, the Hall of Fame baseball player, when Hough was a fancy neighborhood.  The custodian said to me, “We had the elite in my neighborhood.  No mongrels, like from P.A.”  Her husband was from P.A.

I had a building manager who rarely cleaned. A tenant taped a note in the hallway: “This building is a mess.” Other tenants added to the note: “Vacuum the halls” . . . “Take the tree down, Christmas is over!” . . . “Trim the shrubs.”

I had a custodian whose vacuum sweeper was always outside her door but she never vacuumed.

Hoover don't move her

I had a custodian who threatened to kill me.  He was dating a black transvestite prostitute from apartment 200. I didn’t like him fraternizing with tenants.   He said he would hunt me down.  Luckily, he didn’t know his way around the East Side, where I live. The East Side has curved streets.

I had a custodian who asked for loans regularly because her husband took all her money, she said.  I liked the husband.  He went to the racetrack a lot, but he was a hard worker and had a good day job.

I had a building manager whose kids were thieves. I once asked where her son was, and the manager said, “He stepped out to shop.”

“Where?”

“Marion,” she said.   The Marion (Ohio) Correctional Institution.

He came back from Marion and broke into an apartment.

Bad.

—

Footnote:
For the record, I’ve had plenty good managers.

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Lakewood International News, a magazine store, carried the Paris Review, Partisan Review, Kenyon Review and porn.  About half the store was porn.

The proprietor, Gil, was a part-time railroader.  He and several railroad buddies manned the elevated counter, which was a lookout tower for nailing shoplifters and pervs.

I went to Lakewood News.

Where else could I read an interview of William Styron in the Partisan Review, and Bustin’ Out in the same visit?

Gil lost his lease.  (I wasn’t Gil’s landlord.)  I had a vacant store.  Maybe Gil and I could do business together.  A bank tenant had bailed on me down the street.  I thought I was good for 30 years with the bank, but then all banks in the world started merging in the late 1980s.

The bank owed me rent until the bank was re-leased.  The bank, through back channels, quickly found a new tenant — the city.  The city planned to open a health-department annex.  Fine.  Cockroach inspectors would be my new tenants.

Except the city didn’t move very fast.  There were various “readings” at various city council meetings.  Meanwhile, Gil, the magazine store owner, told a couple people he was getting the bank store.  A Plain Dealer reporter called me.

Possible PD headline: “Stratton New Porn Czar.”

The old porn czar was Reuben Sturman, a local-boy-made-good and the nation’s largest porn distributor.

I got scared.  I hand-delivered a media package to the Plain Dealer reporter.  I did a Q&A with myself.  I answered: “I believe in the First Amendment and the bookstore would be an asset.  It isn’t just porn.  Ever heard of the Paris Review? I’ll rent to the magazine store.”  I wanted the city to hurry up, so I had created a little tension, via the press.

Plain Dealer, June 21, 1989. See text below.

The Plain Dealer story came out.  (Nothing too horrible.)  But suddenly the city fast-tracked the legislation and rented the space.

That was the only time I ever spun the press.

Don’t believe half what you read in the papers.  For the real story, go to the memoirs 20 years later.

But by then, you probably won’t care.  But maybe you care in this instance; you read this.
—

Here’s the beginning of “Adult store’s Detroit Ave. move thwarted” by Paul Shepard, Plain Dealer, 6/21/89:

“My only goal is to rent the store.  Whoever signs a lease first gets it, but I think both would be fine tenants for me.”

—
I wrote an op-ed, “The Old Seder Table,” for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, online, Friday (4/6/12).  The op-ed is the only Passover story ever to mention Yazoo City, Mississippi.

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Retirees usually make good tenants.  Unfortunately, I don’t get many retiree tenants, because most old folks don’t want to live in pre-war hardwood-floor apartments with no dishwasher or A/C.   Been there, done that.

I had an application from Joe, 71, a retired factory worker.
He made $1600/month.

Welcome, Joe.

I ran a criminal search on him as a formality. Aggravated arson, forgery and sexual battery.

Pre-Internet, I would have rented to him.  Pre-Internet,  it was hard to run background checks.  I once rented to a rapist/murderer because I wasn’t schlepping to county records, and the rapist wasn’t volunteering he was a rapist/ murderer.  (The man got picked up on a parole violation and moved out of my apartment without killing or raping.)

I rented to a retired nurse whose previous landlord followed her to my place.  He told me the old lady was a forger and felon.

But she already had the keys to my place!  My building manager had given her the keys in exchange for a dime store ring.

My custodian, Buck, always subverted me.  For example, he thought junk mail should stay in perpetuity; watering outdoor plants was ridiculous; and accepting fake rings was part of the job.

I helped Buck move the retired nurse’s belongings into the basement.  I locked the basement door.

“Give me my meds!” she said.

She had a point.

I gave her meds, plus her toothbrush.

This cost me.

I was young.  I learned two things: a) Don’t ever do a “self-help” eviction.  Lawyers love self-help evictions.  b) Screen all tenants like crazy on the way in.

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Louise Stevenson, an elderly tenant, plastered 3- and 4-cent stamps on her rent envelope.  This was in the 1980s.

Miss Stevenson was an old maid and very old school.  She patrolled the building  in a nightgown — a house coat — whatever women wore in the 1950s.  My mom wore one too.  Yes, a house coat.

Miss Stevenson didn’t like the custodians.  These workers never met her standards.  One custodian showed off too much butt crack when he scrubbed the floors.  Another manager supposedly broke into Miss Stevenson’s apartment and stole a book.  A third custodian went barefoot “like a hillbilly” in the hallway.

Miss Stevenson could guess whenever I was coming by; she stood guard by the building’s front door.  I listened to a lot of her diatribes about the decline of the West (Side).

I had a stamp collection too.  I should have talked stamps with her.  But I didn’t.  Miss Stevenson was a bit frightening, and my dad had always taught me: Don’t get personal with the tenants.

Miss Stevenson claimed she was related to Robert Louis Stevenson.  (The stolen book was an autographed Stevenson, she said.)

She carried a shopping bag and took the bus downtown every day, wearing her house coat.

Miss Stevenson died in 1992.   That year a first-class letter was 29 cents.

I hope I get a letter today with eleven 4-cent Lincolns on it.  I won’t, unless Miss Stevenson sends this . . .

—

Postage goes to 45 cents Sunday (January 22).  Add:

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An Asian Indian asked me if he should buy a motel.

Why ask me?  Why not ask Patel? I thought.  Forty percent of American hotels are owned by Indians, and many are Patels.

The Asian Indian was a tennis pro who had invested in Cleveland real estate and lost money.  He thought maybe I knew some tricks about investing.

I knew this: Most everybody in the real estate biz in the 2000s was not hitting the long ball.

He asked me about stocks.

This is what I knew:  My late father, who was a stock broker for about six months in the 1950s, taught me the market is legalized gambling.  John Bogle, former chairman of the Vanguard Group, said, “The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain.”  You have to be lucky twice with stocks: when you buy and when you sell.

In March 2009 the New York Times business-page headline was “Are We There Yet?”  There meant the stock market’s bottom.

In March 2009 the price/earnings ratio was at its lowest in more than 20 years: 13.  (Trailing 10-years figure.)  The worldwide P/E was even lower, down to 10.  It was a good time to invest, but scary.

***

My Uncle Lou and Uncle Al drove a truck, delivering wholesale items to stores.  They offered me a carton of baseball cards — 24 packs — at deep discount.  I was in.  I immediately ripped open all the packs.  I was 9.  This was my first speculative investment.  I got a lot of Humberto Robinsons (an Indians relief pitcher) and no Mickey Mantles.  Maybe my uncles were teaching me dollar-cost averaging: better to buy a pack a week (i.e., dollar-cost averaging) than go all in.

The Asian tennis pro moved to Florida.  His wife and kids couldn’t stand Cleveland winters, for one thing.  He didn’t have a job down there.  He didn’t have a house.  I hope he knew Patel.

—-
Here’s “Beer and Coconut Bars,” which I wrote for the CoolCleveland website.  Went up a week ago.  The story is definitely full Cleveland, if not cool Cleveland.

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I went easy on a tenant, rent-wise, because he called the police on a leaded-glass thief, who had stolen windows from the apartment building’s entrance.  (The windows were sidelights.)

Ex. Two sidelights flanking main entrance

The cops asked my tenant, “Would you be a witness?”  My guy — Bill Livingstone — said yes.   I appreciated his civic involvement.

Livingstone was nosy.  That was a good thing.  Livingstone, a poodle groomer, stayed at the building 23 years.

***

A vandal scrawled graffiti on a front door.  Livingstone wasn’t around. (Different building.)

The building manager knew the graffiti “artist.”  She even knew his phone number.  My custodian personally knows this derelict?  The graffiti “artist” was a friend of a friend of the custodian.  The “artist” hung out at a skaters coffeehouse and had a recognizable tag.  My custodian,  a lesbian brakeman with multiple piercings, knew the scene.

I phoned the graffiti kid.  What if he was nuts?  I hung up.  Let the cops handle it.

The kid called me.  “You just called my cell.”

I hate that.

The cops found him and made him clean up the doors.   His mom even helped.  The kid was in high school.  I didn’t press charges because he cleaned the door.

***

Re: the leaded-glass sidelights thief.  That guy was caught due to Bill Livingstone’s accurate ID of the man.  (The thief sold the windows to an antiques store.)  The man was charged with aggravated burglary and grand theft.

He didn’t do any jail time.  He made restitution to me over a couple years.

I’ve been fortunate. Thanks to Bill Livingstone, tuned-in building managers and persistent police detectives.

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I rented to a commercial photographer who moved out after 23 years and left a store full of manila folders, invoices, developing trays and chemicals.  Three dumpsters’ worth.  He shouldn’t have done that.  I had never hassled him about late fees.

Down the street, the Armed Forces Recruiting Center moved out after 40 years and left a punching bag, three couches, 27 chairs, a lot of  “Army of One” promotional material and a 1970s stereo system.  That wasn’t the half of it.

The good news: the government — unlike the photographer — paid for the clean-up.  Also, I got $75 for the Armed Forces sign on Craigslist.  (I thought the sign would go for more.)

Perfume bottle doubling as a pen holder

I’m sitting on about 3,000 perfume bottles.  I’m not totally sure they are perfume bottles.  Martha’s Beauty Salon left the bottles in the basement.  The bottles are packed in cartons with zone numbers on them, not zip codes. (Pre-1963.)

Every month I serve an eviction notice on a lawyer.   Every single month.  Then I file an eviction on him.

The lawyer rents a storefront office.  I pay the $85 eviction filing fee and get a court date.

The day before the court hearing, the lawyer pays the rent, including the legal fees.  Like clockwork.

Until he doesn’t.

At eviction court he said to me, “I’m broke.”  No tears, no dough.  “You’re in business.  You understand,” he said.  “I don’t have the money.  I’m moving out.”

He turned in the keys and cleaned the place.

He stole money from his clients.  He was disbarred in April and convicted of grand theft in June.  Sentencing is next month.

Note to the probation department: he left the store clean.

—-

As my dad used to say . . .

Meaning: Pay the rent.  We aren’t a loan company.

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A tenant peed in the heating ducts and poured aquarium gravel into the toilet.  Several other residents used the cheap hollow-core doors for karate practice.  The apartment building looked genteel, but it wasn’t.   Jamestown Village, on the West Side, was a post-war, modern apartment complex.

Many tenants lived beyond their means; they liked the swimming pool, the playground and A/C, but couldn’t really afford these amenities. There were a lot of evictions.

The complex was garden-style, low-rise buildings set around a pool.  All the buildings had mansard roofs like McDonald’s.  My father kept a sketch of Jamestown Village in our family room.

A high school wrestling coach, who was also a big-time real estate investor, bought the complex and converted it to condos in 1976.  That worked out well for the coach and my dad.  As my dad’s banker said, “You made your money, and  he made his.”

I worked on the Jamestown Village roof, replacing lids to vents.  The lids were called jap caps because they looked like coolie hats.

There was no better place than a roof top — at least a flat roof. You could see everybody, and nobody could see you.  That’s why cops in The Wire go on roofs so often.

But it wasn’t all fun and games on the roof.  There was some work too:

Lesson 1:  Modified bitumen membrane is the basic black roof, usually applied with a blow torch.

Lesson 2:  Thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) roofs look like white pool liner.  Your roof  is reflective.  Cleveland has more “heat” days than “cool” days, which means white roofs (TPOs) are great in Dallas, but not so great in Cleveland.

Lesson 3: Summer is the best time to put on a roof.  I had a roof installed in April and it rained constantly, and the job was a mess; we had leaks into the apartments below.

Lesson 4:  Consider vacationing on a roof.  There might be an old longue chair up there, left by a rebellious tenant who sneaked up for sunbathing and serious drinking.  People want to be on roofs badly.

There is usually an empty tar bucket for your guest to sit on.

Roof & Relaxation

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The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an op-ed of mine yesterday.  Something about baseball cards.  Gotta write about baseball if you want to be in the big leagues: “Investment Home Run.”

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The first three digits in your Social Security number mean something. For instance, 545-573 and 602-626 indicate you are a native Californian. 268-302, an Ohioan.

That’s history. Effective Saturday, newly issued Social Security numbers (SSNs) will have no geographical significance. The “Social Security Number Randomization” policy hits.

New Gavins, Emmas and Destinys will get random SSNs.

I read about the randomization policy in the Social Security Administration/IRS quarterly newsletter to employers.

I look at Social Security numbers a lot because I’m a landlord. One apartment applicant wrote his SSN as 900-. There are no 900-999s. I turned him down on the spot. Likewise, there are no 000s-. And I don’t rent to 666-; that’s the devil’s number, and the Social Security Administration (SSA) doesn’t stock it.

The SSA website says, “If your [SSN] concerns are firmly rooted in your religious beliefs or cultural traditions, Social Security will review your request.”

The new randomization policy will extend the number of available SSNs. There are 435 million unused numbers. Dead people’s numbers go to the grave with them.

What about a vanity SSN? Are the feds thinking of that?

They should. Parents might pay $100 for a snazzy SSN — say, a 999-. Something that would stand out on Baby Emma’s college application 17 years from now.

Just say no to randomization.

Baby Emma is not a random number. And Gavin is an Ohioan — a proud Buckeye. Destiny, she is a California girl (602-).

Joe Buckeye

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Due to a computer glitch, this post (“Just Say No to Randomization”) didn’t go up on Wednesday June 22. It went up today, Saturday June 25.

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Here’s an op-ed I wrote for the Cleveland Plain Dealer last Sunday. “Harvey Pekar’s Hollywood Hustle.”

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I write “landlord/bandleader” for occupation on my taxes.

“Real estate/musician” would be too boring.  I want the IRS to think of me as more than just another number.

QUALIFIED DIVIDENDS.  Every year I try to remember what qualified dividends are.  They are qualified for lower capital-gains tax rates.

ALIMONY.  My lazy ex-wife thinks I’m her personal ATM.  Alimony shouldn’t be on the tax form.  It’s a big distraction.  (I don’t have an ex-wife — lazy or otherwise — but still, the thought of it is scary.)

SCHEDULE C. Business income. The government looks closely at artists’ expenses on this schedule.  In the band biz, how does one list the candy bars for the band’s sleep-deprived, van-driving keyboard player? Is the MilkyWay a “meal”?  The MilkyWay seems more like “maintenance.” The MilkyWay is not a “meal.”

SCHEDULE D. Capital gains (losses). When I met my wife-to-be, Alice, she owned a mutual fund. Nobody except John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, owned a mutual fund in 1977.  Smart move — my marrying Alice.

SCHEDULE E. Income from royalties.  Yiddishe Cup sells CDs from the trunk of a car, so to speak.  That’s not a big royalty situation.  But now that Yiddishe Cup is on Sony Germany’s Balkan Basics World Tour II CD, maybe we’ll get some royalties.   Royalty checks are often a joke, I’m told.  Like $0.31.  Still, I’d like one.

IRS Climbing Wall

DEPRECIATION. Form 4562.  Buildings have lives.   For instance, apartment buildings live  27½ years.  Buildings-with-stores last 31 years or 39 years; the laws keep changing. And buildings on the Alternative Minimum Tax form last 40 years.

SELF-EMPLOYMENT TAX.  Schedule SE. The Social Security and Medicare tax is effectively 14.13 percent for a self-employed person.  A salaried person pays only 7.65 percent.  That’s worth knowing if you’re starting a business.  (For 2011 only: reduce the above figures by 2 percent.)

THE FLAT TAX.  There is a 31 percent tax on 31-year-old buildings; a 23 percent tax on 23-year-old sons; and no tax on klezmer bands, which the president has declared national treasures.
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Happy Passover!  Here’s a funny Klezmer Guy video, “Irregular Passover Humor” . . .

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The florist, who had a shop in Linesville, Pennsylvania, said he knew the DeBartolo family of Youngstown and had provided flowers for Clint Eastwood’s godfather’s funeral.

I know machers too, man! I felt like saying. I know, through gigs, the family that wants to rebuild Brooklyn and move in the New Jersey Nets. The boss of that family likes to hear “Oyfn Pripetchik” (On the Hearth).  I play that tune even before the boss can request it.

I’ve done a lot of fancy gigs (by Cleveland standards), Mr. Linesville Florist.  I did one where the bride’s dad bulldozed his back yard to put up three tents.  Then he put in a quarter-mile road to his front door.  Yiddishe Cup played for 15 minutes, after which a Nashville band took over.

I’ve seen clients back up A/C trucks to the old federal building to cool off guests.

I haven’t seen that sort of extravagance lately.

The florist considered renting a store from me.

He liked to talk, and not about utilities or lease terms.  He talked about Clint Eastwood’s godfather — “a simple western P.A. man whose coffin had a flower spray that floated on Styrofoam over the casket.”

The florist said he had spent the past 30 years in Linesville, where ducks walk on carp at the Pymatuning Reservoir spillway.  “That is the second biggest tourist attraction, to the Liberty Bell, in Pennsylvania,” he said.

He showed me the bee stings on his arms. “There are a lot of yellow jackets because I live out in the country,” he said.

The florist wanted to move back to the city, he said.  He winked at me. “We are going to be partners in crime!”

He began talking about the DeBartolos of San Francisco. Then Clint Eastwood’s floating  sprig again.  Maybe the florist had talked only to ducks and carp in 30 years and was lonely.

After a half hour, I interrupted, “Give me a call when you’re ready to put down a deposit.  I have to go.”

“You’ll be hearing from me!”

I didn’t.

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I had a custodian who enjoyed the Weather Channel and thought the end of the world was coming every day, via hurricanes or snowstorms. I don’t think she ever went outside.

Another employee was also fixated on the weather. He did a lot of indoor apartment painting and wanted every day to be 74 degrees like Costa Rica, so he wouldn’t sweat.

A neighbor of mine asked if I had a winter place in Florida.

I was surprised. I’m not there yet — retirement in Florida.

But I know a klezmer musician — a bushy-haired baby-boomer clarinetist — who is moving to Florida and taking up golf.  So anything is possible.

Maybe my friend will play a freylekhs (hora) by the water fountain on the 16^th hole.  (Mickey Katz did that.  His band got paid to surprise a golfer on his birthday.)

Some Clevelanders complain about the cold. Arizona versus Florida.  That is the discussion.

My wife, Alice, and I went to a wedding in Florida last spring, and a guest asked Alice, “Are you still in Cleveland?” Meaning “Are you nuts?  Do you like gray skies, slush and potholes?”

Another Cleveland woman at the wedding said, “The day I hit sixty-two I had to leave.”  She spends the winters in Scottsdale, Ariz.  A third Clevelander, originally from South Africa, preferred Florida over Arizona.  “I like the ocean,” she said.

Last month at a gig in Florida, I ran into a waiter who had lived in Florida and Arizona.  He said summer in Arizona is unbearable. Florida is bearable.

What about Ohio?  Ohio-with-layers in the winter and pleasant the rest of the year.

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Please see the post below too.  It’s new.   And check out this  video, “Albert Stratton Practicing his Comeback.” The clip is  an Ann Arbor song, taped at The Ark this month.

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