Philip Robert

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been looking for an apartment in Ashland, Oregon. There was a room in a house that I thought would be a great place to live. The people who lived there seemed to be great people. The house was great with a beautiful, functional kitchen. An expansive dining and living area. A wonderful back yard with a garden, and it was right around the corner from the Bikram Studio. This would have been a nice place to call home for a while. Unfortunately, they decided that they didn’t like me, or at least they didn’t like me as much as they liked some of the other people who were looking to live there.

Perhaps I just needed my own place. It’s been sometime since I’ve lived without a room mate, and it would make things easier. If the kitchen is clean when I leave… it’ll be clean when I get home. Of course if it’s dirty then I’ll know it.

There are three ways to find an apartment here:

• Classified Ads
• Bulletin Boards
• For Rent signs

I’ve looked at places found using all three, but my favorite is driving around town. You must must must carry a notebook and pen with you when you’re driving around. When you find a likely place write down all the information and make a phone call. This way you can keep track of where you’ve been, what’s available, and who you’ve talked to. Otherwise you’ll just scramble it all up in your head.

There was a very cool one bedroom apartment in the railroad district of Ashland that would’ve been great. The owner is holding it for her niece who is going to spend the summer here. No sign on this one. No classified ad, and no bulletin board posting. I was driving by and I saw one of the tenants carrying boxes out to her car so I stopped and asked if she was moving. She wasn’t. Then she told me about the open apartment and gave me the owner’s phone number.

Yesterday I found a great studio on craigslist. The owner calls it a studio, but I would say that it was a one bedroom apartment. There is a partial wall dividing the sleeping area from the kitchen/dining/living area. The other studios looked like closets with kitchens by comparison. I was really hoping for this one. The views were incredible. It was in a quiet neighborhood halfway between downtown and the yoga studio. Being close to the yoga studio is important to me I would have been moving into this one this week except that the owner’s wife had already rented it to a lady she works with.

School lets out this month so I suspect that there will be plenty of places opening up soon. Internet please send me a large affordable apartment close to downtown Ashland, above the blvd or in the railroad district, with a big kitchen with a gas stove…