Haunting old places: so this must be what a ghost feels like…

Recently, thanks to the internet, Zillow & a bored but inquisitive mind, I came across something I’ve wondered about but haven’t seen in thirty years.  

My first real apartment in the city that I got on February 1, 1989.  I wasn’t quite the hermit I am now, I was in my twenties, dated a bit and family visited on the weekends.

And then on the first Friday in August 1994, I came home from work to find a Sheriff’s notice on the front door.  The owner of the building, delinquent in his taxes and with a stack of unpaid gas, water, trash & sewage bills, had deserted the property. 

We (myself and 2 other tenants) had 60 days to vacate the premises.  I honestly cried like a big baby, I lived there 5 1/2 years and loved my place.

I eventually moved to a neighborhood closer to downtown, and in the 30 years I’ve been gone, have looked at old photos on occasion and wondered what happened to the place after I was booted to the curb.  And now I know.

The building from the outside, 1989.  It had an insurance office and two apartments above.  (I was on the second floor, in the rear.)

  And how it looks in 2023.  (Pretty much the same, a bit scruffier.)

My living room in 1991, and my friend Rebecca dropping by for a visit.  To the left of the double bookcases was my kitchen.  To the right, my laundry room & bathroom.

And here’s that same room in 2023.  It’s a woman’s place now, and boy does this lady decorate.

Here’s the wall with my couch, in 1990.  That was my first girlfriend in Pittsburgh, Rossi.

Here’s that same wall now, 30 years later.  By the way, do you see that framed photo collage by the current tenant’s front door?

I had a collage by that front door 30 years earlier.  Here’s a pic from 1991, with my sisters Courtney & Donda-Lin.

Here’s my sister Shawn in August 1993, celebrating her 30th birthday.  I baked her that cake, y’know!

That same kitchen, 30 years later.

  Here’s a boring pic of my boring bedroom in 1990…

And here’s Miss Modern Day’s bedroom in 2023.  I am impressed.

 

I don’t have any photos of my bathroom back in the day, but I recognize this layout like I’d been in here yesterday. 

Finally, here’s the laundry room now, and how it was in 1993.  (That’s me, smoking a cigarette out the window.) 

 

Well, not everything changed in 30 years—in the current (first) photo, that’s my same linoleum floor!