So after a pretty wild weekend, we decide to keep it low key today and grill at my girlfriends house. It is me, my girlfriend, 3 coworkers, 4 friends, both my roommates, and her roomie and boy friend. That makes roughly 11 people, because not everyone was there the whole time and some left earlier. I should also note that one of my room mates is an Iraq vet, so today meant a lot for him. I should also note that I was on a 4 day binge and didn't want to take shit from anyone. A few hours into our boozing and grilling, my girls neighbor pops out and stares for a few moments until I notice her and let my girlfriend know. Turns out apparently her nephew died 2 weeks ago in Iraq. We express our sorrows, let her know the guy grilling our food was in the marines, and if she needs us to be be quieter to let us know. She was definitely more drunk than any of us. Quick back ground story: girlrfriend rents a really nice rehabbed place between 2 multimillion dollar single family homes. One neighbor is cool and keeps to himself and the other family is pretty dysfunctional; husband rarely home, untrained dogs, shitty kids, and unemployed alcoholic wife. Anyways, after her strange personal story, she then opens the window and starts yelling "shut up". At first, we figured she meant the dog, but turns out she was yelling at us. About an hour later, she came out and apologized for yelling. We keep drinking, eating, and being merry. Periodically, she pops out and makes small talk. At this point, she is either very drunk or took some happy pills chased with wine. Her next argument is that her kids have school in the morning. It's 8:30, and the music has been off for 2 hours now. Also, as i said, she lives in a solid brick and concrete multimillion dollar single family home. 4 floors, at least, double pane windows, the works. Yet 6 people quietly chatting outside with no music bothers her. Here, we decide it's better to ignore her since she is either really drunk, insane, bipolar, or a mix of those. She does not take kindly to this, calls us "imbecile renters" and calls my girlfriend a "common whore". I wanted to go off on her, I really did, but at this point the cops had been called on her crazy ass. I told her that at least when we day drink, we don't do it alone, and that she should go inside because she is embarrassing herself and her family. She did not take kindly to this, or my under the breath comment of being bipolar and that we work for our rent money while her absentee husband buys all her shit and she doesn't lift a damn finger. Really long story slightly shorter, cops were on our side, she already had a mug shot and criminal record (PI is my guess, police would not tell us), and I told my girlfriend to keep that knife and mace I got her close. If this woman flips her bitch switch in my presence again, I will fucking lose it. I will make sure her children know she's a pathetic failure, advise her husband to leave her crazy ass, and go above and beyond to make her sad life even more miserable. I'm thinking of signing her up to receive complimentary AA literature, all sorts of religious pamphlets, and anything else that doesn't require a credit card. In short, fuck her. Focus: shitty neighbors, let's hear the stories. Alt focus: revenge upon said shitty neighbors...how did you execute it without doing something that will get you jail time?
I have no truly crazy neighbors but the rental house next to my folks has seen some characters over the years. Mom and Dad came home once many years ago to find SWAT in the bushes arresting the guy next door. A more recent occupant of the house was arrested also...bank robber. All I have to deal with is the Moscow Ballet that practices upstairs from me at 2AM...
We have a grumpy old Polish bastard living accross the street, I think all the noise I made during the reno made him take a set against me. For several months whenever we saw each other he would give me a dead pan scowl, I returned the favour. Was a fun game while it lasted, for some reason he's decided I'm ok people and has started smiling and waving. Not wishing to lose the upperhand I respond in kind and try to be the instigator of this new friendliness if possible. I'm considering killing his cat.
The neighbour who's house is directly behind ours is... odd She sits at her kitchen table all day, doing.. nothing, it seems. If we're out in the yard she'll glare at us then scowl, and look back to the end of her kitchen (which we can see through the windows, does not have a TV) Her husband is just an angry old man, my only encounter with him was when we were doing yard work and he came out and did a 20 minute tirade about how "the fence wasn't shared*" because we had a shovel leaning against it. He eventually went inside, grabbed a coat hanger, and knocked the shovel down. He then went back inside to sit with his wife and scowl at us Also last year we put a fire pit in our back yard. Once we did this we had inspectors coming to see it every day for two months. I suspect she (the only neighbour who could see it) had something to do with calling the city inspectors constantly. We eventually asked the inspectors why they kept coming and they just said "local complaints", which reaffirms this. I've considered putting up posts in our backyard just to annoy her, with little optimistic messages like "Keep your chins up!" * It's always a shared fence in my municipality. Doesn't matter if you put it a foot behind the property line. Which they didn't.
In high school, there were a fair number of mountain biking trails in the woods of my neighbor's land that had been carved over the years, and he didn't care that we rode on them. I actually had written permission from him to build and ride there. Access was provided by a public (dirt) road that ran up right past his house, and I would regularly ride past and wave to him on the way. Around my junior year, he started spending more and more time away from home (he was a pilot), and his wife started acting odd. She was always a little strange, but she started doing crazy things, like one morning we woke up and she had torn up their entire enormous vegetable garden in the middle of the night. Then she started watching me out the window as I biked up their road, going from room to room to watch me the whole way up the dirt road. Then she started alternately yelling at me - screeching that I was tearing up their trails and destroying their property values - and waving with a cheerful "hello!" It was an absolute crapshoot, which person I'd pass. A little more than half the time, I'd pass the most pleasant person in the world, waving, smiling and telling me to have a good ride... and the other times, it was a demon spawn who was trying to murder me with her eyes as I went past. Her husband gave her the boot a couple years later and I believe she ended up in an institution for a little while.
This might be off-focus, but two of my college roommates (In the last two years of my bachelor's degree, I had 5 different roommates.) were the neighbors from hell. I mean, they were pretty shitty to live with, but they used to torture my downstairs neighbors. Somehow, they got it in their heads that the one of the guys living downstairs had a thing for me. They used to purposely stomp around and make noise so that he would knock on the door. Then thy would try to get him to ask me out or harass him with questions about me. When the stomping stopped working, they would bang on his door at 2 or 3 in the morning and harass him that way. On top of this harassment, they were usually drunk or had just speed-balled (is that the right phrase for when you do cocaine and Oxycontin at the same time?) when they did this. I spent a lot of time in my bedroom that year.
I'm pretty sure I did something to piss off a witch a couple of years ago because since I moved out of my dad's house, I've been cursed with obnoxious musician neighbors. 1st year of college: Lived under a straight-edge screamo band. 2nd year I was at the top floor of the dorm, so I lucked out. Sublet: Lived next to a crazy person who had a keyboard. He didn't even make music...he just made....tones... And then he got an electric guitar and just let it play feedback. Last year of college: Lived next door to an acoustic guitar player and above an electric guitar player who only played after midnight, and across the street from a metal band. I also lived down the street from a saxophonist, but that was nice. When I looked at the apartment I moved into after school, I actually asked the roommate I met if there were any musicians in the building. There weren't. Then, three months after I moved in, a DJ moved into the room below me and played it at night-club volumes all hours of the day. My room sounded like a headache and everything vibrated, and not in the good way. I went down to complain and he gave me his number if it ever got too bad. We'd then fight over text message and he'd usually just ignore me. I was thinking of calling the cops a few times. Thankfully he moved out a few months ago.
Nothing beats the schitzo cat lady neighbors. We had one randomly walk into our house when we had some friends over. We weren't having a blow out party or anything, maybe 3 or 4 friends over out grilling before we took it inside. She still figured it was an open party and walked in anyway. She approached me and started talking about how she talks to her cats in French and how she wants to marry a Frenchman and that she's a Frenchophile. I started shooting my friends the "what the fuck?" eyes as they all turned away to avoid eye contact. I let her continue for a few more minutes before she started talking about how her cat was unhappy with her and being moody that week since she stopped taking her meds (fucking seriously). I finally stopped her, thanked her for stopping by but it was just a private get together and showed her to the door. I saw her on the block after that but never once talked to her again.
The people that used to live next to me were hilarious to listen to and also crazy--they had the cops called on them a few times. From what I could tell by listening to their conversations (loud fights), she was a small white girl who worked three jobs and he was a lazy, fat black guy who played xbox all day and left dirty dishes everywhere for her to clean up. Most of their fights made me think Maury had moved his studio nextdoor. My favorite was when she came home from work one night at around 8:00 and just erupted. Their exchange went something like this: Girl: WHAT THE FUCK? I come home from working all day and your useless ass is playing video games. Him: Listen, bitch...I'm playing this shit because I want to. Girl: What the fuck does that have to do with anything? I'm sick of you doing nothing, I'm sick of you leaving your shit all over the house, I'm just fucking sick of you! Him: What the FUUUUUCK (yes, it was an extended "u" sound--awesome, really)! You can't talk to me like that! You might be able to talk to your bitch-havin-ass (verbatim) parents like that, but not me. My momma didn't raise no PUSSY! At this point, my ear is to the wall, I can hear everything, and I'm laughing my ass off as silently as I can. I can hear stomping and then a smack. Girl: Fuck you and fuck your momma. They moved out two weeks later. Another story involved a different unit in my building where the guy above them was just shitting and pissing directly on the floor--so much so, that it was coming through the cracks in the hardwood and falling into the unit below. This was really shocking, as I don't live in a bad place at all. There are lots of families, the police chief, and some well-off people that live in the building. I think the guy was removed by the cops and placed in the custody of his family. I'm glad I got the Maury neighbors.
My neighbor killed his wife in the bathroom and then burned the house down with her corpse inside. But he wasn't a dick to me though.
Not technically next door neighbors, but when I was young I lived down the street from a dude who made national news. He drowned his wife and children. When we went trick-or-treating to his house (during the several-year trial), my parents always threw away the candy he gave us. Real cordial dude. I think he's on death row now.
I live in the end unit of a fourplex and share a common wall with crackheads. Literal crackheads. My children know what crack smells like. I love being a single parent on a ghetto budget. The people across the street used to be a great source of white trash drunken entertainment during the summer. He'd get all drunked up, she'd kick him our at 2am, and he'd stand on the street yelling about how he was sorry and he didn't mean it, it was the booze talkin'! I was kinda sad when they got evicted.
In high school, my dad moved into a new house with myself, his girlfriend, and her kids. An hour after we arrived with the first load of boxes, the guy next-door came by. Not to welcome us, not to say hi, but to tell my dad that he didn't like the way the previous owners had refused to maintain the trees and such that were on HIS side of the property line. He came to the door repeatedly over the next months, and bitched whenever he saw one of us outside, that we couldn't trim the parts that were overhanging onto our side of the line (these trees had clearly not been pruned at all) but he also demanded that we tear up the vines on our side of the property line. The year I had a roommate, we had a crazy living downstairs. She came up one night to complain that I had woken up her daughter...by walking in bare feet from my living room to my bedroom. The kicker? She was on her fucking cell phone, at 3AM. Somehow I doubt that my skinny ass footsteps made more noise than, say, her flapping on her phone in the next room. She was a bitch about it, cursing and just generally rude in demeanor, so I mentioned it offhand to the landlord a few days later. After giving him a description, he told me she had been trespassed from the apartment complex, and to call him if I saw her on the property again. Thankfully, I never did. What I did, and still have to do, is keep a close eye on my laundry. The laundry room is in the basement of one of the buildings, and several times I've come back at the end of the cycle to find the dryer empty, and my wet, cold clothes sitting in another dryer. I've taken to carrying around a large garbage bag with me, and checking every fifteen minutes. The next time it does happen, I'll happily bag up the clothes and walk them to the dumpster.
I've never had any crazy neighbors. I lived in middle class suburbia during my childhood, with two older black grandparents next door. During college the one small problem I had was sometimes one of the group of guys I shared a wall with would play music quite loud at 2 in the morning, but on the weekends, and usually our music was blasting just as loud. I think he bothered me once, but I slept right through it. Now I live in a house, and we have a family with a dad, mom, and newborn child nextdoor. We introduced ourselves when we moved in and gave them our number if we got too loud, but we haven't heard from them since. I guess some people get all the luck. I'm just waiting until I get a crazy.
Can I post again? I want to post again. Deal with it, I'm posting again. I forgot about all my Bedstuy neighbors! My next door neighbor is insane. She stands on her stoop and just yells noises throughout the day, when she's not sweeping the sidewalk. For whatever reason I escaped her bad list, but if she doesn't like someone (like all my roommates) she'll scream at them whenever they pass by her house, on either side of the street. Then, there's (one of) my drug addict neighbors. We think he's on heroin, but none of us are really sure. I watched him attack someone with a chair, and tip over and crack his head open on the sidewalk. Then there was the time he told my roommate when they were in the laundromat that "If I wanted to, I could just come in here and shoot everyone and no one could stop me." Or, when I passed him on the street and said hello and he responded with 'SHOOT ME. JUST SHOOT ME IN THE FUCKING HEART." He also gets me confused with all of my other roommates, who are black or Puerto Rican. I'm not sure if this guy is technically a neighbor, because I've never seen him, but every couple of nights some crazy and/or intoxicated guy will come onto my block and start yelling either "DANIELLE!!!!!!" or "ERIC!!!!!!" for hours on end. (Not an exaggeration: hours.) I really want to know the story there. Then there's the guy who's crazy in a good way, who has huge stereos set up on his porch and blasts reggae when it's warm out and every time I walk past he wants me to either sing, dance, or smoke with him. Then there's the teenage mother who I get parenting tips from when I hear her screaming at her kid in the playground across the street. "BITCH WHY YOU ALWAYS CRYING? EVERY FUCKING DAY!" Then there's the Haisid, who propositioned me on the street to be his sex slave. These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. It's an interesting neighborhood.
I mentioned a while back my neighbour, who I was once friends with, is a bi-polar mongoltard that about a year ago lost his entire collection of shit on me at our neighbourhood store's parking lot because I asked if he was on something after he asked my wife and I the same question 6 times in a three-minute conversation. Why wouldn't I ask that? He was talking like a 90-year-old war vet. When I did, he started screaming threats, insulting my wife, and standing over me (he's 6'4", I'm 5'9") trying to intimidate me. I refused to back down, but at the same time if you get into a war with a neighbour, you're basically pissing into your own pool until one of you moves away. It's a 24-7 heat score and I don't need that now that I have a kid. I really wanted to slug him right in the throat, but I simply ignored him. To this day, if he even looks at me he gets Fuck Off Eyes in return. Fuck his 32-year-old wigger ass. His wife left him, took their daughter, and his boss has a restraining order against him for death threats. Scene, starwipe, fade. In my first apartment, my next door neighbours were newlyweds (you can probably guess what's coming next). They seemed nice and normal whenever I said "Hi" to them in the hallway but as soon as their bulsa wood door clicked shut she turned into Catherine fucking Trammel, and Sampson The Human Sledgehammer would start pounding her against the headboard like he was trying to knock a castle door down so goddamn hard I would have to blast action movies at level 11 just to drown out this nightmare pussycat theatre. "YOU ANIMAL!!! YOU...BIG...FUCKING...HORSE!!!! AHHHHH FUCK!!!!!!!!!!" This chick had a foundation-rattling oragsmic shriek that sounded like a flock of geese being peppered with buckshot. One night, I had had enough and kicked on their door until Superguy pulled out and answers the door in his gitch, pissed at me for the rude interruption. I wasn't an asshole, but told him that they're basically fucking up my life because I worked early in the morning. They SORT OF quieted down but then a couple of weeks later, nothing. I was worried they had been murdered or something but it turns out she ran off on him. I saw him once more, than never again. I guess he wasn't enough man for her. You could have fooled me judging by the shit I heard her yell all the time whenever they were two-backing it.
The first year I moved off campus, we lived across the street from a two-family house that rented the upstairs to a bunch of delinquents in their twenties. The favorite pastime of said delinquents was drinking forties on their second-story balcony while calling each and every passer-by 'faggot' or 'gross-ass bitch'. Be it 10 a.m. or the dead of night, chances were excellent that this activity was occurring. One night, we're sitting inside when a friend of ours bursts in the front door and tells us that someone at this house has been shoved off the balcony. We run outside to find one of the guys lying in a puddle of his own blood and teeth, moaning softly. We look down the street to see two other guys sprinting away. One of us calls out, "We're calling the police." One of them replies, "We know.", and continues running. A friend of mine walked over to the guy to see if he was OK. Apparently, the mere suggestion of compassion was enough to snap him out of his stupor, because he immediately started screaming about how he was going to go inside, retrieve his handgun, and "kill fucking everybody." My friend informed him that we would call an ambulance. His reply? "SO CALL THE FUCKING AMBULANCE, FAGGOT." Needless to say, we watched emergency services arrive from the safety of our front porch. They got kicked out three days later.
It embarrasses me to admit this, but often times me and my housemates are the shitty neighbours. We try to be conscientious, and are never intentionally obnoxious, but... well.. we don't really fit in. I run a poker game on Tuesday nights, maybe 8-9 people, and a lot of my friends smoke, so we play on our back deck. It's also a fairly multicultural game. Usually about 10pm, after a fair bit of bourbon, I'll suddenly realize that for the last hour the conversation, turned up to 11, has consisted of "how the fuck could you call half your stack with a gutshot draw, you ignorant porchmonkey? With play like that don't give up your day job picking cotton." "Suck my dick slant-eye, just think: you didn't even inherit an ability with numbers, just the micropenis." Our neighbours have children. It's... not good. About 3 months ago, we had a contractor out to backwash our pool, and forgot to tell him about the extra pipe you have to run from the outlet. We ended up drilling a 4ft hole in the neighbour's yard with pool run-off, and washing away a lot of their garden. We went around to inform them and throw ourselves on their mercy, and the husband was unusually home at 3pm in the afternoon... because he was installing doubleglazing on their windows. And yet - when our fence blew down, he was the first one to come around and help us put it back up. He invites us over and we share beers. It's... shameful. We've now established a system where he turns on his back light when it's time for us to move inside and shut up, which I think (hope) works. We've probably bought him $300 worth of apology wine / beer, and we've only been in the house 7 months. We suck. Neighbours I've had: at the last house we lived in, in the middle of a quite nice area, there was a Govt-subsidized house directly opposite us. 3 cars up on blocks, empties littering the yard, fairly cliche stuff. The domestics were legendary. It's only noticeable because I was pulling up to my house one night, and there was a police roadblock at the end of my street. They waved me through after I showed them my license, and there were maybe 10 bruised and bloodied people being restrained by cops, screaming at each other on the front lawn of this house. Apparently a family birthday party had gone horribly wrong, people had bottled each other, and two of the women had already been taken to the station for serious assault charges. Oh, and in the house before that I lived next to a brothel. That was actually totally fine, and sometimes I'd have mates round and we'd open the windows and listen to the performance the workers gave. Hours of entertainment!