Brooklyn’s Lowest Rent Comes With An Old-World Catch

UPDATE: Apparently this whole thing is a parody...this kind of thing usually seems obvious in retrospect, but in this case the story is still believable. Maybe we're just way too jaded with this city, but consider us fooled!

We've all been there. The messy roommates, the tiny apartment, the one bathroom shared by five people...cohabitation can be tough. When you're living in NYC, all that stress comes with exorbitant prices, long commutes, and crazy neighbors to boot. So what if you could ditch all of that and move in with your beau in Park Slope for the low, low price of $300? You'd do it in a heartbeat, right?

Well, there's a bit of a catch. Your dream apartment doesn't come with a bathroom. Not even an old-school, tenement-style, common hallway bathroom. Real-life Brooklyn couple Marcela and Ryan Marshall decided to take it anyway, and fell back on an age-old method of doing your business: the chamberpot.

In an interview with The Hairpin, the Marshalls recalled how they originally started with one chamberpot for the two of them. Somehow, it didn't work out (though they don't elaborate, thank god). And then there were the summers. Please, let's not talk about the summers. "We don't have, or ideologically support, air conditioning, so nights could get a little rough, especially when you don't know what to expect when you lift the lid," says Ryan. "It's not necessarily for the squeamish, but we've been doing it for three years now, and it's helped us feel closer to the building, to its history, and to each other." Granted, the streets of NYC already smell like death as soon as it gets over 85, so at least they're used to it.

One may wonder how the couple managed to find such an object in this day and age without, ahem, depreciating the value, if you may. Fear not antique freaks, the couple feels that "metal is obtrusive in personal spaces" (we can think of something else even more obtrusive, just saying), and so they use pots glazed in sea glass by an artist in Red Hook. Apparently, they regularly give these pots out as gifts, as well...though we're not sure if they specify the intended usage to the lucky recipients. (The Hairpin)