That’s Sedgefield Gardens in Greensboro, NC, where I rented my first apartment at the age of 22. I ended up living in three different units inside that place across four-or-so years. It wasn’t bad at all and is apparently unchanged (according to the pics) from 30 years ago. The legendary Peaches Records, where I worked, was maybe a mile from there. I could’ve walked, but never did. I mean, seriously… A mile?? What am I, in the Iron Man competition? And by the way, the phone number at Peaches was 852-3926. Somehow I remember that.
In any case, the most memorable Sedgefield Gardens era was definitely the final one, when I lived with my brother in a two-bedroom unit. I think that lasted for about two years, and it was non-stop dipshittery and ridiculousness. Yesterday I recorded a new podcast episode describing the “highlights” of that adventure. You can listen wherever you get podcasts, or right here:
I’d love to know about your first apartment after you moved out and were on your own. Please tell us about it in the comments. Did you have real furniture, or was it just crap you cobbled together like we did? Shit! I can still smell that weird elongated couch. Where did it come from? The city dump?? I have no idea at this point. What kind of crazy stuff happened there? Bring us up to date on it, won’t you?
And I’ll see you guys again soon, very soon.
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I still live in the same neighborhood. I lived in the same apartment for over two decades. No crazy stuff. Just crazy neighbor stories.
Fall, 1984 – Austin, TX. First time living far away from home. Ground-floor “efficiency” apartment, which meant my bed was next to my nightstand which doubled as an end table because it was next to my couch. The hot water heater was in a closet and one morning I saw a German roach scurry under the door, so I opened the door and the back of it was COVERED in German roaches, which all went scurrying as I went into a tap-dance frenzy. I drunkenly wrecked my first car while partying the night of my birthday and the floor of that apartment became my repair shop, as I unscrewed the entire header panel from my car and brought it inside so I could apply fiberglass patches and repaint it – so my dad wouldn’t kill me when I got back to Ohio! The next summer I’d be in a different apartment in that complex and I found I could get WLW all the way down there, and listened to Pete Rose pass Ty Cobb for the all-time hits leader!
Oh yeah – all the furniture was from “Aaron Rents”. I brought a TV from home: a 12-inch BLACK & WHITE!!!! It sucked watching the Playboy Channel on that!
My first apartment of my own, as opposed to a group house, was a third-floor walkup in Troy, NY in the early 1980s. The lock on the apartment door was a padlock. The place looks nice on Google maps now, but I recall it being pretty much a shithole. But it was $180 a month. And I ended up marrying a girl who lived on the 2nd floor.
I never lived in an apartment. I did live in a rental house in the 400 block of 18th St in Dunbar though. Not a bad place at all. Big fenced in double yard for the dogs. Front porch. It was a good neighborhood then. Probably the craziest thing that happened was me firing a shotgun into the air one 4th of July. Good times.
I lived in a apartment at a huge complex in Southeast Michigan. There was a laundry room next to my bedroom and one night heard a loud banging noise. Some clown was drying tennis shoes at 2:00 am and I had an early flight the next morning, Good times.
I had a crazyass apartment on top of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, but I’m more concerned with the update which was a commercial for episode 78 of the podcast. I hadn’t listened to a podcast in a couple months and everybody deserves as many chances as they want, so I clicked on episode 78 which didn’t help because it was a commercial for episode 77.
jtb
My apartment was a sublet from a daddy’s little rich girl near Sugarloaf Mtn Ski area. It was an office building converted to 3 apartment units… I owed her $800 for the season, which I finally finished paying in June, since I didn’t have much money because I was collecting unemployment… Oh, yes, collecting unemployment, skiing 3-5 days a week and generally living the good life.
The main memorable thing actually in the apartment was when about five of us skiers where hanging out, and the guy that was selling little seal a meal packets of marijuana decided to sit for 2 hrs and pick out the red hairs from the Columbian red pot flowers that he had and made a joint out of it. A good time was had by all!
My first experience at “living away from home” was in a barracks at the age of 17. By the age of 19 I was sharing a $150 a month 3 bedroom townhouse in Dumfries, VA with a couple other guys I was stationed with just outside Washington DC. That was a wild ride, to say the least. As luck (or lack of luck, depending upon one’s point of view I suppose) would have it, it was considered unconstitutional to drug screen us in those days. It was around that same time frame that I totaled my car, driving home from seeing Hunter S Thompson give a talk in downtown DC. The first sergeant was not amused. By the time I was 22 I was (somehow) an honorably discharged veteran, sharing a $125 apartment in southwest Wisconsin with an army buddy as we both actively worked to get ourselves fired from great jobs with a railroad.
My first apartment, in !970, was a one room, fully furnished efficiency at the Eldorado motel in Sandusky, OH. It cost me $15 / week. It was about a mile from the local Ford plant and was mostly used for illicit affairs and prostitution. The walls separating them consisted of $2.99 paneling on sideways 2″x4″s. Two lesbians moved into the apartment next door, and they fought, loudly, quite a lot. I had a metal shower stall with 3 bullet holes in it. It was a lot wilder before I moved in, but after the bar lost its liquor license, it was converted into a cockroach infested laundromat My strangest experience was when a man who owed me $300. delivered a stolen 1968 Oldsmobile 442, right to my door for payment. It was the era of free love, so i had a lot of fun there.
1982 in Amsterdam, NY in a three bedroom apartment with two buddies while we attended nuclear prototype training in Ballston Spa.. Still there today but no longer all brown wood. Everything is a painted off-white.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9522041,-74.1671281,3a,75y,104.29h,95.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sXCGeqa47xLoElV44NL_VMw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
My god, Phil, it looks like a Soviet gulag. I was going to post googlepics of a couple of my tumbledown digs, but you got me beat. Glad they spruced the place up with a paint job.
John
Oddly John, the inside was actually kind of nice. They were not very old when we moved in but the outside did look like something from the cold war era in the Soviet Union.
Lived in Lowell, ma in my first apartment for 175/ month included heat and hot water. Heat came from a small space heater unit on the side of the cook stove. It barely heated the kitchen, let alone the rest of the place. This was back in 1980. Had a great girlfriend who also liked women and had quite a few night there with more than one babe in the bed at once. Holy crap what a good time