Of Awesome Views and Psycho Roommates

After living in our pension for a little over a month, our friend, EIleen, decided to go back to Portland. Kari and I would have been fine staying and splitting the rent two ways, but at that point the unit was having some problems, i.e. the bathroom from the apartment right above ours was leaking copious amounts of water through the ceiling and into our apartment & the owners were doing nothing about it. At that timeI was approached by two other girls from Elite about moving in with them.

Jada & Erin were the girls who were looking for new roomates to share their studio apartment at the Decoplage. Jada was a self proclaimed "Southern Belle" from Georgia and Erin was from a small town in Washington. They both seemed really nice at the time and they had an amazing, albeit small, unit at the popular complex, the Decoplage. The apartment was on the 12th floor of the building and afforded us views of the beach and its vast expanse of cerulean waters. At that time, the Decoplage was considered "model towers". Most of the models on the beach lived there which gave it somethng of a fab dorm atmosphere. The building sat at the end of Lincoln Road, right on the beach with a gym, valet parking, concierge services, pool and private beach access. It was luxury digs when it comes to model apartment living. But along with the "luxury" came steep rents so the more the merrier. Kari and I moved in.

The Decoplage....tall pink building to the right of the pic....not too shabby:



The VIEW!




After living there for several weeks, Kari and I started to feel uncomfortable. Jada and Erin were very clique-ey with each other and for some reason, Erin had a problem with Kari. This has, to this day, remained a mystery to us since there was never any real issue other than perhaps Erin was gaining a lot of weight and Kari could out eat a football player any day and still have a perfect body....being that they were both blond and therefore in direct competition with each other....jealousy maybe? Or maybe it was because she would be on the phone at every hour of the night & day with her boyfriend and we never got to use the horn because of it....or get much sleep. There is nothing more annoying than getting woken up at 4am by someone whispering a conversation over the phone with their sig other. 4 am? Seriously, what the hell do you have to talk about at 4am? Anyways, I think Kari may have mentioned something about this to Erin and therefore upset her. Like I said, it's a mystery.

Jada, on the other hand, I dismissed as shy rather than think that she was an outright bitch. I was wrong. The girl never, ever smiled, and also had some obsessively weird relationship with her fiance who lived in Georgia. Another all hours on the phone thing. We ended up all cohabitating in this studio and it got to the point where Kari and I dreaded to go home and would hang out with other friends and at coffee shops till we just had to go back for showers and sleeping. At this point we had met with a zany photographer from NY named Gary who perenially wore a black Stetson and who dubbed us the "anti-models" because we were such normal girls and just did the job for the sake of doing the job, nothing else. He took us under his wing and introduced to us a bunch of great characters, one of which ended up becoming my best guy friend, Jean-Paul. Luckily, this meant we had a lot of people to hang out with and that kept us out of the apartment.

I would say another month passed and my friend from Portland, Jason, who was also a model let me know that his two roommates were going back to Canada and he needed new roomies....and did I know anyone? Oh, did I know anyone? LOL! Jason had a one bedroom on the unfabulous third floor of the Decoplage....but it was a one bedroom! When I jumped on the opportunity, he offered me & Kari the bedroom and took the living room as his home base. Jason is and always has been the quintessential gentleman. Kari and I won the lottery with him as a roommate. We traded our beach view for a view of Burger King and the Albion Hotel and lived happily ever after that season.

I have to add that several years later, while living in LA, I did a shoot for Razor magazine with a photographer, Ian, who I had become friends with. When I arrived on set my heart sank as I saw that the other model working that day was Jada. It is a small industry, really. We were cordial to each other. That was that. The next day, Ian called me to say that Jada had talked some serious crap about me while they were shooting together. She said that she hated me because I had tried to steal her fiance. WTF?!?!?!?!? Psycho is the only word that comes to mind. Please note: I NEVER met her fiance and didn't so much as see a picture of him....ever. And even if the guy had been around, I am sorry, but I am not into the Confederate flag owning, cross burning, gun rack having type of dudes. No thank you. I like my boys urban & rough around the edges. Not to mention, that I have always had an internal rule that makes any man in a relationship completely taboo and untouchable to me. I don't care if Johnny Depp had walked up to me one day when I was single and asked me out....if he was attached, then he would be out of the question. I am a kharma freak so you can chalk my morals up to that.

So now that I have gotten my South Beach geography all ironed out for you, I'll be able to go on and tell more tales of work and play Miami style. And believe me...there is much more to tell.