This hole in the wall doesn’t have a finished floor, but it does have a furnace that loudly erupts sporadically when one of the other 13 apartments in the complex needs heating.
For about $1200/mo, you can be the lucky renter who gets this unit. Located about 3 miles from the nearest public transit hub, your friends will wonder with jealousy what’s so good about your place that makes you never come to their gatherings. How blissful their ignorance. Fortunately, the city’s parking minimums have pushed every nearby store out so much that you’ll have to spend two hours doing your groceries on foot.
The real estate company posing as your landlord that has more rights than you thanks to corporate personhood forbids box spring mattresses, air mattresses, water beds, tents, and bicycles. On a technicality the furnace counts as an in-unit kitchen, qualifying the unit as a ‘luxury apartment’, but you’d be better off bringing your own hotplate.
There are also no outlets to plug your hotplate into.
For decoration, I suggest you embrace “garbage core” with a collection of your favorite car air fresheners, random beaten up posters found in the dumpster outside a college dorm on the last day of school as all the students move out, and street furniture acquired after rainy days. To deal with the ~2 hours of natural sunlight you get in a day (1 in the winter), you can spruce the space up with half burnt candles you poach from your parents’ laundry nook. They won’t notice, they haven’t had a romantic evening in 25 years and they’re not going to start now.
Local attractions include: city hall meetings where the people elected to run the city treat renters like scum despite you being the majority of the populace, adult tag (not like that) in the 400 sq.ft public park that’s only a short 20 minute jog from the apartment, and “jumba jam days” which is an incredibly loud block party hosted directly outside your window every Thursday until 4 am.