Cleveland DOES hate architecture!

There was a storm this last Thursday and for some reason the threshold to my space (under the 1" gap at the bottom of my door) is lower then the overflow berm to the overflow drain next to main storm drain in the parking lot.

Water goes downhill.

My place flooded.

Since I had just moved in all my stuff was in boxes, on the floor (I was currently working on the upstairs to make room to put all the things in boxes on the floor, not really ironic but there could be a sad song about it anyway) and I learned an important lesson about the capillary effect of cardboard.

Basically a good 70% of my stuff was ruined. Books, records, my computer is pretty messed up, my mattress (which is not floating away in that photo even though it looks like it is), etc, etc, etc. The total dollar amount for the damage is pretty intense and since this was not really a habital space yet I had not gotten renter's insurance (regrets...lots of regrets...who knew this place would FLOOD?! - everyone but me).

The owner of the place is a pretty nice guy but is out of town on vacation so I am unsure as to how the situation will play out. I know that there was at least a couple of instances where the gyp walls were submerged in a up to 2 inches of standing water for quite some time and there is already some mold on the walls. This makes me very nervous. I don't like mold. I like roquefort just fine, but not wall mold.

Will TOIstudio survive? I don't know about that. I am pretty tapped out financially. I had put all my savings and gone into some credit card debt to acquire and begin fixing up the place to work as a gallery. That is pretty much gone now. I am not really happy with the idea of only existing online and was really into an architecture gallery opening up in this city. Heaven knows it needs one if it wants to keep any young and interesting people in town. Otherwise it will be the same old crap over and over and over again. (12th Avenue Townhomes anyone? - did that place survive? It looked like it was made out of paper!)

Am I bitter? A little. Sad? Oh man, there were some first editions, out of print in the rubble. Angry? Not so much. Hopeful?

Sadly, not at all.

More news as events follow.

Damn.

(if not for the grace of the MarJ I would be a hopeless mess right now.)