Curbed Horror Stories are firsthand reader reports about terrible New Orleans apartment experiences past and present. This week, in honor of Renters Week, we're having a rental horror story showdown across all Curbed sites, with the winner receiving a staycation. Have a terrible tale to share? It's not too late to submit. In this tale, a sublet becomes a crash pad for a parade of weirdos, including bad hip-hop DJs, drug dealers and white supremacists.
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For a brief stint in my early 20s, when my decision making was spotty, I subletted a room in an upstairs apartment in Uptown. The other renters were a friend at the time and her co-worker. The apartment was a one bedroom. I shared the bedroom with my friend who spent an average of maybe a couple nights a month actually at the apartment and the other nights with a guy she was more or less dating. Her co-worker slept on a loveseat in what could be best described as a living room. Over the span of a couple months, other random people started trickling in to the apartment who he invited to crash there. Very strange things started happening. One of the new arrivals claimed he was a hip-hop producer and brought in turn tables which he constantly spun very loud, mediocre rap music on. Then a friend of the hip-hop producer also joined in the mix. They also sold pot out of the apartment.
Sharing the small space with these strange three men was beginning to get uncomfortable, but the real tipping point was when copies of Hitler speeches and other Nazi/white supremacist propaganda started surfacing on the walls and furniture of the apartment, which was doubly bewildering as the new "tenants" were not caucasian.
I left the apartment soon after this discovery.