Sayōnara Sturdee, may we never meet ever again

Six years. Five months. Two days. 

I counted down to the last minute, the final moments of which we would inhabit this godforsaken place – a place I have, for many long days, thought that every god above and beyond the cosmos had just about abandoned… and that we would never, ever escape it for as long as we’d be alive. 

Alas, at the merciful grip of the Great Magnet, from the darkness came reprieve, and even as I write this, I am numb with disbelief. 

I have dreamt of this moment… for so very long… said Morpheus at the end Matrix Revolutions, during the scene when the Machines spare the remnants of humanity from total annihilation, subsequently ending a centuries-long war. 

Is this real?… he says as he looks toward his friend with teary eyes.

I joke with my wife and friends a lot with regards to this scene and finally being able to move away. And while I often share this (rather beautiful) glimpse of cinema in satire… in truth… it sums up everything how I felt in the moment when I realized that we will, indeed, leave the godless and lawless wonder that is 519 Sturdee – a place, that by all accounts, seems to be marred by eternal chaos and misery. 

So how can I tell you this story? Well, perhaps by starting at the beginning. 

The Sturdee saga began in the summer of 2017, one of the muggiest and smokiest recorded up until that point in British Columbia. I was in the process of transitioning jobs, from a rural newspaper in Sooke, to one in the heart of Victoria. Rental apartments, even back then, were becoming increasingly scarce and out of reach. After several weeks of feverish searching, we had found nothing; just an endless list of overpriced, musty, run-down scum pits. It was deep in this endeavour that we had caught a break however – a fellow colleague knew of a fresh vacancy in her building, and that it was going to be posted soon on the rental market. 

Without hesitation, we pounced on the opportunity. 

Upon first look, it all seemed rather okay – an open concept hallway four-storey building built in the late 1960s, leading up three flights of stairs, into a two-bedroom suite one would call spacious, even today. It had an almost Khrushchevka look [Russian for a cheap four-to-five-storey building built en masse during the Soviet era throughout the USSR].

Needless to say, it was in rough shape to begin with. The man who previously lived there had been evicted following months of unpaid rent and multiple horrific mental breakdowns. These manic episodes at the behest of this individual scarred the apartment with insidious signs of violence and rituals; a fist-sized hole in the bathroom door; a closet shutter rail torn straight out of the drywall; stains of red candle wax on specific corners of the second bedroom and living room; and, my personal favourite, countless needles and burnt/fragmented pieces of shaving blades hidden in the carpet, which we had to pick out ourselves by hand, one by one.

Despite our pleas with the so-called building caretaker to clean and wash the place, nothing was done – and, as of the time of writing, all those things remain in the same state as we moved in, more than six years ago, without a single repair or improvement.

And yet, despite all the signs – the dirty, putrid hallways, the constant stench of cigarette and marijuana smoke, we were desperate and tired of searching. So we took it. 

Day one of moving in, the light cover under the ceiling fan fell as soon as we turned on the switch, smashing on the floor, very narrowly missing our heads; thinking back, perhaps this was an omen of things to come. 

And came they did, in swift succession, one after another. 

Just months in, our neighbour above, a lovely lady and her dog, abruptly moved away. In her place moved a prepubescent couple with a shrieking creature that I would reluctantly call a baby. These two marvels of human evolution spent all of their time inside the apartment, either yelling at each other or viciously engaging in intercourse on perhaps the squeakiest furniture imaginable [while their cryptid animal child shrieked on top of its lungs]. And when they didn’t do either of those things, they’d treat their whole apartment as a massive cornhole field, tossing and dropping objects with delirious fun. 

Then one day, they disappeared. Shrieking baby and all. For three or so months, it seemed as if we had finally found some sliver of paradise and silent peace. But the cosmos would not have it, for our journey through the circles of hell would be just beginning. 

Appearing almost from the cracked drywall itself, came the pinnacle of the modern asshole: a self-professed DJ/dog walker. Oh yes. This fine specimen had a recording studio set up – right above our heads – and would not hesitate to practice his shitty beats at everyone’s expense during all hours of the day or night. Despite being a thin man of small stature, it didn’t stop him from opening his door (from the top of the fourth floor where his suite was) every morning to shout obscenities at me the moment I left for work (this was shortly after I confronted him about his noise, so his microscopic view of the world perceived me as his main threat). Regardless, for an entire year, he rained just absolute terror on our peace of mind. Besides his shitty “music” he’d purposely stomp his heel as hard as he could into the floor, assured well enough that it would give us a violent jolt; after all, micro-aggressions against his neighbours seemed to be the only sense of satisfaction he’d get from his miserable existence.

This went on for a while, up until, following a harrowing work week, my own wire broke and soon enough I was on the same floor as he was (much to his own surprise). Needless to say, I am not a violent man, but months of consistent volleys of harassment and verbal abuse from this boorish deadbeat had just about tipped my pancakes; and I was about ready at that point to tip his. 

Nothing happened however, since, much like a chihuahua yapping violently at its perceived aggressors, his entire arsenal consisted of what I call vapour aggression; an appropriate term for such a personality, in which an individual behaving in a malicious manner dances the fine line between instigation and instant retribution, something that, even with me at his shores, he could not face. 

But, I digress. Eventually Discount Eminem managed to piss off just about everyone else in the building, ultimately getting himself evicted.

Following his eviction, the suite remained empty for several months, again, promising peace of mind above our heads. In the meantime, our colleague and friend next door had moved out as well, leaving two empty suites around us. 

What followed was pulled right out of the realm of absurdity, guaranteeing that, for as long as we lived there, we’d never have decent and reasonable neighbours next to us. Within months, a trio of sisters had moved in the above suite, and a young couple next to theirs. Though seemingly-peaceful at first, this, too, would soon end.

Over the years, Sturdee was both the antagonist and the protagonist; the shelter from the storm, as well as the storm itself.

One of the three sisters had an electric drum setup, in which she would not hesitate to play at high volume via a powerful speaker system in their suite. This ensured that every other day, we’d be welcomed to a deep tribal beat of drums straight out of the Congo that shook our floors and windows. On top of that, all three of them stomped their way around as if they weren’t 60 kg women, but 4,000 kg elephants. Coupled with the fact that they seemingly spent 99% of their time in the kitchen (in what sounded like they cooked all their food on the floor) unleashed a torment of pounding and smashing noise never encountered before in my entire life, even in the lowest ends of the earth, in the worst of the worst slums. They each also managed to work perfectly synchronized rotating shifts, so it guaranteed that when one left for work, another arrived, continuing an endless assault of noise. Oh, and one of them sang. In full voice. At 2 AM, all the way up and down the stairs.

Meanwhile, the quiet couple in the far top corner of the building had since split, leaving just him in the suite. And what better way to get through his breakup, than dealing/doing meth and throwing massive parties at all hours of the day or night. This too, went on for a few months, until he and his entire druggie ensemble were kicked out of the building. 

I could go on, and this blog could be 1,000 pages long, so I won’t. Sturdee would remain troubled by a select rotten few, who somehow kept sneaking in for the entire duration of our tenancy. Notable mentions include the drug-dealing prostitution operation that ran for at least a year right next door to us, which often erupted in violent domestics between the junkies inside, who would awaken from their drugged-out stupor and begin screaming and smashing furniture in their suite.

Or the woman who would subsequently move in, whose suite bellowed a distinctive smell of death and decaying flesh. She enjoyed laying in the fetal position on the bare floor outside her door (in the middle of the hallway), and took at least (without exaggeration) 12 baths per day (I’d hear this while working from home, with the hot water going off around all hours of the day and night, daily).

Or the aggressive drunkard who moved on the fourth floor on the north wing of the building, who, on his second day, was escorted by a small army of police after violently beating his roommate (so loudly in fact, that tenants in a neighbouring building called the cops). For the record, this lunatic still resides there, careless and free, despite his ongoing campaign of terror on several other neighbours, particularly the one living below him, who, from day one, just wanted some peace and quiet.

And thus, this brings me to a rather sombre conclusion. Before we left Sturdee for good, my wife and I went to all the neighbours we knew over the years, the ones who managed to bring us joy and solace throughout all this time – who sympathized, who listened, who helped, and got us through some truly hard times. It’s why our departure from Sturdee is nothing but bittersweet.

While I feel hardened by my experiences, and relieved we no longer live there, I am equally saddened to see genuinely-good people be stuck, time and time again, beside horrible individuals who have no regard for others, and no right to be in a residential building near civilized people. To see them be systemically failed, over and over – as we were – by the abhorrently-mismanaged building management company, by the incompetence of the municipality and the carelessness of the provincial government.

To know that they, too, deserve to leave this place – this mecca of poverty and turmoil, stuck forever in a loop of misery and hopelessness. In my departure, I am cognizant of the mark Sturdee has left on me; the good, the bad and the ugly, as it does on all who live (and die) there.

Most of all, it serves as a living reminder that pain and darkness, too, shall end, and that those rays of light will, in fact, someday break through the clouds above.