Rereading my journal from when moved to Los Angeles, I’d forgotten just how stressful an experience it was when I first walked off the plane. My first anxiety-filled mission when I arrived was trying to find a car so that I could, in turn, find a place to live, work. I remember thinking that owning a car was an essential part of the LA equation–like having a tent if you want go to camping.
Let me make it perfectly clear that I don’t like driving and never have. When I was twelve I repeatedly had dreams about being on the school bus and the driver suddenly disappears and I have to talk the helm. From an early age I disliked the idea so much so that I was really late in getting my driver’s license–a year and half after my peers. My parents had to force me to take driver’s ed because they were sick of driving my ass around.
I only had budgeted about $1800 for my new wheels. The first place I looked was Craigslist, however, everything there was either too busted, too far away, too good to be true, or too out of my price range. In addition, I knew dick squat about cars, let alone buying, registering and insuring one. My first instinct was to do what my mom does when she doesn’t know something about what she is buying: look in the Consumer Reports. To me, the Consumer Reports felt more like reading the cliff notes without reading the book itself. In other words, it only helps to know that Honda Accord earned 4.3 stars on reliability if you can tell the difference between a sedan and a horse-drawn buggy. The extent of my car experience at that point had been limited to sitting shotgun while my brother drove me to school.
By some stroke of luck, uncle Craigslist landed me an afternoon meeting with Devan (pronounced dee-VON). He had advertised a 1997 red Nissan Sentra for around $1900. I met with him at a parking garage and he was wearing sunglasses the whole time. Not a very personable chap. In fact, I didn’t like his cool attitude, I didn’t like his faded LA sunglasses and I certainly didn’t like his name (which I repeatedly mispronounced). He asked me if I had car insurance and if I wanted to drive the car. I said yes even though my answer to both was a resounding no. As I was backing out I took a sharp turn out of the parking spot and rubbed the front fender against a white cement pole. Devan freaked out a little bit and I swore to myself to try and seem more dramatic than him in the hopes he would say, “That’s okay, don’t worry about it.” He didn’t fall for it. To this day, it still embarrasses me to think of that moment–not my finest.
Devan sucked and I’m pretty generous when it come to giving strangers the benefit of the doubt, especially a stranger whom I’m about to give $1800 to. He would not take a check from me (and I hadn’t yet established my new bank account because I’d only been in LA a week and had been looking for cars the whole time). My rental car needed to be returned by the end of the week and I was under an immense time constraint. Out of desperation, I withdrew that cash from my Boston account and that was that. I was now the owner of a shiny (technically it was dulled from the sun) used 1996 (he lied to me, it was not a 1997) Nissan Sentra. Added to the list of unforeseen ailments: the car’s AC was broken, the steering fluid had a slow leak, the radio was messed up, it needed new breaks and new ignition wires and, to top it all off, there was freshly spilled coffee on the front console. I was screwed and I knew it. I dubbed my car “Red Barron”.
It was even more intimidating finding an honest mechanic than it was finding the car itself. The mechanic I eventually found instantly exposed my naivety for not having had the car inspected before I purchased it. Why didn’t I think of that? Where was that in the Consumer Reports? I had spent another $700+ on the Red Barron to fix all the mechanical problems. The car made me want to cry.
Five weeks in to my adventure, while I was driving my roommate to the airport, I was rear-ended. The car that hit me was a commercial pickup truck for a plumbing company. I’ve never been in an accident but I know that if you are in an accident you should exchange basic insurance and license information. The guy refused and told me to call his company and they would take care of it. (Everyone was okay, by the way). The Red Barron was looking pretty bad, it looked as if the Hulk had tripped over the back of my car. Even that initial parking garage scrape to the front fender was nothing compared to this. The next day I was leaving to go home for Christmas and there was absolutely nothing I could do to remedy the situation until I was back in LA. It was a stressful vacation thinking about how I would get screwed again.
Yet, there is a happy ending to this story. I returned to LA and after deliberating with the plumbing company for a couple of days, they finally agreed to reimburse me for the damage done–which was well over $3K. Now, I had all the money back that I had invested as well as a car that still functions. If you are reading this, in your face Devan!
After I got my first parking ticket, I made the brash decision that I never wanted to put anymore money into this that machine. After I had found a job and became familiar with the public transportation system, I gave the car to my friend Matt. I also used a chunk of the insurance money to buy a new sweet road bicycle which I used to commute to my job. Plus, as an added bonus, I’m in the best shape of my life for riding my bike everyday. The Brokeback Nissan, for all the headache, was the best car that I ever had–all two months of it.
