You may have missed an opportunity. The best time to knock on their door might be when they can hear it.
Just call the police the next time.
About a year ago, I was trying to fall asleep, but over on another street, a wild party was in full swing with loud music, drunken chatter and drums. I opened the window and brought the phone over to the window before I dialed. I described the location of the party - which street it was on and the approximate address, how it was on all three decks, etc. The dispatcher asked if I’d mind turning down the radio so they could hear me better. I said “That’s the party!” It was shut down ten minutes later. 
Fast-forward to now. My downstairs neighbors are fine - immediately under us is the building parking garage, and in the front part of the building is a produce market. They open at 8 AM and close at about 9 PM, so noise just isn’t an issue. Their moron customers that don’t understand red zones and driveways are another problem. :mad:
Upstairs, there’s apparently two families living in a 2-room apartment. The roughly 6-year old brat revels in riding a razor scooter in the kitchen. Back and forth, from fridge to stove, over the 12x12" ceramic tile floor. thump-ump-ump-ump-ump-ump. thump-ump-ump-ump-ump. Someone else up there seems to weigh 400 pounds and has no knees, so their footsteps are very heavy. At least they all seem to work normal day jobs, so they’re quiet at night.
I make damn sure they hear me when I come to complain - even if it means ringing the doorbell several times. They never come down the steps to answer the door, just yell down the stairs for me to come in. Their lazyness works to my advantage since if they knew it was me, they probably wouldn’t answer.
DoperChic
See, I hate living on the top floor mainly because I’m a lazy, lazy bastard. First off, I move. Alot. Pretty much once a year since I was about 7. I’m 26 now. So one of the first thoughts in my mind when I’m looking at places is how much a pain in the ass it’s gonna be moving in and out. Then I think of the every day chores. I tend to only go grocery shopping once every 6 weeks or so. I work really, really long weeks so I usually put it off until the cupboards are pretty much bare. So when I go shopping I’ve got TONS of bags. It’s enough of a pain in the ass lugging them from the carport to the apartment, but then up stairs? That’d be a hell no, thanks. Plus I live in an area that’s hot enough to be hot as hell if you’re in the wrong apartment, but not hot enough for most places to have air conditioners. So being on the top floor usually equals being hot as hell in the summer months. When I was looking at places in this complex, I looked at an upstairs unit first, then a downstairs unit. There was about a 10-15 degree difference. It was amazing.
So all that rambling basically boils down to: I deal with the elephant man in order to have the convienence of a cooler, more easily accesible apartment.
Oh, and I’m a lazy, lazy bastard.
Ha! Actually, after staying in a fifth floor walkup in the East Village for a week, I’m with you. Luckily, we’re on the third floor here, but the first floor apartments are basement apartments. I only have to go up 1 1/2 flights of stairs:). And so far, it’s been nice here (except for the fact that we can’t open our windows more than a crack because my boy cat climbs in the window and tries to sleep against the screens - I touched one and it fell out, so unless we want a flying kitty, the windows can be open no more than half an inch.). We do have A/C, but haven’t used it.
I think I’m just ultra-sensitive to noise - I can’t fall asleep to any kinds of noise except a low murmur from the television. So I’d rather sleep on the top floor and be a little warm (ceiling fans help) than worry about noise.
I can’t wait to buy a house, though. We’re looking to buy in January or February of next year. My one stipulation is a QUIET neighborhood.
Ava
One of my neighbors often has an urgent need to work on his car at 2 am. He seems to have a lot of trouble with the timing because when he revs the engine it really sounds like shit. The noise doesn’t usually wake me up, mostly because I’m still awake half the time, but it gets on my wife’s nerves.
Oh yeah? Well I used to live next to a combination daycare/sawmill/gun range/mad scientist lab/torture pit of the damned/spaceport.
After a bunch of college-aged guys moved into the apartment next to mine, several years ago, I quickly grew weary of cranked-up stereos (I came to the conclusion that each of them moved in with his own big-ass stereo system, hence the need to put one into each bedroom as well as the living room.) When I had finally had enough, I decided to demonstrate to them the thinness of the walls. I placed my bass guitar amplifier right up against our shared wall (speaker toward the wall), plugged in my bass, turned the volume to “10” and proceeded to practice my favorite Iron Maiden songs. I had very few loud stereo problems from them after that.
I think my old neighbors have moved to your complex The 27th Evil. They didn’t think that there was a BAD time for loud music.
Or for having loud conversations with one another. “I’m gonna kill you bitch!” “Get the fuck off me you whore!”…
They were lovely people really. I enjoyed their 3AM dramatic interpretation of “Couple, Fighting Again”.
Then they had to go and get themselves evicted. They lived above me. 12:30AM on the day they were locked out they threw their couch off the balcony of the second floor, directly in front of my bedroom window…
~J
Oh, here’s a fun situation for you: I live in a building with three dwellings. I’m in front, there’s an apartment behind me, and then, the back half of the house belongs to the landlord. Guess who the noise problem is?
Yes, several Mondays ago, he was blasting that song that is a combination of “What a Wonderful World” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at 12am. It was so fucking loud that I could hear it over my TV. I put up with it as long as I could, but I have to work at 6am. I go back there and realize he has the outside speakers on! Knocking on the glass door is not loud enough for me to hear, and I’m the one knocking, so I let myself in. There he sits, slumped over in his chair, next to the stereo, drunk as a lord and unconscious. I wake him up and somehow get him to turn off the outside speakers and lower the volume. He tries to get up to see me out but can’t really stand.
I live in the middle of nowhere, so there are few other neighbors really to be bothered, and the other guy in the building is rather an inert gas. I guess I could call the cops, but I’d hate for my landlord to find out it was me who did it . I am really worried about how it’s going to be in the summer, when he has people outside late at night. It could get ugly.
i hate Ja Rule.
Flashbacks to my highschool dorm.
Britney, et all have NOTHING on Chinese and Korean pop. God that stuff sucks, especially from the next room at floor-vibrating levels.
Man, this issues gets me more upset than just about anything else. I lived in a crappy apartment about a year ago and had problems all the time with noise. The lady who moved in next door shortly before I left was classic…she would blast music so loud stuff would vibrate off the shelves on the other side of the wall. I always wondered what these people are thinking. Are they just so completely ignorant that they don’t know how obnoxious it is to share your music with unwilling neighbors or are they just rude? I never wanted to call the cops, you make enemies forever that way. I would have expected slashed tires the following morning.
its true, as bad as our pop music is, its even worse in countries with less developed music industry.
Try inviting the apartment manager over for a friendly visit. Our neighbor deals with the noisy family upstairs from her by having the maintenance man hear it for himself.
Heh. If it’d been me, I would considered backing out and closing the door, then calling the cops: “His music has been on for hours! I went over, and you can just barely see him from outside. I don’t know for sure, but he might be dead.” Talk about a wake-up call…