EUGENE, Ore. (BN) — A Bay Area man returned to the Whiteaker neighborhood apartment he’s been renting since 1996 for the first time in 25 years, sources told Brimborion News on Tuesday.
“Man, I haven’t been back in forever,” Azrael Skreed, 47, said from his moldy-smelling living room sofa. “I dropped out of ASU, decided to go slumming for a while. My parents said they’d pay for the apartment, so. Guess I forgot to tell them I was moving to Hawaii.”
Skreed had a career as a professional surfer in Maui before starting a business selling surfboards and surf-related accessories. The company he founded in 2003, Kahuna Bruh, now has locations in Hawaii, Mexico and Australia.
After meeting some students from Eugene during his time in Tempe, Skreed first began renting the Blair Boulevard apartment some 27 years ago, but then left two years later because he got bored. He told neither his landlord nor his parents he was moving.
The manager of his complex didn’t seem to notice he had vanished. “The checks kept coming, and the place stayed furnished and quiet,” Norm Farkhan, manager of the complex, said. “Outside of that, how a tenant conducts his affairs is none of my business.”
“Man, back in the ‘90s, Eugene was the place to be,” Skreed said. “The cops didn’t care if you bought, sold or grew your own. Horse was cheap, too. This was way before Oxy. And all my old friends still live in the building, too. Which is rad. Except they don’t seem to remember me all that well.”
“The old guys around here don’t know who the f— he is,” said Lyle Colton, a tenant in the building for the last five years. “They just smile politely and wave to him, and sometimes they party with him, but they’re like, ‘Who the f— is this guy? Is that what’s-his-name? What the hell is he doing back here?’”
