advice please on apt hunting for sept

[http://users.livejournal.com/__the_dude__/]

hi folks,

yes, sorry to say, another housing post. i'm currently in ann arbor MI but will be moving to the somerville/cambridge/medford/maybe even arlington area in sept to start a job in the alewife area of cambridge. i was all set to fly out the weekend of june 8-11 to look for sept housing when i noticed crazy high airfares and low hotel vacancies...and found out it's graduation weekend for MIT and harvard. urgh.

so my question to you locals: should i wait a weekend to avoid the craziness of two big graduations (tufts doesn't graduate that weekend too, does it)? or will i be able to drive around and look for apartments that i've found on craigslist (that's also assuming that landlords/realtors don't shut down for the weekend)? you might be able to tell from my questions that graduation here is a HUGE deal and you don't drive anywhere near the campus unless absolutely necessary (kinda like those GD football games at the big house...but i digress). more importantly, i suppose, is whether june 8-11 is a good time to find housing for sept 1 move-in, or do listings come up later/earlier...?

i read the post that the good apts are found by referrals from friends or, absent that, current tenants moving out, so if any of you happen to know of a 2 BR, 1-cat friendly apt "near" the red line for around $1500/mo, i would really appreciate hearing about it.

thanks in advance davis sq peeps!

Comments

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=+arlington,+ma&ll=42.409199,-71.143427&spn=0.014671,0.054245&t=h&om=1

If you look along the NE edge of Spy Pond, you can see pretty clearly a stripe of road that doesn't look like any of the other roads. That's the Minuteman bike path, between Alewife and Arlington Center. It breaks at Arlington Center[1], but at that scale you can see where it continues to the west all the way in to Bedford.

[1] or as chenoameg says, it crosses Arlington Center inelegantly. It had more rights when it was a railroad.

[ron_newman]

In fact, you can even go beyond Bedford. The paved path ends there, but two unpaved branches continue on, one to Concord (near Old North Bridge) and the other to the Billerica line.