After utilizing craigslist for my first apartment it took me quite a long time to drop the craigslist addiction, addiction, ADDICTION. Sure it starts with housing, then for sale (for http://newyork.craigslist.org/fur/), and what are people giving away? Then personals – now you are gone. One short trip into craigslist personals and the snare yanks tight. My laptop was no longer anything but a craigslist portal. I found myself searching (NSFW) random and awful (I’ll leave that one up to you) words to see if they’d come up and reading the (NSFW) terrible and funny entries.

Then finally it started to get old. Oh finally I could rest! Then a terrible (terribly good) friend said, “You’ve never read ‘Best-Of‘?” I was shocked and embarrassed. How could I have missed it? I laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and (NSFW) laughed until I really thought I might pee. I eventually recovered from the hysteric laughing but was deeper into my addiction than ever before. Craig, oh Craig please update Best-Of! We need it.

For quite some time I’ve been craigslist sober. I’ve even been rehabilitated where I can go on and look for a bike for sale, dabble in the personals or a MC or two and not go back for weeks.

Now to the original point of the post: my craigslist housing translations (taken from actual headlines today).

$600 – CHEAP RENT – – FREE COMMUTE! = Staten Island

$500 near YANKEE STADIUM! = Umm what? Why would that be a selling point?

Uptown!!!!! = Harlem would be downtown from this

And now for a great recurring post that must be seen in its full and glorious linkage to be appreciated. Is anybody actually dumb enough to fall for this? I can imagine several scenarios but they all involve a) creepy men b) a video camera and c) the internet.