I've been to a few people's homes around the Westside in the past six months, and I saw many many apartments before renting one upon moving to Santa Monica last summer, and can now comment on a particular type of apartment occupied by young professionals without trust funds.

The building is two stories tall, long and skinny, with similar buildings on either side. There may be four, six, eight, or ten apartments, all one or two bedrooms. The building is divided into entryways, each entryway accessing two apartments per floor. Entryways never have doors, let alone secured doors and buzzers. Construction is stucco on chicken wire on wood frames or concrete. The pathway along the side of the building to access the rear entryways is usually poured concrete, sometimes asphalt, and is lined with some sort of skinny greenery, a wall, and then the next building, which is nearly identical to the present one.

The apartments usually have wood floors or fake wood floors of some sort of laminate made up to look like wood, floating over plywood or concrete. The front door enters into a combined living room-dining room, with a galley kitchen hidden behind a wall. The continuation of the kitchen area suggests a dining area, though this is usually too small for a table and chairs for more than two people. Sometimes there is a balcony.

Tucked to the side is a bathroom and bedroom, or two bedrooms, usually separated by the bathroom. The whole unit is roughly a square, split down the middle into the living-dining-kitchen half and the bedroom-closets-bathroom half. Sometimes one of the bedrooms has a private bath within.

The walls are decorated with framed not-art, personal photos and prints and objects collected from international travel not intended as art, like mexican sugar skulls or a kite from Shanghai. Dust collects in the corners. Everyone has at least one bookshelf in the living room. There is a couch, sometimes two, a chair, a small dining room table, sometimes a big TV sometimes no TV never a small TV, a desk and computer corner, and a slight awkwardness when entering for the lack of transition space between the public outside to the private inside. Open the door, or have it unlocked and opened for you, and you are directly into the cosy interior, and can collapse directly onto the couch from where you stand, if you feel comfortable enough with your hosts to do so.

Yesterday's run destination: main branch library

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: donuts and coffee
lunch: tuna wrap at (not recommended) Naturally, in Pacific Palisades
dinner: tofu yakisoba