"...And they'll say, Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly..."

We are usually the bad neighbours. Not in the sense of causing trouble for anyone else, because I have this horror of making anyone else deal with my shit, but we're not really the yuppies we appear to be.

1. We used to smoke a lot of dope in our tiny backyard, and it would blow over the neighbours fences. The old couple in the unit behind us were cool with it and actually came over to borrow rollie papers a couple of times. The neighbour on the other side was a cop, and I was legitimately worried about going to jail, as my personal stash would occasionally get a little large. Fortunately, he was having sex with an underage girl and we saw her kissing him goodbye and trying to sneak out one night about 3am, and so we went out on the porch and said Hi. Ahh, detente.

2. A couple of weekend's back I may have slightly exceeded my tolerance for mushrooms. A sober friend drove me to Maccas and I basically hid under a jacket on his backseat because I was laughing uncontrollably. We got back to my house and those hash browns were like a gift from a benevolent God. I was incapable of processing so much joy in one little greasy bundle, and was just having the time of my life eating these hashbrowns. About 20 minutes later I realized it was 11am on a Saturday, my neighbours were out walking their dogs, and I was lying on my front grass laughing hysterically over a hashbrown. Ooops.

I had fun though.

 

OK so my parents both own flats but live in one and rent out the other. The one that's rented belongs to my mom and I've spent some time there while renovating in October-November 2011 - most of the neighbours there seemed cool, mostly younger people <40 but one very old couple and 2 50-something couples. That was except for the people in the larger of the 2 penthouses in that block - they moved out about a month after and had been insufferable towards my mom for years at that point, who were, by coincidence, one of the older couples.

However, the block we live in is also mostly OK (4 stories, 14 flats, 2 of which are penthouses) but we've had our share of idiots around us. At the moment, the two guys who live one flat and one floor down from us play really loud music from 7 a.m. on weekends, which definitely puts them on my shit-list - getting blasted by Gospel music sung in Zulu on a fucking Sunday morning is just not cool. No matter how many times we complain, they don't change their ways and there isn't much else we can do about it (the cops do not respond to any complaints). The guy upstairs from us at the end of the passage is currently fucking with the building's security gate and spills oily stuff on the stairs (don't want to know what it is) - the general worker for the building has complained a few times about him. Also, the guy in the bigger penthouse is a Born Again Christian and a complete, unrepentant fuckface who continually causes problems for us and has been doing so for over a decade; his list of transgressions include:

- leaving passage windows open and then claiming that Body Corporate must pay when they break (the wind whips up more than a few times a year at a strength enough to blow the window fastening screws open if the window is open at the time; if they are properly latched and the screw is tightened, they are fine).
- doing an awful job as Chairman of the Body Corporate for a year (the security gate buzzer box he had installed cost $700 and has NEVER worked properly) and also did a terrible job as a Trustee (he kept being voted on by others) where he would not do tasks that were given to him.
- complains continuously about us having 2 parking bays and a garage, despite that we have a letter from 1981 stating we PAID for a double bay (one bay and the garage are part of our Sectional Title and the other bay was compensation for having our original double bay split in half by the installation of an electric driveway gate) - he actually instructed the managing agents to bill us and he got a letter from our lawyer within a week.
- chopped down the trees in the front garden because he couldn't see the road (my dad had planted some of those trees, with approval from the Body Corporate by vote at the time)

Fortunately, he is trying to sell his flat so I hope we will be rid of him soon. I can hardly wait.

 

No one is judging you.

 

I have an diagnosed crazy neighbor that lives in my condo building. Some of the things I've seen or discussed with her:

1. She told me that her and her husband had to move away from Vancouver because somebody was trying to kill them. She now believed whoever it was had followed them and was getting into their apartment and moving items around. She wanted to review the security tapes to see if anybody was breaking in. She said that for some reason the police didn't believe her...

2. She will stand on the landing by the garage door and stare at whoever's entering the building. No wave, no smile, just stare.

3. I found her in the meeting room for the condo board one day. One of the building contractors had put a bucket of ice melt in the room and forgot to lock the door. She saw me and called me into the room to show it to me. She told me that she saw somebody pouring it into the building water supply and that we were being poisoned. Then she picked some up and tasted it. I noticed both her hands were covered with it, and I asked her if she had been eating it. I calmly took her out of the room, locked the door, and said I would immediately call the management company. She kept saying that people are going to get murdered if we don't do something about it. I contacted the building management company, who in turn called her husband.

I'm sure she's a paranoid schizophrenic who stopped taking her meds. She's been much better since the ice melt incident, I'm sure her husband makes sure she's on her meds now. I'm just glad that she didn't get into the boiler room, where there's all kinds of chemical cleaners, and other hazards.

 

My alcoholic, coked up, obese neighbor is blaring the music at 7:15am, right now I can hear it thumping through the walls. I seriously hate that beast.

 

There are two houses on my street that need to be leveled. One is an obvious and blatant drug dealing house, the other is an alleged brothel. Both have the police visiting frequently.

The drug house is a mess. It has decent grass and new stucco; but the driveway is full of trash, old cars and (probably) stolen property. There is one guy that is ALWAYS outside "working" on his car, with a constant stream of meth heads flowing through. These people are straight out of Breaking Bad. Not to mention his fucked up train wreck of a girlfriend that can generally be found wandering the road screaming obscenities or rolling around the front yard.
The mind blowing thing to me is that this dumb ass is selling that obviously; go somewhere else and keep it out of my neighborhood. My kids don't need to be near you.

The brothel is across the street from the drug house; I'm assuming they have a mutualistic relationship. That place has boarded up windows, a trashed back yard and another constant stream of useless fucks. Oh also it's for sale, 130k, I called the real estate agent.

There is police activity at each, both bring a lot of unsavory people in, and neither seem to want to leave. My brother-in-law lives on the other side of them, and we routinely discuss ways to take care of them while making it look like an accident.

Now I'm all worked up. These guys are definitely destroying the neighborhood.