I recently rented a lockout studio in Downtown Los Angeles with the intent of using it to rehearse with my bands and have a place where I can permanently store my musical equipment. I have to tell you, I really like it here but there is one thing that is really pissing me off about this place and that is my inability to get decent internet in my unit.
Now, let me describe this place to you. The building is located off of 7th street right across the Arts District in Downtown Los Angeles. Technically, since we are across the L.A. River, this is no longer Downtown L.A. but apparently, my landlord didn’t care about that when he chose “Downtown Rehearsal” as the name of his business.
Downtown Rehearsal occupies two of the four floors in the building: floors 2 and 4. In each of those two floors, there are 124 units. Floor number 3 is occupied by LaLa Land, a clothing company. And floor number 1 is occupied by at least 1 tenant also in the clothing industry and a performing artists group. The place is managed by a company by the name of Wonderful Management Company.
My lease is a month-to-month lease and the contract is short, sweet, and to the point. Basically, it states how much I am to pay for the right to use the space, when the rent is due, and what will happen if I do not pay my rent on time. It actually even says that they will tolerate being late with the rent one time up to 15 days, but the second time you are out! It also says the space is non-residential and what that means – essentially, no sleeping or cooking in the units at any time, period. Beyond that, it’s just boring boilerplate legalese.
All 248 Downtown Rehearsal units are wired for DSL. AT&T is the service provider and this building only gets 6mbps service. In the three months that I have been here, I don’t think there has been one time when I have been able to get more than 1.5mbps down and my uplink is just embarrassing at 128k – I can’t even backup my computer to AWS because it just takes such a ridiculously long time to do so and it basically brings everything else, including browsing, to a standstill. SSH connections are a nightmare. The service is truly as substandard as substandard can be, but that is all the Wonderful Management Company will allow me to have here.
Spectrum has a drop in the basement and there are 3 tenants already attached to it. Spectrum also has a direct drop from the outside into one of the 1st floor tenants spaces. I called up Spectrum and tried to get their service installed here but the security guard called the ‘building engineer’ and he told me that I am not allowed to install Spectrum in my space because they want no holes drilled into the building. Spectrum assured him there was no need to drill any holes and then he changed his tune to “Spectrum is simply not allowed.”
I am very much annoyed that I am not allowed to install a decent internet solution in my unit and am wondering if there is anything I can do.