Craig Solomon

9/5/2011

Intro to Journalism

Heather Chaplin

Hurricane Irene created the perfect excuse for 22-year-old vagrant Winslow Laroche to blow his way into a comfortable apartment on Hancock St. The Bushwick apartment and the five residents locked inside sustained more damage from one unwanted guest than the evacuated danger-zones of Manhattan.

"My roommate who was not here was used by Winslow as a welcome tool for a weekend stay," said Tyler Zuker, 20 year old junior at Eugene Lang College and one of the five tenants of this apartment .

Laroche made claims that he had been invited to wait out the storm with Craig Solomon, one of the other tenants. This had perplexed the other residents because Solomon had taken up shelter in his Long Island home and was not expected to return until the storm passed. As soon as public transportation had shut down, the floors of apartment 1R became the bed, ashtray, and garbage can for Laroche.

Abuse of his presence had occurred during the previous school year when Laroche transformed into a parasitic couch surfer. According to his claims, Laroche is a student of Media Studies at Eugene Lang and has an apartment off of the Morgan Avenue stop. Both of these "truths" have been debunked by the victims of Laroche's invasion.

"After living with our "extra roommate" this whole year, the idea that he actually went to school and had a place of residence appeared to be a complete pathological fib, due to his failure to leave our house or even attend a class that had not been cancelled," said Solomon.

As the city rapidly begun to reawaken after the non existent disaster, the comfort of the Brooklyn apartment was too homey for Laroche to want to leave. All of the residents of 1R knew that their first school week would be spent in the company of this dirty free loader if someone didn't give him a jolt out. Laroche was asked to leave repeatedly by Zuker, only to be payed no mind like a child were to ignore a request to clean their room. To make matters worse Laroche tried and failed to turn the roommates against each other and assert his loyalty. However, each tenant had all of their own reasons to not trust or enjoying spending time with Laroche.

It all came to head after an intense verbal confrontation between Zuker and Laroche. Zuker had perviously had his Ipad and Ipod accidentally borrowed by Laroche.

"Dude it just fell into my backpack I had no idea I had it for a week," lied Laroche.

Zuker pointed out how Laroche clearly has trouble following obvious polite requests and Laroche laid accusations of harassment on him. Shouting had ensued when Laroche finally got the hint and decided never to return to apartment 1R. This was not before intentionally forgetting his belongings as he had done so many times before and attempting to lurk till he blends in with the furniture he dirtied.