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Finding a cheap apartment on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg? Priceless. Paying $550 a month to lay your weary head inches from a toilet? A little disgusting.
Nonetheless, just such a humble abode turned up on Tuesday morning on Craigslist — with pictures, no less, of a room that fits little more than a bed, a sink, a shower, a mini-fridge and hotplate and, yes, that toilet, all inches away from each other.
Oh, and one more detail: there are no windows.
“Room is in basement,” the listing reads. “There is no separation between the bedroom and the bathroom.”
What did you expect for $550? A gap of more than six inches from the foot of the bed to the toilet? Are you some kind of Rockefeller?
If not, join the club. The landlord’s housekeeper, who showed the room to The Brooklyn Paper on Tuesday afternoon, said there has been lots of interest in the listing.
“We’ve gotten a lot of e-mails today [to come see the apartment],” she said.
But by sunset, the listing for the “prison chic” unit had been “flagged” by Craigslist for further investigation, possibly because a basement apartment with no windows is illegal.
Illegal or not, there could be another reason why the listing was de-listed. “The apartment has rented,” the landlord claimed when contacted by The Brooklyn Paper on Wednesday.
The current tenant will be out on Oct. 31. He told The Brooklyn Paper that he had no problem with the space, but is moving on to bigger and better (and maybe even sunlight).
One thing is certain, the listing has got people talking. One poster on the Williamsboard Web site made the obvious comparison:
“At least in a prison cell, you get a small window,” the poster posted.
©2008 Community Newspaper Group
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