Apartment Choice

Imagine being away from home for the first time, just a teenager in a new state, surrounded by a bunch of people you don’t know. Now picture a few months into your time in your new state, a state where you are slow to trust those around you, not one, but two of your best friends are murdered less than a month apart. That’s the real world nightmare Antonio Brown faced when he arrived in Durham in the winter of 2014. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Brown grew up in an area where, as he put it, people were trying to make a name for themselves by any means. Those means weren’t always positive. Sometimes a way out, or a way to become well known was sports. Other times, more times than not, it was through violence, earning a reputation on the streets one way or another. “It’s not a lot of stuff for us to do, period,” Brown said. “Especially not positive. Most of the kids down there see ball or rapping as their only way of getting out. At my high school not even football is a way out, so...

How I told my mom I was a stripper, and her surprising reaction. More From Lenny Letter No. 100 4 articles Aug 22, 2017 Sally Nixon Advertisement - Continue Reading Below When I first decided to strip in the grubby clubs in the Tenderloin, I lived in a tiny square room in a dilapidated Victorian apartment with three other roommates I'd met on Craigslist. My room had a legal-pad-sized window with a view of a drippy gutter. I slept on a borrowed mattress on a dusty hardwood floor . It was the 1995, pre-tech, perma-fog, home-of–Queer Nation, Food Not Bombs, underground-gay-sex-clubs, needle- exchange San Francisco . I was always moments from getting evicted. Each month, I begged the landlord for one more week, until finally I came home to a note on my door from my roommates asking me to please move out. More From Lenny Letter No. 100 4 articles I was 25 and scary-broke. I worked minimum wage at a clothing store where I sold my used T-shirts on my lunch break to buy a burrito...

August 13, 2017 Cat and dog owners alike adore their pets. And though it’s not always obvious from their behavior and body language, dogs and cats do love their owners back. Sometimes, our pets show extreme bravery to save us from danger or avert tragedy. Want to meet a cat who helped stop a man from committing suicide? How about a dog who fought off coyotes to save his owner? Or a cat who alerted his family to a deadly house fire ? Read on to meet some of the most heroic pets who have made the news for saving people’s lives. ")}; 20. The ‘Hero Cat’ who rescued a child from an attacking dog A brave cat stopped a dog from attacking a child. | iStock.com/Steevy84 Sometimes, an animal attacks a child. And every once in a while, another animal comes to the rescue. That’s exactly what happened when a heroic cat saved a child from a dog attack in Bakersfield, California. The dog, which belonged to a neighbor, dragged the boy off his bicycle with his teeth. But the attack was cut sh...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"????>AuthorCreated with Sketch. By Jesse Barron Aug 23, 2017 The text messages started the night her son went missing. Lynn Roy saw the first one around ten-thirty on July 12, 2014: "Do you know where he is?" She saw the second the next day: "Did you call the police yet?" Then a third: "Any news?" The sender, Michelle Carter , was familiar to Lynn as a girl her son, Conrad, texted. She guessed they were friends. It turned out Michelle was right to be worried: That afternoon, July 13, police found Conrad in the parking lot of the Kmart on Route 6 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, asphyxiated by the carbon monoxide from a water pump in the cab of his F-250. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Advertisement - Continue Reading Below "Our songs, listen to them and remember me." A few days later, Conrad's father, Conrad Roy II, discovered a spiral-bound jou...