Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

I LIKE DRUNKS

by Bert Stratton

 
I was an adjunct professor at the local community college, teaching creative writing, creative non-fiction, and “I’m Creative!” (a course I made up). Whatever worked. I might do teaching again, maybe in retirement. The money was horrible but I enjoyed the kids.

I was in the family landlord biz, too.

Chris Kraus

Years ago I was interviewed in a mag, Rust Belt / Waist 40, about my landlord shtick. There are approximately two landlord-writers in America. There’s an avant-garde landlord in Los Angeles who wrote a book called I Like Dick. She’s Chris Kraus. She liked a guy named Dick. Her books have been reviewed in the New York Times and all over. She bought four buildings in Albuquerque in 2005. She doesn’t mention that often, but she doesn’t hide the fact, either. She said in an interview, “I spend a couple of hours each day dealing with leaking roofs and plumbers and laminate floors.”

Me too. And don’t forget late-payers, and tenants with eight cats, and tenants who break toilet tanks because they’re super-fat and drunk. I Like Drunks. I should write that.

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This post is 50% fiction, but Chris Kraus is real.

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Yiddishe Cup plays 7:15 pm tomorrow (Thurs. Oct. 24)  at Park Synagogue, Pepper Pipes, Ohio. Simchat Torah. Free and open to the public.

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3 comments

1 Mark Schilling { 10.23.24 at 9:05 am }

“Pepper Pipes”? Sounds like a Dave Barry band name.

2 Bert Stratton { 10.23.24 at 9:14 am }

To Mark S.
fyi, for out-of-towners: the suburb is actually Pepper Pike, which makes about as much sense as Pepper Pipes.

3 Ken Goldberg { 10.23.24 at 4:25 pm }

It’s “The Great Pee-Pee,” which people work so hard for decades just to make it in.

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