Viva Moses!
The myth of Moses started at first sight. There he was, pictured in a Craigslist ad, hunched over, cane in hand, giving a tour of the apartment I would eventually call home.
I didn't actually meet Moses when I moved in. I never signed a lease, nor shook his hand. It was all part of a gentlemen's agreement so popular in this city. We sent him a check (roughly on time), we never asked for apartment maintenance, and he never raised our ridiculously low rent. Everybody was a winner.
Finding a room for rent is such a horror show in this City! After wading through far too many Craigslist ads, I saw the one for 576 and knew I wanted to be a part of the apartment. I was a bit late to the open house, having had to visit other rooms in Brooklyn. The neighborhood was somewhat dark - two kids were break dancing to Arabic music in front of Met Foods. Being the last one to the open house, I had the opportunity to spend some one-on-two time with my potential roommates Rusty and Kylie. I wasn't sure what Rusty thought of me, so I concentrated the conversation on Kylie. Whatever worked, worked. I moved in on February 1, 2007.
Here's a funny story about the apartment search: A guy by the name of John Wray was living in the tiny room I would soon be occupying. He was moving out because of a love interest gone bad with our roommate Kylie. (I later found out that he was having second thoughts about moving out, but by that point, I had already paid the deposit.) As for John Wray, we actually met at a different open house here in Brooklyn! We were both trying to survive the cut-throat world of the Craigslist roommate search and, since neither of us had found a place to live, considered moving in to a place together. I must have been invited to live in 576 just before we seriously began that search. And thus, moved in to John Wray's old room, unbeknownst to either of us.
As for Moses, I'd heard plenty of tales about Moses. Some turned out to be true. Some may still be legend. All to be presented here.
Moses is a Ukrainian Jewish holocaust survivor. He apparently owns multiple properties throughout the neighborhood, which he bought in the 1960's as the Italians began to move out. In the bad ol' days of the 1970's, he drove his big Buick boat of a car from property to property. With a handgun in the glove compartment and another handgun on him, he would collect rent from his tenants at the start of every month.
His wife Rose got sick in the early- to mid- aughts and they moved upstate to the town of Gloversville. This was right around the time that Brooklyn and the neighborhood began to turn the corner. A bar called Soda had opened down the street, another one called Beast had also opened, and there were some kind of rumors about a new arena deal. Moses didn't know about this, and continued to charge us an absurdly low ghetto-priced rent. And everything was OK in the world.
My roommate Tyler and I were driving back from a weekend on Big Moose Lake in 2010 and decided we would stop by Gloversville, NY to pay a visit with Moses. Neither of us had met him, which only reinforced our self-protectionist interests in possibly getting a written document showing we actually lived at the property. Our "lease", based on a handshake that never actually took place, was only good so long as Moses was alive. Tyler would even go so far as to ask about buying the place, but that's a different story.
We walked in to the small house Moses called home; "Welcome to the place that will soon be my grave," he greeted us. Not the most reassuring thing for the lease-less renters. A massive guard dog barked at us from behind a fence. Tyler offered Moses a potted plant. Moses looked at it and goes, "What am I going to do with this? Go give it to some girl." (He ended up keeping that plant.)
We sat down in Moses' living room and talked with him. He then walked us around his house, showing us pictures of his past, constantly saying "...but I don't want to keep you" before jumping into another story. He talked about his wife Rose, she actually had passed away a couple of years ago. They had met in Ukraine before the war; when he returned from the concentration camp, she was all that was left. Everyone else was dead. So they decided to make a new start in New York.
He got a job plucking chickens in the East Village, something like a nickle for every chicken plucked. He saved his money and eventually began buying property in Brooklyn. By the 1960's he owned this one, 576 Vanderbilt. In fact, he operated the bar downstairs. Around that time, the race riots started picking up. He understood the danger. Moses walked down to the precinct and paid off all the cops, telling them to look after his property. He then went back to his bar and set up molotov cocktail bombs and lined them up outside. "The Nazis couldn't take me, I'll be damned if some thugs try to take me." The buildings at all three corners of the intersection burned. Nobody touched his.
By 2010, Moses didn't make many trips to visit his properties. Tyler asked him about selling, and Moses said he wasn't interested. He would be leaving it all for his kids. We mentioned a lease, and Moses again wasn't interested: "Leases involve lawyers, and lawyers involved money." "What are we going to do when you're gone?" Tyler asked. "I'll tell me daughter to take care of you. You can trust me on that." Very little argument could be made.
Ever since, I've included a little note with every rent payment. I never really had much to say - just a hi, the neighborhood is great, hope you're doing well. Part of it was this false idea that, should something happen to Moses, we'd have something to fall back on. I also genuinely wanted to share greetings with him. He told us he never made friends with his tenants. I think he made an exception for our case.