Bender: Travel guide, prices and free housing · 2026

АГАлександр Горбачевmenus12 · Jul 3, 2010Read

The month is ending, a new one is beginning, and every time it's the same thing – apartment hunting, moving, bills. And all because after a month you realize – you can't live like this. After a stuffy basement, the captain found his sanctuary in Staten Island, further from the hustle and closer to his side job. Like any place of residence, there are pros and cons here. I felt the coldest stone when I was returning home late at night from Brighton. The route started at 1:30 from the Brighton station, then a transfer at the Coney Island station to the N train to Bensonhurst, from there to the R train to Bay Ridge, and from there by bus home. Being absolutely sure that buses run around the clock, at 2:30 I was already at the bus stop in Bay Ridge. Indeed, buses run around the clock... all of them... except the one I needed! So, Bay Ridge, 2:30 in the morning, a backpack full of groceries on my back (because according to the legend, my neighbor was supposed to pick me up by car), but the scariest thing is that, as always, SUDDENLY O_o the cold hit, and I was dressed, to put it mildly, for summer. Dancing with a tambourine didn't help me warm up or summon the bus. Letting out a fairly large piece of my emotions, I will say that the bus finally arrived at 5:40, and by 7 o'clock I was sort of home, and by 10 I had to be at work. A very sad story. To my luck, there are more pleasant sides (although at that moment the desire to live was quite questionable). A private house, second floor, a separate room, after renovation, there is furniture for sitting/lying/hanging. In general, the house itself is gorgeous. The landlady is a Russian language teacher. She is almost never at home – either at the dacha or at work. Her son and his fiancée live in the basement. This comrade deserves a separate paragraph. Even when I first came to see the room, the first thing my eyes fell on was a bass guitar standing in the corner. Actually, from that moment I realized that I would stay here. The landlady told me about her son, that he is a musician and so on. Pleasant neighbors are always good. When moving in, I got to know him better. Of course, the first thing I was interested in knowing was when he played, where, what, and with whom. Now the captain can say with a VERY IMPORTANT EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE that he lives next door to a dude who hung out, drank, and played on the same stage with guys like CANNIBAL CORPSE, BEHEMOTH, CHILDREN OF BODOM, DIMMU BORGIR, recorded one song (bass) with CHIMAIRA on ROADRUNNER RECORD, ...my hearing dulled after that, but that's not all. And he told about it with such an imperturbable expression on his face, as if everyone does only that xD. Maybe it is so, who knows, I just didn't hear a gram of pathos in his voice. After 9 years of metal, he quit that business and started writing trance, and actually cool stuff, not the trashy techno we have. And now it takes 25 minutes to get to work instead of 2 hours. By the way, today I felt like Bender from Futurama, because today I was bending O_o all day. I would even say that today I was acting as a conveyor belt that bends and staples books. For those in the armored train – there are printed books of approximately A4 format (it's all the same, different measurements here), a print run of 1000 copies, Bender's task is to convert the A4 format to A5 (again, approximately) by folding it evenly in half, and then securing the material with a super-stapler. Moreover, the day before, these A4 sheets were A3 sheets, but they were mercilessly cut by the captain on a hellish cutting machine of non-repentance. The work is tedious, but not difficult. They don't pay mountains of gold, but they feed you well and sometimes even treat you to beer. On the other work front, it's restless. American bureaucracy won't let me get a job on a boat. To get a security license, I need to get a local ID (Non-driver license). After standing in line for an hour in the morning (by the way, I was standing q