Withering Glance: New lease on life

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: Just about every construction crane we see in the Twin Cities is building apartments. Are we overbuilding? Having lived in lots of apartments, I am not sure I ever wish to do so again. You?

RN: If we're talking the rat traps I inhabited in the early 1980s, no. But these new complexes are a pretty luxurious-looking lot.

CP: For me, the notion of a luxury apartment is an oxymoron.

RN: Then we need to take you on a tour of one or two of the 10 zillion buildings under construction in the North Loop.

CP: An apartment in my mind is for the young, who can move in all their earthly possessions in two hours, nail a Klimt poster to the wall, drape some Indian cotton over a battered sofa and plug in a microwave. Eight months of alternating bliss and heartbreak, followed by eviction.

RN: Yes, Methuselah. Times have changed. "Three's Company" went off the air in 1984.

RN: You just described the moldering Stevens Square studio of my mid-20s, where an emotionally challenged neighbor used to fixate on the names of kitchen products, shouting them into the paper-thin wall separating our abodes. I still can't look at a package of Lorna Doones without thinking of him. You know, an hour or two of "Lorna Doone! Lorna Doone! Lorna Doone!"

CP: At least he wasn't also banging his noggin against the wall at the same time. In the Loring Park walk-up where I lived, the guy upstairs threw Madonna on the stereo each night after "bar close" time, and let 'er blast. I've hated Madge ever since.

RN: Today's rental palaces are outfitted with Pilates studios, rooftop sundecks and heated parking. In the 1980s, a rental property was considered high-end if there was a semi-functioning laundry room in the basement.

CP: Another place I rented was hit by a smell so penetrating and pestiferous that we thought we would have to move to a motel for a while.

RN: Shades of the community Frigidaire here at the plant.

RN: Perhaps we didn't know any better. It reminds me of the general lack of air conditioning back then. I'd sleep in the bathtub, sans water, and barely complain.

CP: Ah, sweet porcelain dreams of youth.

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com