I'm holding off on spreading the news around too prematurely, in any sort of official capacity, since we've only got verbal agreements, letters of intent, plus earnest money given, but it's looking good for us on the Evanston space. We've arrived at verbal agreements with both the seller and current occupant and the landlord.

Restaurant Real Estate guy, I believe, has a good relationship with the building owner, and that may have influenced the deal the landlord gave us, which included a 20% discount off the current rent and 2 free months (rent "abatement", as I learn the lingo). Nice.

It's almost been a bit too easy, and I realize as I type that that I shouldn't even be typing that, but there it is, it's out there, I said it, no backspace key is going to allow me to pretend I'm not thinking it constantly. Which is another reason that I'm holding out posting about this place at any length and/or getting ahead of myself.

But, of course, I am picturing myself in the space, going over layout in my mind, as far as how the line appliances will be positioned, and the flow of the food from receiving to prep to the hot line. We're going to be moving through a lot of beef and potatoes.

If I haven't explained this concept at length here before, I might as well do it now. The concept is burgers and fries (we'll also sell dogs, sausages, and a few other sandwiches, as well as milkshakes). But, at heart, it's a celebration of burgers and fries.

First, for the burgers, we'll grind our own beef. I haven't started playing around with what particular mix on the cuts of beef I'll be using, but we'll start with a good amount of chuck, which has a natural 80/20 lean to fat ratio, and is easy to grind for burgers since you don't have to then go back and add fat. Brisket, short rib, and hangar steak are all options, as they generally add a really nice strong beefy flavor. The whole idea on the beef is fresh, fresh, FRESH. Very few hot dog stand type places use fresh beef, it's all either frozen hockey puck patties or previously frozen ground beef, thawed. That kills the texture and flavor of the meat.

So, beef ground fresh every day for the burgers. Pattied to order, only salt, pepper, and beef. The other thing on the burgers is that we offer two styles; you can order your thick 8 oz. burger cooked on the char-grill, rare, medium, whatever, and we're also going to be offering the thin, diner-style burgers that are cooked by smashing the beef down on the flattop with a spatula, the more Steak-n-Shake type style. These would only be 4 oz. each, so you're more likely to do a double cheese burger on this one.

Then the other thing is the fries. We're going to do hand-cut fries, cut everyday, fried to order, cooked and seasoned perfectly, and we'll have a little fun with some crazy toppings on the fries as well.

So this week, we're praying to the lawyer gods to make those guys work fast. My lawyers are drafting the purchase and sale of the assets of the current occupant, and the landlord (or his attorney) are putting together a new lease (current occupant's lease expires end of July) for us to look over. The plan is to get everything signed and then I could take possession in early August.

Once all that's taken care of, the next piece of the puzzle is the city. There's a requirement in Evanston that all "take out" restaurants--defined as any restaurant that does not have waiters, table service--must get a special zoning ordinance passed to allow them to run this sort of establishment. Even in this case, where the existing restaurant already got the special zoning, we have to re-file, to have the current occupant's transfered over to our name. Which can take 6-8 weeks, not to mention a few hundred bucks. I was down at Evanston's city offices a few times last week, working to get that in, and will be going back at least two more times next week to get the business license and health department all on board, fill out all the forms, and pay all the fees, so that everything is in motion as early as it can be.

If all goes as planned, it's quite possible that we could be ready to open, waiting for the city to grant us all the permissions and the licenses. Which wouldn't be a first, at any rate, but would be a pain, when we're geared up to get open and get a feel for how the business will be.

I'm itching to blog about THE FOOD that I'm planning to offer at this restaurant (burgers will obviously be central, but I've got lots of other fun ideas), but don't want to jump the gun. This is, after all, being published on the internet, regardless of how few people are actually reading.

So...back to the grindstone of working on finding a space.

I went and looked at the Evanston location again today, and had a nice long talk with the current owner, who seems like a genuinely nice guy. Bottom line; I love the space and the location and believe that the added costs will be offset (at the very least) by increased traffic. After taking a look at this guy's financials from the last few years, I called the listing agent and made an offer.

On my way over to see the Evanston space, I spoke with one of the owners of the Western/Armitage space, who told me they're going with another offer. I had known for a while that another, more well-established, hipper restaurant was interested in this space, and I figured they had the advantage over me and my unproven concept. The other factor was that this party approached this deal through an agent (coincidentally, it's the same agent who I'm dealing with on the Evanston space) and, therefore, they were offering the current owners quite a bit more than I would've had to offer them if I'd gone in through the landlord.

Confusing, eh? No shit. I'm having trouble remembering which deals are still alive from one day to the next. I'm not too upset about losing Western/Armitage, but that's only because I'm really excited about Evanston.

If that one blows up, I'll be back to square one, and this is starting to get frustrating. Oh, and the seller of the Evanston space told me that the landlord is very thorough and will want all sorts of information before agreeing to lease the space to me.

This is an eye-opening education about a process I've never been a part of before. I've bought and sold a few houses in my life, which seemed difficult and stressful at the time, but this whole thing is making that process seem simple. The hard part here is getting all three parties--buyer, seller, and landlord, on the same page at the same time. I figured that as long as there was a potential buyer, the landlord would be happy to rent to whoever, but that's way off. It's starting to look like the landlord is the harder nut to crack in these deals, which makes sense, I suppose, since it ultimately becomes a longer relationship and involves more money.

Tomorrow, I sign off on the written offer for the Evanston space. Here's hoping that this one moves forward smoothly and quickly.

We're in in-between time right now. We've made our case to the landlords at Western/Armitage, who are deciding between us and another, more well-established restaurant, a very hip Asian concept, for whom this would be their second location. The first has been a runaway hit.

They've already made an offer to the current occupants of the space, but the final decision is the landlord's since, without a lease, any offer becomes void, similar to what happened with us at the Lincoln Square location.

I do have an 'in' with the landlord in this case, but the ownership is a group and they're ultimately going to do what's best for them, from a business standpoint, regardless of my personal relationship with one of the owners. So if they decide that the other concept will work better in that location, that's what they'll go with.

It'd certainly be nice to have options, but at this point, I'm thinking that the Evanston location I looked at last week is the the better location for us.

I went by there on Saturday, which was a very rainy day, and the streets were dead. But this past week was finals week at Northwestern, so most students have likely left town by now. Then I swung by there again on Sunday, when the weather was beautiful, and the streets were hoppin'; tons of people out and about, shopping, walking, etc. And that's with the university kids gone for summer.

The rent is higher there, and so is the buy-in, but, ultimately, I believe our volume would be significantly greater in Evanston, enough to counter the higher expenses and then some. I did some number-crunching and it wouldn't take much of an uptick in traffic from what I was expecting on Lincoln to offset the added expense of Evanston, and then, once that money is offset, the rest is profit. Volume always makes things easier, numbers-wise.

The listing of the restaurant that's in the space now claims that they do $390k in gross annual sales, and that's with what I consider to be a fairly weak concept. That's about double what I estimated for our first year on Lincoln, so it's a nice-sounding number.

I'm going to take another look at Evanston this week, when the restaurant's closed, and so I should have a much clearer picture of what the start-up will entail there, but from what I've seen so far, I'd only have to add a couple pieces of equipment--deep fryers, an ice cream freezer, maybe a stand mixer or a meat grinder--and do a little painting/decorating. It's exciting to think that I could put in about $5k and a month's work and get the place open and running.

I will wait and see what happens with Western/Armitage, but I'm thinking that I really want to make an offer on Evanston this week.

I'm still working on a deal for the space near Armitage and Western that I mentioned a few posts back, but I'm also trying to keep my options open and see what else might present itself during this process, so I've begun casting a wider net. Mostly due to circumstance.

I'm not set on any one particular neighborhood, or even a specific part of the city, but I feel that I'll know the right location when I find it. I mentioned in my last post that I was going to do a bit of trolling along Southport to see what was there (my real estate contact kept mentioning it), but when I went down there, I didn't really see anything that looked like a restaurant-ready space for lease. Upon further pressing, my real estate contact became less responsive and then stopped calling me back.

I called him again yesterday, and again today, and so he gave me a name of another real estate contact. A friend of his, that deals specifically with restaurants.

I'm not sure why it took him so long, whether he was trying to keep me for himself or what, but I'm certainly glad to be in touch with this new guy, who appears to really be THE guy to talk to about this. He rattled off about four listings that seemed like decent options, and, unlike everyone else I've spoken with, this guy led with numbers. He's a fast-talker, and not shy about sharing the crucial information, and even had the courtesy to break down the $/square foot prices to real monthly net costs.

(The way the world of commercial real estate works--and this was brand new to me just a few months ago--is that the rents are listed in dollars per square foot per year. So you'll see something that says Rent: $25. You have to multiply the price by the square footage to get the yearly rent, and then divide by 12 to get the monthly number.

But then you have to add in other stuff. Most are "triple net", meaning that in addition to your rent, you have to pay taxes (whatever the landlord decides is your share of the property tax on the building), common area expenses (if any), possibly insurance (your share of what it costs the landlord to insure the building) and possibly water, depending on how it's set up in the building. These extras can often add a thousand dollars or more to the monthly rent number.) So you can understand why I was so thrilled that this guy gave me monthly net cost numbers, without even having to ask, right from the get-go.

Later, when I got home, there was an email waiting for me with about 20 listings from all over the city, including asking price, situation, and monthly rent. THIS is what I'm talking about.

Since I happened to be not that far from one of the listings the restaurant real estate guy mentioned while I was on the phone with him, I figured I'd swing by there and check it out. It's in Evanston, of all places. Totally not on my radar at all during this process, but I went and looked at it and it's a very good fit. It's in a very busy downtown area, tons of shops, boutiques, other restaurants, but only one similar concept, and the layout of the place is nearly dead-solid perfect. It's also much more low-key and befitting of the concept that we had in mind. The Western/Armitage space is almost too nice, and the layout is much more problematic.

I grabbed a little food at this Evanston place, spoke briefly to the owner or manager, and cased the place pretty thoroughly, and....I like it. It's a strong contender. I took a walk all around the area and counted restaurants, made some notes, and pondered whether this concept would fly in this location. I think the population of the area is a good fit. Students, the more affluent Evanston residents who are already patronizing the fancy shops, salons, and boutiques in the area, and I also noticed several very tall condo buildings very close by.

I left Evanston, headed south down Lake Shore Drive, and did a drive-by on a second location that Restaurant Real Estate Guy mentioned as well. This place was much more affordable, from a rent and purchase standpoint, but I did not like the location at all. It's on a smaller, almost side street, and the main street that it's just off of is not a busy foot traffic area at all. This place was kind of in a no-man's land between Old Town and the busy North/Clyborn intersection. Either of those areas would be a good fit. Smack dab in the middle of them is not.

There are a bunch of other possibilities as well, plus I answered an ad on Craigslist today about a place in Andersonville that's kind of interesting.

This place is on Clark, about two blocks south of Foster. The really well-developed part of Andersonville is all north of Foster, but it's been creeping south for quite some time now. There are plenty of new construction condos and the salons and boutiques that invariably follow in their wake, but there are still a number of holdouts from when this area was kind of dicey. The space is right at the edge of where the creep has reached so far, so it's potentially a good spot, and it's really only a few blocks from the really busy section of Clark.

The situation, though, is a bit strange. It's raw space right now, so it would have to be completely built out. To offset that, however, the landlord is offering one year of free rent, and the rent he's asking is really low (nearly half what Evanston would cost, about 2/3rds of Western/Armitage). Rent is a big consideration, since that number can ultimately determine whether we survive or fail.

But location is an even bigger consideration, since that will drive (or fail to drive) sales.

The big question on this Andersonville space is how much would the build-out cost and would we have enough left to really make a go of it in that space? The build-out would deplete our cushion, but maybe we woudn't need the cushion with free rent for a while and low rent after that.

The other factor on that spot is how long it would take us to get open. I'm not super thrilled with the idea of waiting 6-8 months, dealing with contractors, etc. The other two main contenders right now are both basically turn-key situations where we'd have to do almost nothing--paint, decor, change the kitchen configuration, get inspected and open. 1-2 months, tops, for either. So that, to me is, worth the price of entry on those places.

It'll come down to location, ultimately. I'll keep looking. I'm thrilled to have my new Restaurant Real Estate Guy in my corner, with his stack of listings....it seems so full of potential. I'm trying to let go of all my preconceptions about Lincoln Square, or Southport, or even the city in general, and go in, open minded, with the mindset of finding the best possible location where I can make this thing work.

I never would of thought to look in Evanston, but maybe Evanston is the best situation. We'll see.

Unfortunately, I don't have anywhere in particular to go.

This post will give some insight into just how difficult every tiny little step in this process has proven to be.

Back when we had a deal and a space and a plan, I decided I needed a truck. But I didn't want to just go ahead and buy a truck for the business, because after things were all settled down and the restaurant was running normally, I wanted to have the option of using my vehicle to drop the kids at childcare, if that proved to make more sense. But I figured I'd need a truck during the period that I was doing the build-out and equipping the kitchen, so I could make Home Depot runs and go to restaurant sales/auctions and haul deep fryers or what have you away on the spot. Often, with these sales, if you show up at the right time with a wad of cash and a truck to take it away, you can get really good deals.

So I called around to see what it would cost me to rent a pickup. I quickly realized that the normal rent-a-car places weren't an option. They wanted $1200 a month and up, plus wanted to charge me for mileage. $1200? The truck I had in mind could probably be bought outright for that much.

Then I called a few used car dealers. The best response I got was from the guy who asked me if I'd already made any calls and , if so, what did they want to charge me?

"Well, I'm asking you how much you'd charge"

"Well...that depends...what is everybody else quoting you?"

Are you kidding me, I thought? Do your own research, slimeball.

"A hundred bucks a month," I told him. Click. Apparently, he was not amused.

So then I put an ad on Craigslist and lo and behold, a few days later, I got an email from a guy who would consider renting me a truck that he might be buying in the next month or so.... Fairly dubious, but it was really my only hope. After much emailing and cell-phoning back and forth, we did come to terms and he agreed to rent me the truck for at least two months for $400/month. But, he said, I had to insure it.

"Well," I figured, "that shouldn't be very difficult". Heh.

So I contacted my insurance company, told them the situation, they made some calls to the underwriters, and a week or so later, told me it couldn't be done. I had to own the truck in order to insure it. I kept at'em, and then they told me that, maybe...just maybe...it might be covered under the package that I was purchasing to cover the entire restaurant. Some more time went by, my Truck Guy was working on purchasing, then fixing up, the truck, and eventually, word comes back from the insurance folks--yes! It will be covered under the policy I'm getting for the restaurant.

Well, those of you who are reading this blog know what happens next. The deal falls apart, there is no restaurant any more, and so, logically, we're not purchasing insurance to cover it.

We debated about whether to cancel the truck, but figured that now, since we're still looking for a space, I'd need a vehicle to run around checking places out, and plus we felt kind of bad that we had this guy do all this preparation for renting us the truck and now to cancel so far into it wouldn't be very nice, so we decided to take it, figuring it would at least make our lives that much easier for a couple months.

So...back to the drawing board with the wonderful insurance people. I called them last week and relayed the information about the new situation. Wouldn't my normal policy cover at least the liability part? As if I was borrowing a friend's car?

Nope. 'Course not. I asked my Insurance Lady to check into what the options were and she said she'd call me back the next day. This was last Thursday.

Fast forward to today, Wednesday. I still hadn't heard back from her, but today was the day we'd set up for me to take the train out to Joliet, where this guy lives, and pick up the truck. So I call her to follow up, and, then, while I'm waiting at the train station downtown, she calls me back.

Nope, she says. No one will cover it. It's not covered under my personal policy, because the insurance stays with the vehicle, not with the driver. "What I want to know," she keeps asking me, "is how he bought the car without having insurance?"

What does that have to do with anything, Insurance Lady? WHO CARES??? He probably bought it off some guy for cash. They don't tend to ask for proof of insurance before allowing you to drive away. And that has nothing to do with what I'm asking you to do for me. Please focus on the task at hand and JUST GET ME SOME DAMN INSURANCE, so I can drive this thing legally, without having to worry that if I get in an accident, I could lose my house.

Anyway, I'm clearly fed up with her on the phone and, eventually, I say to her "look--just do what you need to do to get me covered to drive this thing. I'm just trying to get basic liability insurance, so I can be legal. That's all. You should be able to do that. This shouldn't be this hard."

If it's possible for someone to look at you like you're scary and crazy through a phone line, that's what she was doing. She said meekly that she'd make some more calls to the underwriter and get back to me tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm picking up the damn truck in an hour. Thanks for nothing, Insurance Lady.

So, as I sit on the train, it occurs to me. Why am I dealing with this stupid insurance brokerage that takes forever to get questions answered just because we use them for our personal policies? There are hundreds of bottom-feeding insurance companies saturating the air waves with their stupid, mind-numbingly memorable commercials that would probably bend over backwards to accommodate my situation.

I dial 411 and ask for Geico, but they don't do policies for less than six months. I scour my brain for remnants of ads I've heard from other auto insurance companies, and come up with 1-800-Safe Auto. I dial it up, and....presto chango, four dropped calls and a brief delay in beautiful downtown Mokena later, I am reading the digits of my credit card number to the incredibly patient phone person and she's telling me that, yes, I am, as of right this very moment, insured.

Incredible. What my broker (who we've dealt with for years for all of our insurance) couldn't manage to do over the course of five weeks, this company did in 20 minutes. Perhaps the most amazing part of this story was the fact that not only did I have the VIN number of the truck written down, but I was actually had it with me and was able to locate it while I was on the phone with the person.

Small victories. They're all I've got right now, so savor them, I will.

After that whole episode, smooth sailing. Truck Guy picked me up at the train station, briefed me on the idiosyncrasies of the vehicle (it idles rough), I was psyched to see that it had a newer stereo with an mp3 hookup cable, and we went back to his house to sign the homemade contract that we had worked up and trade cash for keys.

So now, good readers, I am proud to announce that I am the proud owner renter of a fine 1997 red Ford F-150, which sits in my driveway at this very moment while I type. It ran fine on the way home and Truck Guy assures me that the odometer, which reads 886,433 miles, is not correct.

I believe him. Tomorrow I go scouting locations along Southport.

The Lincoln Square deal is officially dead. It's probably been dead for a while now, but I'm now officially pronouncing it.

I called the landlord again today, following the strange, confusing discussion I had with him yesterday, and he finally came out and told me that he is taking another offer. I busted his chops a bit. Figured I'd vent out some frustration on him...it's not like he's a bridge I mind burning. And I asked him a few questions about this so-called better offer.

Apparently, whoever's he's now renting to is going to keep the concept the same. They're going to re-open it as the unsuccessful middle eastern sit down restaurant that closed way back in December. Yeah, that'll work. I'm sure the neighborhood will just flock to a place that's been closed without explanation for six months and then suddenly reopens as exactly the same thing as it was when it closed. Good plan!

The landlord claims that it'll work this time because the new owner is a chef. I snorted and scoffed a bit and then predicted that he'd be back in this same position within a year. I'd be surprised if it took that long. Sour grapes? Yep! I'm not going to apologize for it. I spent a ton of time working on this and I'm pissed.

My wife had a bit of a breakdown last night when we were talking about the deal falling through. She'd already been picturing how this restaurant would effect her life, similar to what I was talking about towards the end of this post, and losing all of that potential stuff was hard for her. She's got a good friend that lives in Lincoln Square, and she'd been picturing herself spending time down there, taking walks over to the restaurant, going to the park with the kids, etc. We've both spent a lot of time envisioning how our lives would be while I ran this restaurant, and now, all of a sudden, the page is blank. Again.

I can't help but think that the landlord and seller did, in fact, team up and try to get rid of me on this deal. The landlord's whole "talk to the seller" thing rings false if he simply accepted another offer. Plus, I've now called the seller twice to have kind of a post-mortem on our deal, and he's not calling me back. If the seller was really getting the rug pulled out from under him by the landlord, he'd be calling me back, if only to commiserate. My guess is that he got a better offer after he signed the contract with me, and his only way out of our deal was to go to the landlord and ask him not to agree to terms with me, so our deal would blow up, he could take the higher offer, and then pay the landlord back more of what he owes him in back rent.

The lawyers tell me that I can stall this out as long as I want to, effectively preventing the seller from selling his property to anyone else until I release him from our contract. I can potentially string him along for months, claiming that I'm still trying to work out a deal with the landlord. But I probably won't.

There's really no point in it and it's better for me to let go of the anger and resentment I'm feeling, rather than indulge in a pointless, spiteful exercise that won't get me anywhere but mired deeper into a situation that's never going to resolve itself the way I want it to.

On top of all this lovely stuff, my wife is freaking out about money. Since this deal was supposed to have happened by now, we set up childcare for our kids and, in addition to our normal expenses, we're now paying around $250/week for someone to watch our kids while I'm at home, not working, essentially not doing anything that would prevent me from watching the kids myself.

But, we're reluctant to just pull the kids out of the situation they're in, since, if another deal takes shape, we'll have to just slap them back in there again, which isn't fair to them or the person who we've got taking care of them.

That being the case, I feel a strong need to make every day the kids are at childcare a day that I do constructive stuff towards getting this restaurant off the ground. Often, that's just making phone calls or waiting for people to call me back, but today, I took some initiative and did some scouting in the area that may be about to become our new prospective location. (Did I put enough qualifiers in that sentence? You can tell I'm reluctant to emotionally commit to this new possibility!)

This site is in a different part of the city than the last one. It's near Armitage and Western (just a bit south of Margie's Candies, for those that know the city) and it's a very good opportunity. I detailed some of the pros and cons already in an earlier post, and while the entry situation is excellent, the big question mark was the neighborhood, and whether it can support the concept I'm envisioning.

So, I took the train down there today and spent about five hours of this cold, rainy Tuesday walking around the area, scouting competitors, getting a feel for the area, checking out the ratio of new condos to old apartment buildings, and having lunch in the space.

I'm pretty encouraged. This area is a lot harder to get a handle on than Lincoln Square, which is kind of one dimensional (but in a good way--the one dimension is young urban families and couples with disposable income). This area is much more varied. There are plenty of fancy upscale condos just a bit east in West Bucktown, and, subsequently, quite a few hip little boutiques and shops to cater to their inhabitants, but Western Avenue is kind of the border of that area, and Western itself is still pretty seedy, with lots of currency exchanges, payday loan places, and dollar stores. Let me put it this way; the immediate area isn't lacking in people standing around bus stops for hours drinking liquor from paper bags and smoking cigarette butts they found on the sidewalk.

The upside, though, is that there's almost no direct competition. There's a McDonalds very nearby and a tiny hot dog stand with no seating that doesn't have burgers. And then a new outpost of an established suburban Italian beef place about six blocks away. So, not much. Another plus is that while there's less foot traffic than there would be in Lincoln Square, there's a ton more car traffic and parking is relatively easy. This is a much more high-traffic area overall, with an 'L' stop very close by, tons of cars passing through the six-way intersection of Western, Armitage, and Milwaukee, and a lot of busy bus stops as well.

The restaurant that currently occupies the space isn't, according to the accounts I'm getting, doing all that bad, it's just that the owners overextended themselves during the buildout prior to opening and so they have a pretty big debt to service every month. One partner has decided to get out of the restaurant business, and the other doesn't have the ability to buy her out or run it solo. They were pretty busy for a rainy Tuesday, with nearly every table full at around 12:30 and still some stragglers at around 2:00 when I finally left. Their prices seemed very high--I had a sandwich and a can of Diet Coke and my total was $11.01.

(Tangent--what's with restaurants that sell cans of pop? This annoys me to no end. C'mon, people, get the damn fountain service! It's cheaper than cans, you'll make more money, customers prefer it, you present a higher perception of value by offering free refills, you don't have to store all those cans, and there's much less to put in the garbage/recycling. Get with the program, folks!)

So that's encouraging. I think by offering a much more focused, simple concept and a better value price-wise, we will do pretty well in this location--especially because we will not have all that debt to pay back.

Based on what I saw today, I want to move forward on this place. My wife is reluctant. She thinks I'm just going for the "rebound" opportunity, and she's probably right. But that doesn't mean that we can't make a go of it in the rebound place.

The thing is, I don't think we have time to mull it over. This place is a great opportunity; the owners have allowed their lease to expire and now are just interested in getting a decent return on their equipment without having to deal with an auction company or selling stuff piecemeal. If I don't act soon, I'm certain someone else will jump on it.

But I have the inside track on this place; the building's owner is a neighbor and a friend who's been trying to get me interested in this space for a while.

So, once I got back home, I called him up and told him that we're interested in taking the next step toward moving on the place. Certainly not a done deal; he's got to get his partners sold on having me and my concept as their tenant. But at least we're moving forward on something.

If this space doesn't end up working out, I really don't know what we're going to do.

After last week's conversation with the landlord and the ensuing flurry of calls that followed, I had more or less completely written off any chance of the purchase we're under contract for actually going through.

But, since I'm still pissed at the landlord for doing a complete 180 out of nowhere for no apparent reason, I decided to call him today and ask him some pointed questions just for the hell of it.

Surprisingly, he picked up his cell phone when I called. I introduced myself and reminded him of who I am (he seems never to remember from one day to the next) and just asked him point blank, "so, you're still determined not to rent the place to me?"

His answer was to tell me that it's not his decision. A whuh? Whose decision is it, then?

He asked me if I'd spoken to the seller, and I said that, "yes, I'd spoken to him and that he's very upset that you're doing this and blowing his deal. He wants to sell the place to me and the only thing preventing that is the fact that you suddenly don't want to rent to me."

He seemed confused (join the club, I guess) and said that he'd have to call the seller, so I should call him back tomorrow.

Feeling brazen and belligerent, I didn't let up. "Look," I asked, "do you own the building?"

"Yes," he answered, reluctantly.

"So, then you decide who you want to rent to", I said. "Right?"

Again, he begrudgingly admitted this was the case.

At a loss as to what this guy was saying, I took a different tack. "Why don't you just be straight with me," I said, "do you have another offer? Is that why you suddenly don't want to rent to me?"

"Of course!", he shouted back.

Well, what the fuck, then, dude? Why don't you just say that in the first place? Why are you trying to tell me it's not your decision?

He won't answer any of these questions, though...he just continues to repeat that he needs to talk to the seller and that I should call him tomorrow.

So while the title of this entry is "completely confused", I guess I'm not, actually. It certainly appears that the only logical explanation is that these two are trying to cook something up that will be mutually beneficial to them, whether it's an attempt to ditch me for another buyer, or to squeeze me for more money, or something that I haven't thought of yet. The landlord's constant refrain of "talk to the seller" pretty much tells me all I need to know.

Except that I'm getting a completely different message from the seller, who seems genuinely frustrated that this nut-job landlord is blowing the deal we worked for three months to put together. So maybe I am completely confused after all. I don't know what I am.

I do know, however, that I called the electric and gas companies today and stopped service so that we're not being billed for the utilities in a place we're not going to end up occupying. And I do know that I'm almost certain that I wouldn't even go through with this deal now even if the landlord suddenly reversed his position on his sudden reversal of his position, and up and decided that, yes, he does want to rent to us.

Because if this is how he acts during the negotiations, when folks are usually on their best behavior, how will he conduct himself once we've signed a lease?