WEDNESDAY'S
NEIGHBADS
(now with roommads?) !
Hey!
You got a bad neighbor?
Or bad tenant?
Or a bad landlord?
Or bad dormroom neighbor? Or a bad roommate?
Or are you
the bad
neighbor?
Write me now!
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Three for Three
Generally speaking, I relish the smallish midcity section of my town
with its neo-hippie-art student ambiance where I have been living for
several years in a turn-of-the-century apartment house...however, time
(and a succession of cheap landlords) have not been kind to it, and over
this past winter, what used to be an infrequent occurrence of a squirrel
getting in the crawlspace in the roof, turned into a large family of
racoons that are taking up residence and like to run recon missions into
whatever spaces they can get into...I had to barricade the kitchen
cabinets one night when it became obvious that one of them (or maybe
they were working in shifts, I don't know) got through a weak point in
the construction, and was right in under there with the pots and
pans....The landbad's solution is to "wait and see if they leave when
the weather warms up".
...and this leads to two out of three the next day when one of my
neighbads complained at me because "your damned dog was barking late
last night"---at the racoon mentioned above. Now, this particular
neighbad has had an edict issued on her (surprisingly, from the
Landbads...Badlords?) to not leave cat food outside her door...think of
her as an older, crankier, chainsmoking Snow White and instead of cute
bluebirds and deer gathering around her it's feral dumpster cats. This
was done because the brain trusts made the link between the Racoon
Movement and heaps of Meow Mix laying around all night outdoors.
Recently, she has taking to thumping our connecting walls with a
broomstick to "drive the racoons away" from her side of the building
whenever they act up....that of course, means they come hang out in MY
walls. She has also named one of them. Stumpy.
As for Number Three, there is the neighbad across the street. I will
begin by saying that I contribute to the local Veteran's and homeless
charities several times a year, and have supported people going through
recovery myself, so keep that in mind. I am not heartless, I just think
that the Badlord who owns the house this neighbad inhabits (rent not
being a correct verb here) could better serve the recovering homeless
community by getting this guy into a program instead of letting him live
there in exchange for keeping up the property. It started out, I know,
well enough, with the guy being very grateful and doing a halfway decent
job of landscaping and light carpentry. When he decided to crank up the
antique weed-eater at five o'clock on Sunday mornings, I said nothing.
Then, the carpentry got heavier and later. And more ill-defined. Or
abstract. Maybe that's it...Dada Landscaping...because that must be it
when all you do is drag a snow shovel up and down the sidewalk at two in
the morning. For a loooooong time. No, wait. It's the drugs.
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Here's one for you, tOdd.
I've loved your site for over a year now, and I'm young'n.
Anyways, I started my Freshman semester of college recently. I'm all pumped,
like "Yo! This is gonna be way awesome! Par-tay all the time with my loser
friends!" I'm going to be rooming with someone I went to high school with,
y'know? A good friend I've known for years so I think things are going to be
awesome.
Well... The first mistake I made was letting him pick the room. He goes for
the dorms that have the restaurant on the bottom floor. Awesome, right?
Easy-to-access food, right? Can't be bad, right? Try, a dark, damp,
mildew-smelling dungeon with people blaring loud rap music right outside our
window all the time.
Yeah, well, I grew up with my own room so I'm used to darkness. I figure
things can still be fun, right? Then comes to long series of annoying
events. Let's see: My roommate has a habit of, no matter what, coming back
from classes and sleeping the entire afternoon away. Two-to-five every day
during the week, he's passed out leaving me to sit there and be quiet so I
don't disturb him. On the flip side, I don't nap. I like to go to bed around
midnight so I'm not dead the next morning, having early (for me) classes and
all that.
That's not easy, however. Because of the napping, he doesn't go to bed
until... two or three AM, maybe? I don't know. All I know is he keeps his TV
and light (THAT DAMN LAMP FLOODS THE WHOLE ROOM) on until he does. I swear,
I put a pillow over my head when I try to sleep.
The TV wouldn't be so bad, except Adult Swim's schedule officially sucks now
and I hate everything it shows.
Oh well. We're moving to a nice dorm next semester, so I'm cool with
everything now.
Thanks for letting me vent, tOdd! Peace!
~The Dood
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Hi,
I did a search on obnoxious neighbors and
came across your website so I would like to add to it.
My husband and I moved into our nicely
kept home about 6 yrs. ago. We are a nice, quiet couple with no
kids who keep our property nice and well cared for. We respect
our other neighbors and don't make loud noise, pollute or cause
any troubel. There is a large maple tree on half our property
line and half on the neighbors line which is huge and damaging
our roof. They own a lot in between our two houses and we own a
small portion of it.
Anyway, these neighbors have two kids, one
that lives at the house with her boyfriend, and another son that
is in high school. The mother works and the father is uemployed.
He spends his entire day in his garage working on motors to cars
and other things like go-carts, etc. and revs these loud motors
all day creating alot of smoke and noise. I have complained
about him before and the police came to remind this idiot of the
noise ordinance in this city, which he is well aware of. I have
heard that he is off work due to a back injury but it seems
awful funny that he is able to mow the other neighbors lawns
(for pay) and do this on his extremely loud, and smoky mower
that I am sure he worked on in his noisy, dirty garage. lol.
He also works on motors in his garage (for pay I am sure) all
through the spring and summer months. People are coming and
going in the summer all the time and he works on their stuff.
Geeeezzzz, I wonder if he was also receiving
unemployment compensation for the hurt back !!!!!!!!
The other day, my husband decided to cut a
large branch from the Maple tree that is damaging our roof. It
is on our property so he cut the branch down. This idiot came
over with his digital camera and starting taking pictures
telling my husband that if the tree died we would have to pay
for it. Now, we like trees. The problem with this one is that
it is a hazard since if a storm ever knocked it down, it would
fall on our roof and possibly kill us. It is that large. When
we first moved in, we tried to reason with these losers but
since they are controlling idiots, they wanted no part of the
conversation. We even offered to buy them a new tree to plant
on their property.
In the meantime, for 6 years, we have
listened to the reving motors, put up with pollution from their
defective woodburning stove in the winter time, listened to
their loud dogs bark ( not the dogs fault, by the way !!!! ),
and dealt with the kids and every other kid in the area playing
a few inches away from our cars and marking them all up with
pings from balls, etc. and almost breaking our windows to our
home. In addition to this, he runs around the neighborhood
gossiping about us and saying bad things about us that aren't
true. (Yeah, he is a nut, by the way. )
I would like any input on what to do about
these losers. We are not moving because they are idiots. We
like our house and are not going to be pushed out. We live in
New York State and I don't want another summer of harrassment
from these jerks.
Thanks and I appreciate the forum for
allowing me to vent !!!
A nice neighbor in upstate NY.
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hi. I live in Brooklyn for 20 years and was happy
until new people on the top of me got the apartment and I just
lost my life.
I have health problems and noise makes me feel
even warse. At night they start cleaning apartment and I hear
water running and furniture moving. Plus all of them sluming
doors so strong that my head is falling from my neck. Nothing is
helps. I dont have no husband and no big family. Just today I
call police agane and I also reported to my landlord office for
a maybe 1000000 times.
I cant move . I am using radio at night now and
it is really helps a lot to go to sleep and I cant hear them a
lot.
Good luck all of you and magic night
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I took in a friend i had known for about 8 years as a roomate
after another friend she lived with got married. Their place was
always spotless so i thought no problem, i'm a borderline neat
freak plus she works nights so we wont have to see each other
all the time. About a month later i come home to find clothes
thrown all over the living room, every pot and pan put on the
counter. After piling the clothes into her room and putting the
pots and pans away i realize there are a mix of raisins and
dried cranberrys scattered all over the carpet. Once i got those
all vacuumed up she gets home from work. When i asked her about
it she said she had problems opening the bag, and it eventually
tore open and flew everywhere. By then she was late for work so
left them all over the floor.
The next day i come home and the apartment looks like a
disaster again. This goes on for about a month until the
apartment maintenance came to fix the washer during the day
while she was home. They reported the mess to the management but
noted that one room (my bedroom) was immaculate. They called me
down to the office and said they were evicting her and
transferring me to a one bedroom within a week. I haven't been
to her new place out of fear and now thoroughly check new
roomates habits before letting them move in.
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