Feeling nostalgic / Retro websites

Posted: July 12, 2026

More than a few years ago, I lived in a really old and dilapidated apartment, in a really cool part of the city. And it was awesome!

At one point the apartment was likely a gem of the city...it had 10 foot high ceilings with picture rail near the ceilings, a private balcony overlooking the city, the biggest bedroom I've ever had, a really nice kitchen and dining space, and a huge living room...all for $350 a month (because it was no longer a gem). It was so affordable because hadn't been kept up with and there were chronic problems, such as: mayflies (I think - although I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between those and termites) that flooded the bathroom every spring time for a couple weeks then disappeared, endless vines growing through the window in the shower, never ending dripping water in the kitchen (thankfully water was covered by the rent). Instead of faucet handles in the bathtub I had vice grips attached to the metal stubs coming out of the wall.

Occasionally, after doing as much pruning of the bathroom vines as possible, I had to straddle the railing of the balcony while clutching the brick window frame with one hand, and with the other I'd extend a nine iron as far as I could reach to yank out as much of the bathroom vines as possible.

The landlord was easy to work with and would let me deduct the cost of repairs from the rent - for instance, when a hurricane blew apart the screen door on the balcony, I replaced it with a new door from Home Depot and just deducted that from the rent.

Just as all places in Charlotte, the building was swarming with palmetto bugs and they used that high picture rail near the ceiling as a super highway, but I barely noticed them (unless I was hosting a group of friends). Did you know they can fly?!? One of them flew directly at a guest as she was exiting the bathroom. The look of horror on her face, and a few other ongoing issues, is why I ultimately moved.

There were other issues too: Being adjacent to two different bars there were ocassionally late night chaos spilling out towards our front door. And being adjacent to a bus stop on a main route, the exterior of the building was ocassionally treated as a public restroom.

The building was falling apart but it was a wonderful place to live in that time of my life. And although I was mostly annoyed by all those issues at the time, I now look mostly with a sense of nostalgia remembering how great it was in the autumn and springtime (after the mayflies died out).

One cool thing about the area was it being so close to lots of great restaurants, parks, and Central Peidmont Community College's main campus where I'd walk to take some web design/development classes to earn a web design certificate. Recently I was going through some old files from those classes and I stumbled on two websites I created for that class - talk about walking down memory lane! I really loved retro video games and science fiction movies based on PKD stories, which inspired these two class projects. At least I know they were made with valid HTML ;)