We lived here for three years in Building III, during the WWB project. We faced the highway. Unfortunately, we saw a model apartment, and no one bothered to mention that the apartment we were going to rent faced into the constant buzz and drone of the Beltway, and that during the day, the buzz and drone was accentuated with the constant thuding of off-ramp stanchions being pounded into place. And no one bothered to mention that the model had a vastly different floorplan from the apartment we were renting. Technically, I believe that could be a felony called a bait-and-switch, but I'm an academic, not an attorney...

Other than that, my wife and I not-so-affectionately termed the complex "East Berlin" for its joyless landscaping, its solid concrete construction, and its general shoddiness, which ran from a front door with the peephole painted shut, to cabinet doors that fell off suddenly, to the majority of electrical outlets that didn't work, to a balcony door on which I put up my own weather stripping to block the draft. The refrigerator saw its best days in 1991; the heaters/air conditioners brought to the apartment all the charm of a cheap hotel.

And the weekly hot water outages enabled us to feel like we were doing our part for the environment by reducing our energy consumption, as any good comrade in East Berlin would (when the government forced them to), and even when the hot water worked, all you could hope for was tepid water if you didn't get up before 5am. And don't bother trying to throw out trash on a Sunday; the garbage shoot will be backed up many, many floors from the bottom.

Ah, and the shuttle. No experience at Riverside Park was more rewarding than having some guy who still seemed drunk from the night before rocketing over speed bumps at 30 mph while talking on his cell phone at 7am. It was a tremendous joy.

Let me not forget the elevators. My wife and I each had an experience in which the elevator suddenly dropped, jerked to a halt, and then started moving upwards on its own. It took me the whole way to the top (16th) floor. Once I got off, I walked down.

And the people' Why, they were peachy. The office staff, on a good day, were merely indifferent, and on other days were typically hostile and unwilling to report the crimes that occurred on the grounds to the tenants in any real way. The maintenance people were friendly enough, but they appeared to have been instructed never actully to replace anything, just jury-rig it so it lasts for another couple weeks. About half of the tenants were OK; they were just regular people biding their time until they could move into something more spacious like coffin, but many of the tenants were unbearable.

So why did we stay for three years' We were waiting to leave the area, and it took a long time to materialize. But we did leave. And that day was fantastic.

Don't live here unless you can't afford something else. The extra $200-300 a month you'll pay for a livable apartment will be worth it. Besides, the bubble's burst, and there should be a lot of empty condos around with desperate owners who will be willing to rent them on the cheap side. That 35K was what we gave them to live there for three years. I would give them another 35K to avoid living there for another three years.

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