My Craigslist Story: A Musician's Wildest Dream Turned Crumbling Nightmare

Craigslist is weird. It's weird as shit.

I just searched the "Strictly Platonic" section of the personals and this is what I found in about five seconds:

“Young attractive woman wanted to clean house. NO SEX !! NO TOUCHING!! Just wear an attractive outfit (shorts and a halfshirt, bra and panties for example) and do my dishes, laundry, fold my clothes, dust, sweep, make my bed, and clean my house for 2-3 hours wile I drink beer and watch. Thats it. I want my house cleaned and I want some eyecandy.”

Yeah, that sounds pretty platonic to me. Not unsafe or rapey at all. Or how about this one from this 46 year old male?

“I love to give a nice ass Massage. Thats it. I dont want sex and You wouldnt have to touch me at all. Of course there would be a nice donation for your time.”

For YOUR time? Don't people usually pay the masseuse for a massage? This is actually a great deal...

The sad part is that I'm sure both of these charming Craigslist posters got a few responses to their ads, most likely by very, very gross women, shattering these mens' nieve fantasies. But that is not what is really important. Craigslist is a place where fantasy can turn into reality with just a few broken sentences and a sideways flip phone picture. Let me tell you about the fantasy I had, that turned into a reality well beyond my wildest dreams in both amazing and terrible ways.

It was the summer after I graduated from college, and I finally felt free. With no papers or tests in my way, I could pursue my dream of becoming a "real musician" without my parents harassing me about my grades. But because I was still living with my parents, I had nowhere to actually crank up my guitar amp and record. So, my dear friend Jesse and I decided to find somewhere to play. We looked for warehouses, barns, empty offices, churches, stores in stripmalls...anywhere. We didn't give a shit, we just wanted somewhere to put our gear and start working on becoming rock gods.

We quickly learn that this task was going to be damn near impossible. Anytime we mentioned the word "musicians" to these people on the phone, we might as well have said "sex offender". I don't think it would have made a difference. People immediately stopped taking us seriously, and it seemed like the only people willing to let us use their space seemed like they may actually be the sex offenders.

We spent hours scouring craigslist and classified ads in the paper, for weeks on end. Then one day Jesse got the bright idea to post an ad on craigslist for us. Interesting, I thought. Let the weirdos come to us. It certainly seemed more time efficient, but also seemed like it probably wouldn't work. But we had nothing to lose.

Sure enough, within 24 hours of that post, destiny came knocking at our door. A short email from a man named Jay informed us that he was building a massive artist community close to where we lived. Musicians, visual artists, entrepreneurs, we were all welcome. Holy shit, we thought. This sounds perfect. We quickly arranged a meeting with Jay and got ourselves down there to check the place out.

It didn't take too long for us to figure out that this whole experience was going to be pretty ridiculous. As we followed the GPS towards the place, past a variety of liquor stores, fast food restaurants and a dilapidated public pool, it became apparent that we were driving directly towards a gigantic radio tower. Nah, it couldn’t be, we thought. But of course, it wouldn't have been odd enough for a Craiglist experience if that wasn't the case.

We roll up to see a sun bleached old building with the address painted on it and pull into a large gravel parking lot, surrounded by forgotten old factories from the golden era of industry in America. There were plants growing out of windows, and some brick walls that were dangerously slanted, ready to fall apart at any minute.

But looks can be deceiving.

Jay took us up the stairs of one of the buildings, past the overwhelming smell of cat piss (there was an animal shelter on the first floor) and up to what anyone would consider a musician's playground. It was an old school recording studio. There was a 2500 square foot room with 20 foot ceilings. Then there was another, decently sized B room off to the side. Both rooms were connected to a slightly elevated control room where the recording engineer sits, with double-paned glass looking down on each room. This was apparently where the state symphony would play and broadcast live on the radio in the 1950s, thus explaining the radio tower.

We were in heaven. All of a sudden Jesse and I went from not having a place to practice to having by far the best space we would ever have possibly in our lifetimes, 24/7, for next to nothing.

That summer was glorious. We got a lot of great recordings done. Our stuff was sounding professional. The drums were breathing in the room, which made all the difference. Everything had this huge open sound that you just can't fake in the small bedrooms we were used to. We’d ride around the abandoned building on razor scooters, uncovering oddities left from better days, and dead pigeons. We’d smoke joints on the roof, overlooking the urban wasteland surrounding us, wondering what other kinds of hidden gems existed out there in those abandoned buildings. 

We soon met Aaron Livingston (You've heard him sing and you probably don't even know it), who lived not far from the place. Soon he moved into the B room of the studio and we all started playing music together.

Things really couldn't have been better. And then they got really shitty.

One day, a guy by the name of Tony C showed up with a ton of gear and a standoffish attitude. This guy apparently had his fifteen minutes of fame riding the coattails of Kid Rock with his particularly generic brand of bar band blues. But now, it was clear that he was just a washed up, bitter asshole by the time he had made his way to our little musical oasis.

It quickly became apparent that no one was going to get along with this guy, as his plan was to just take over the whole studio area under the logic that since he had more gear than anyone else (about 25 guitar amps...is that really necessary?) he deserved it. So for a short period of time we all kind of shared the space (Tony C barely ever showed up) and things were fine.

September rolled around, and Jesse and I left for two weeks to go hiking, and Tony C saw his opportunity. When we got back, all of our stuff had been put in an unlocked office down the hall. When I asked Tony if we could put our stuff back in the studio where it was safe, he refused and informed us that the studio locks had been changed and only he had the key, and that he "was really in a hurry".

I already knew this guy was a total dick so it was no surprise he was acting like this. I figured I would take it up with Jay the next day and get it all sorted out. Well, the next day we came back and almost all of our gear was stolen from the unlocked office. There were a dozen empty beer cans (OUR beer) strewn about, all my guitar pedals, recording equipment, and my custom molded earplugs (these thieves were monsters - they only fit in my goddamn ears) were gone. All because Tony C didn't let us lock our stuff up in the studio we had been using the whole summer until he showed up.

Things were all downhill from there. It turned out Tony C was a raging alcoholic, which eventually landed him either in jail or somewhere far away for a long time. His presence was replaced with an obnoxious pop-punk producer with a hot-shot attitude. Then there was flooding during a hurricane that collapsed part of the roof and ruined people's equipment. Verizon illegally put cellphone satellites on the radio tower.

And then Jesse fell through the floor. Yup. Fell through one floor, hit the next one, that one broke, and he fell through the next one.

This happened one day as we were waiting for Aaron to show up, and we decided to finally check out one of the more decrepit buildings on the property. The floors were pretty rotted, and there was basically no roof. I stuck closely to the concrete stairwell, but Jesse is a daredevil and may actually be an invincible person, so he likes to do crazy things. I was standing there taking pictures and all of a sudden I heard a very quiet sound of crumbling wood. I yelled to Jesse in disbelief, thinking that the rules were that it has to be loud for something tragic to happen. I heard a distant voice below me that calmly stated “I fell through the floor”. I ran down the stairs and saw him emerge, covered in dirt and rotted wood with his shirt wrapped around his hand. We rushed to the emergency room for the large cut on his hand and the massive puncture wound in his back, which was pretty close to the damage of a gunshot. As we left, I knew that was the last time we would ever see that godforsaken place.

So I guess my Craigslist experience pretty much went down like most others. It started off a bit intimidating, then too good to be true, and then it turned out my stuff got stolen and the friend I brought with me almost got killed. Maybe I'm no different than the girl scouring the platonic relationships section thinking "I really want to clean some guy's apartment for 2-3 hours in a skimpy outfit while he drinks beer and watches." Maybe its naivety, or just straight up stupidity; but sometimes you just have to overlook the overwhelming amount of red flags that go up for that one moment of glory. Who knows, you may find yourself getting an ass massage that someone is gonna pay YOU for...just don't expect to leave with your pride.

Stephen Greenberg is a musician living in Brooklyn [Ed. Note: Now Phila]. He appreciates icebergs, bagels and perpetual motion.