Application Approved

After a slew of faxes and phone calls to the Southern California offices of Fleck Property Management Group - my rental application has been approved! I will be moving down to my new place in Los Feliz on the 29th!

This is definitely a relief. But my oh my, one-year is the longest lease I've signed to date; let's hope I picked a good spot.

Scouting Trip

My, my, my... Quite a bit has transpired since my last post. I'm going to have to break this post into sections, read each as your curiosity strikes you.

Relationship:

I broke up with Beth, my girlfriend of six-months, on Sat July 7th. I will admit that my timing was not entirely considerate of her feelings - she'd just flown back from a vacation on the other side of the country with her family. Within hours of her getting off the flight I had broken up with her. The reason I gave: I didn't think I could handle a breakup and a move all at the same time and without a network for friends in close proximity. Understandably she did not take it particularly well, and I certainly felt like an ass.

Curiously, it looks like Beth might have an inside track on getting a job at William Morris, one of the top talent agencies in Los Angeles and NYC. Best of luck to her in that enterprise, she's a hard worker and I think she'll kick ass if she lands the gig.

Dealing with the breakup has been much easier with the help of friends, and while probably selfish I feel like I chose the right time to end things.

New Car:
After further confusion over which car to get and how exactly to work it out... My dad whispered the magic word "Prius" into my mom's ear and her ties to her car quickly melted away. After many hours negotiating with the DMV, an under-the-table cash-exchange with a body shop, and a few hundred bucks at my local mechanic I am now the proud owner of a 2000 Mitsubishi Galant with 70,000 miles on it. I'm not a "car guy" - but I am filled with no small amount of girlish glee over this exchange. The car has a V6, air conditioning (!!!!), side-impact airbags, and power everything. If I am my car, then I'm doing pretty cool.

Apartment Hunt:
I was lucky enough to have a few friends already living in LA before I made the trek down. Prince Gomolvillas (http://bamboonation.blogspot.com) wrote "The Fabulous Adventures of Captain Queer" which was my first foray into paid theater. A while back he offered to let me stay at his apartment while I searched for a place and I decided to take him up on the offer. He and his boyfriend Lauren were kind enough to let me into their home for the better part of the week while I looked around.

Strategy 1: Craig's List
I'm a pretty geeky person and where possible I will search for the technological solution to a problem even if in the long run it's more of a hassle than more traditional methods. I started my search at Craig's List, which if you don't already know, is a great place to find apartments, furniture, free crap, and casual sex partners (this Craig must be a pretty exciting guy). They offer a number of cool features, but my favorite is the ability to search by price-range and number of rooms. Using this, I was able to very quickly discover that there were pretty much no apartments in my ideal price range (1br for $715/mo)... instead I found a lot of small apartments in crap places that were hundreds of dollars more than I was used to paying in Oakland, CA.

The key with online apartment searching is persistence. After expanding my search range to include studios between $600 and $900 I turned up a lot more results. If you are looking for cheap, good-sized apartments look in and around Korea Town, the neighborhood doesn't feel exactly safe but you do get a lot of bang for your buck. But, I centered my search on the following neighborhoods: Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and Melrose. All of which have a really great funky artist's community feel to them.

Strategy 2: West Side Rentals
I also registered with West Side Rentals which is a service used by just about everyone in LA it seems. I really wish that more folks would use craigslist because registering for West Side Rentals runs about $60 for 2 months. You'll find listings with much more detailed information about neighborhood, amenities, etc. Using this service I was able to very quickly realize that I was not going to find exactly what I was looking for - let's face it: LA is an expensive place to live. I recommend this service, but only register if your preliminary (read: free) searches are turning up 50+ results. By the time you winnow down the results to only those listings that really match your criteria, it'll be a small list indeed. If you turn up less that 50 hits, it's a waste of your money to register.

Strategy 3: Pound the Pavement
Again, persistence is important when looking for an apartment. It turns out that LA is a really weird housing market (at least from the SF perspective). I had the best luck when I walked around a neighborhood I liked and just started calling the For Rent signs that were posted. It seems like every apartment complex has a vacancy, some of the cooler places I found were in the same neighborhood as a craigslist result that was a complete bust. So if you find an apartment in a neighborhood that you like, but it's out of your price-range, just get out, walk around, and start making some calls:

Hi, I'm Donovan Keith. Phone Number XXX-XXX-XXXX. I'm calling about the apartment you have available at XXXX Kingston Ave. If it is a studio or one-bedroom renting for less than $900/mo please call me back. Again, my phone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. Thanks!

You can canvas a few blocks in an afternoon and if you wait a day or so, you'll start getting some calls back for places in a neighborhood you like at a price you can afford.

Stay Tuned
Stayed tuned for my next post, where you'll get to read about:

• A Peek Into The LA Life
• The New Apartment
• My Good-bye Party

Until then... Keep on keeping on.

Car Culture

As my friend Brian Patterson said to me, in LA "you are your car, and your car is you." I'm currently driving a 2003 Hyundai Accent (see image on the left). It's fun, sporty, and has a hatchback which is great for throwing in my gear when I go surfing or out on an audition. The problem is: it has no air conditioning. It gets HOT in LA (105+ in the summer) and showing up to an audition sweating profusely doesn't seem like a good move to me.

When I said I wanted to get an after market A/C for my car. A week later my Dad said "I talked to my mechanic and he says that after market A/Cs don't work that well". When my sister caught wind of my parents solution (My Car=>My Dad, My Dad's Van=>My Grandmother, My Grandmother's car=>Me) she felt it was patently absurd and then raised safety concerns "LA drivers are a little crazy - you need side-impact airbags." In response my dad said "I got T-Boned twice in Glendale, you should get a new car."

It all seemed a little overwhelming, but I do like shiny new things, so I started researching. I narrowed it down to three cars: 2007 Hyundai Accent, 2007 VW Rabbit, 2007 Honda Fit. Once I spec'd them all out with the features I would want they all cost about $15,000-$17,000. A fair chunk of change. When I explained what my family had come up with to my girlfriend, she said "What?! Maybe this is just because I was raised differently, but when I get a car I drive it into the ground." Which in actuality is not a bad idea. Thus it seems I have some options:

Upgrade my current car by adding A/C and getting a tune-up: ~$2500

Upgrade my current car by adding A/C and getting a tune-up: ~$2500

• Pros:
• I get to keep my car.
• I know what’s wrong with my car (nothing).
• I don’t have to deal w/ the DMV or my insurance company.
• Don’t have to sell car.
• Don’t have to take off surf racks.
• No ongoing monthly payments.
• Cons:
• A/C won’t be very effective.
• No anti-lock brakes.
• No side-impact airbags.
• Rush hour will suck w/ the manual transmission.
• I won’t look super cool.
• Sell my car and buy a new car w/ AC, automatic transmission, & Side-Impact Airbags: ~$12000 + $300 (Yakima Rack)

Sell my car and buy a new car w/ AC, automatic transmission, & Side-Impact Airbags: ~$12000 + $300 (Yakima Rack)

• Pros:
• I get a brand new car.
• I can get an MP3 Dock.
• I’ll look a *little* cooler in LA (how cool can you look driving a low-end car?).
• Rush hour traffic will be a breeze.
• Air-conditioner will kick butt.
• I’ll have all the safety features.
• Cons:
• $300 monthly payment when my primary income is freelance tech and acting work.
• 4 fewer acting classes a month.
• Less money going into savings.
• Have to sell my current car.
• Have to transfer plates.
• Insurance will go up.
• I won’t be buying the hybrid or plug-in electric that I hoped to buy for my next car.
• Sell my car and buy a certified used car w/ AC, automatic transmission, & no side-impact airbags: ~$6000 + $300 (Yakima Rack)

Sell my car and buy a usedcar w/ AC, automatic transmission, & no Side-Impact Airbags: ~$6000 + $300 (Yakima Rack)

• Pros:
• I get working A/C.
• Rush hour traffic will be doable.
• I might be able to get a cooler/nicer car.
• Cons:
• $150 monthly payment when my primary income is freelance tech and acting work.
• 2 fewer acting classes a month.
• Less money going into savings.
• Have to sell my current car.
• Have to transfer plates.
• Insurance might go up.

Conclusion: If I can find an aftermarket A/C that will work well I'll keep my current car. If I can't, I'll probably buy a dealer-certified used car with less than 60k miles on it. If the family wants to make up the $6,000 difference between a used car and a new car so that I can have side-impact airbags, I'll get that - but there are lots of folks w/o side-impact airbags and most used cars don't offer them.

Just call on me brother.

The world is a pretty big place - but the amazing level of human interconnectedness can make it a whole lot smaller. I recently sent out a mailer to everyone in my address book (after an exhaustive re-categorization of everyone based on how I knew them). I've received a goodly number of responses and wonderfully many offers of assistance in terms of introductions, school/theater recommendations, and temporary housing.

Tip: Build up your list of contacts.

• Every time you meet someone and make a genuine connection, get their contact information. The easiest way to do this is to give them your card (vistaprint.com), most people will return the favor.
• When you get home, punch their contact information into Outlook (or whatever you use to manage your contacts).
• In the "Notes" field make sure you write down some key information about this person. Where did you meet? What show did you do together, what year? Who are your mutual friends? Do they have kids, what are their names? And for goodness sakes, if you made out with them at the party - can you say "awkward"?
• Next, assign this person to a few different categories: Actor|Director|Writer|Teacher|Classmate|Agent, Film|Theater|Commercial|Business, SF|LA|NYC.

By making an extensive contact list you'll have a larger pool of people to call on if you need help. Or, if someone you know needs an SF theater director for their one-man-show you can connect them to someone you know. As much as possible help everyone you meet - life's just better when you do.