vote for HOA pedro
Be wary of anyone who volunteers to be President of their condo or neighborhood's Homeowner's Association - the only people voluntarily pursuing these roles always have an agenda to push.
Certainly all the items on that agenda might not be bad: repaving the front sidewalk or insisting on installing a new garage door before the old one fails are fine goals in and of themselves, but it never stops there. If there's a pool in your subdivision it's no coincidence they use it the most, so when summer rolls around get ready for a proposal to increase the filtration and cleaning schedule from monthly to weekly. Or, if they live on the top floor, don't be surprised when they show up with a plan to add a roof deck and try to jam it through a vote.
They're only interested in holding the seat of power - if you can call presiding over quarterly meetings where more than half the people invited can't be bothered to attend power - to advocate for their own bullshit, not because they have a burning desire to deal with the insanity of being responsible for actions of people they barely know. A by all means, a non-exhaustive list of garbage a good HOA president has to deal with, for which self-serving sycophants haven't the time of day, follows below:
- Despite multiple emails warning people to use the freight elevator for furniture deliveries, someone took a bunch of shit up the front stairs and now the drywall is smashed and scraped in fifteen different places
- The dog from #2W peed on the entryway carpet and its owners just hoped no one would notice
- Jared from downstairs is perpetually a thousand dollars behind on his monthly dues, but still the money to pay leases on the two BMWs he parks in the garage
- During the week the building is having a new roof put on everyone else's schedule magically fills up, so you have to hang around to let them in every morning and give them access to your unit for bathroom and water breaks
- Even though you sent out a snow shoveling schedule back in October the first four times it's snowed this year you've emailed the person responsible reminding them it's their turn only to have them reply, "Oh I'm so sorry but I'm out of town this week, would you mind covering my rotation for me?"
So the burden to schedule painters, clean up after dogs, deal with assholes, be late to work, and shovel snow at 6am falls on you, the reluctant, new HOA president. After your last meeting, where the former president - who just allocated himself the only available indoor parking spot - said he was too busy traveling for work this year to continue in the role, and the Secretary and Treasurer looked silently at the ground when you asked if they wanted the job, you sighed and said you'd take the job if no one else wanted it. You were voted in unanimously.
So when next quarter's meeting rolls around, don't show up in your straight-from-the-office business casual; bust in wearing this OFF-WHITE Aviator Airbrushed Bomber and show your responsibility-shirking sloths of neighbors that you mean business.
Price: $1,127
Brand: OFF-WHITE
Store: Dope Factory
Why: Jackets like this are the kind you buy for the long run, and not only because you could cop eight Patagonias for the same the price point so it better be worth it. This is the jacket that you buy in your 20's or early 30's hoping that the military artwork and naked woman on the back will lend you a sheen of cool, but as you wear it in to your 40's and 50's suddenly that coat becomes you - you're the cool dad who's been wearing that faded leather jacket for years now, and it's a part of your social DNA. So what if OFF-WHITE might just be Virgil Abloh's elaborate troll job - if he makes a few fire pieces along the way and you buy one that's as good an origin story as any.