My apartment was three blocks from a bar. There was that one morning, about 3 o’clock, when a small contingent of drunks were walking in my direction. At least one of them was loud enough to hear through my closed windows so I opened one and yelled at 'em, “Shut the fuck up!” The loudest one shot back, “Fuck you!” Then I heard a couple other voices, couldn’t quite make them out but it was along the lines of “dude’s got a point.” Didn’t hear a peep after that.
A few years ago a kid moved into the house across the street from us. He would play drums in the middle of the night, loud enough to disturb us even though both of our houses had the doors and windows closed (I can’t imagine how loud it must have been inside his house). I finally went over and pounded on his door, at which point he stopped, but wouldn’t answer the door. I wrote him a note asking him to limit his playing to times when we weren’t trying to sleep. The next day there was a note at our door and a bar of chocolate, and he had apologized, saying he had no idea that he was disturbing us.
When I was in college, I lived in a 2nd floor apartment that wasn’t air conditioned. One summer night, at about 3am, I was awakened to some Motley Crue coming from down the street. :rolleyes: I got up and called 911, and the operator asked me, “Are you in the 800 block of (street name)?” :eek: I replied, “No, I’m in the 900 block.”
That was one loud stereo.
I worked with a guy who lived on the 800 block of (street name) and asked if he and his roommates were the ones who did it. He said it was the people next door, and I believed him.
I lived in a ground floor apartment that was built into the ground, so that the windows were literally at ground level. There were sloping walls that ran up from the ground to the apartment above me. The guy above me had a party one time and people were jumping off of his balcony onto my patio and then scaling up the sloping walls back into his apartment. And then were the times that he liked to lift weights and drop them to the floor, over and over and over again.
Now we live across the street from a guy who runs some sort of trash and handyman business. He is always literally throwing junk into the back end of his extremely noisy pickup that he runs at all hours of the day and night, vibrating the entire neighborhood. And when he isn’t running his truck engine, he’s got it hooked up to an enclosed trailer he made himself that he backs in and out of his parking space and blocks the street, or parks in front of his house blocking, half the street. And when he isn’t doing that, he revs his motorcycle at all hours of the day and night, leaving it running for upwards of half an hour, then revving it again just before he takes off. I don’t think he ever sleeps.
When I was in grad school I had a very noisy neighbor (stereo). One time her mother came to visit and I heard her say “That’s awfully loud; what do your neighbors think?” and the noisy woman said “I’m not here for my neighbors to like.”
And I thought, “great person you raised there, mom! Nice job!”:rolleyes:
Oh oh! And another time, this was before Caller ID, I had very loud neighbors upstairs (again, stereo mostly). Once they turned the stereo way up, and went outside to barbecue. I called their phone. I let it ring. Then I could hear thump thump thump as the person went in to the house, turned down the stereo, and then I hung up before he/she could answer.
The stereo went back up, thump thump thump the person went back out to the barbecue, and I called again. Thump thump thump, turn down the stereo, I hang up the phone.
Repeat. After three times, the person left the stereo volume low(er) so she/he could hear the phone.
Lived in a basement apartment for a very short time. First day in the apartment, I discovered that the upstairs neighbors were in the circus and trained the elephants in their tiny apartment! Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was actually 3 very young children, who must have had lead in their shoes. At 7pm the elephant training stopped and I smiled, and thanked my lucky stars for parents who believed in early bedtimes. By 9pm, I figured out why they had so many children and that my bedroom was directly under the master bedroom…ugh.
I swore off apartments as soon as I could afford to do so and never looked back. Now my noisy neighbors are frogs in the pond and some whippoorwills, and a couple of squirrels that tried to move into my attic, but they were evicted with extreme prejudice.
Told this story before;
During my divorce process, I lived in a rental townhouse. The woman in the larger unit next to mine, whose sewing room was directly above our shared entryways liked to listen to marching music very loud. Sousa, etc.
One afternoon this idiot called the cops complaining about the woman who lived below me, because she was playing music very loudly and singing.
So the cops come out and check it out. I happen to walk outside in the middle of it and she tried to drag me into it. I said 'hey, it’s the middle of the afternoon, I don’t care. Besides, aren’t you the person who plays marching music really loud?" Cops are like :dubious:
So she starts complaining that it is hurting her heart. :smack: That part just pissed me off, because she can listen to marching music super loud just fine?
Then she admits that she wouldn’t be bothered as much if it was CHRISTIAN music. :rolleyes:
Then it turns out the woman was practicing for her church choir and it was Christian music. 
Neighbor kept digging herself in deeper. Basically just a racist fuck who was complaining about those “Mexicans” (they were Guatamalan) downstairs. The apartment complex moved the downstairs neighbors to a new apartment and marching lady’s lease was not renewed when it came up.
Oooh, that reminded me of one of the other joys of now having a martini bar across the street: the parking lot.
Bad enough are the drunk fools who head to their cars, and turn up their car stereos. But, an order of magnitude worse is the bar patron who leaves at closing time (1 a.m. or 2 a.m.), and starts up his Harley, then lets it idle (POTATO POTATO POTATO) for five minutes before finally leaving at 80 decibels.
We’ve previously had a discussion thread here on SDMB about how some motorcycles “need” to idle for five minutes to warm up the engine. That may be, but it’s still ignorant and rude to do that in the middle of the night, in a residential neighborhood. If your vehicle needs to make that much noise, for that much time, before you can drive it, then it’s not an appropriate vehicle to be starting up in the middle of the night.
I agree. Years ago we had a neighbor who would do that with his motorcycle. It was just a toy to him. He would take it out of the garage, let it idle for 15 minutes while he would sit there and make noise with it. Then ride it around the blocks a few times and put it away. When his second child was born, he finally grew up and sold the motorcycle.
We had a similar experience, although the problem was miscellaneous noise (it sounded like they were constantly moving furniture and clog dancing) rather than music.
One day, things went blessedly silent. Our landlord told us that the tenants were behind on their rent and skipped out. Too bad for him, but we were tremendously relieved.
There is a lane behind my house that has four house on it. The house directly behind mine has been a rental for decades, and for twelve years was occupied by a family of hillbillies who were noisy and also annoying in other ways. The parents and children communicated in shouts. The father worked on trucks in the garage which was just across the lane from my yard. The sounds of a compressor, sanders, impact wrenches , paint sprayers, and grinders were frequent. It was hard to enjoy my yard and screen porch.
When the hillbillies moved out and the owners put the house on the market, I bought it. I’m the landlord now. It’s really quiet back there. 
My neighbor across the street owns some sort of souped-up go kart-type conveyance that he races. Every few weeks, he’ll turn it on, let it run for 15 minutes, making sure to rev the shit out of it from time to time. Hand to Og you can hear it two counties away.
I thought this said Nosy neighbor.
Noisy? No, never.
I AM the noisy neighbor.
Motley Crew CHECK
6 Mackie 2600 power heads to potentially play it out of CHECK
Drum kit, fully mic’d and connected to said Mackies no less CHECK
Motorcycle (though never idled for 5 minutes, not good for mine) CHECK
Noisy rooster that wakes up a 3 5 and 7 am CHECK
70 big block dodge that sounds like an earth quake in slow motion CHECK
Air compressor power tools and misc things running at 2am CHECK
My neighbors have never complained though.
Admittedly i am not sure what said complaining might sound like?
But neither the squirrels or turkey vultures or opossum or raccoons or alligator have ever said anything to me that i can recall?
An ex and I lived in an apartment with another couple about our age living in the apartment below ours. They would have loud sex at all hours of the day. We eventually got to the point where when they would start, we would start, either for real or just making the noises, being sure to be equally loud. For the first few times, they just got louder as if it was a competition. Eventually, they got much quieter about it.
I used to live in an apartment where the neighbors were this 6’4" blonde girl who was built like a friggin’ Valkyrie and some dude who was maybe 5’8" and at least half as wide across. I have no idea what got them together but more power to 'em.
Speaking of “more power”, there was a whole lot of kinetic energy goin’ on, on the other side of the wall. Even if they weren’t especially verbal, that headboard would hit the wall like a sledgehammer at 2am.
Our condo is quite well built; can’t really hear anything from neighbors unless they’re extraordinarily loud. The ladies next door continually griped about the noisy family above them. The parents up there never really believed the noise was as bad as the women said. Those old maids eventually bought a place in the country and moved out, then a young single mother and her little girl moved in.
First thing the woman did was invite her upstairs neighbors to dinner, but only the parents. Who got to hear for themselves how loud their kids were.
Please tell me that their performances were accompanied by recordings of Wagner.
In my college apartment, our downstairs neighbors asked us to not wear shoes in our apartment because the sound of heels on hardwood floors bothered them. We obliged, but I kind of wanted to tell them to fuck off. If you don’t want to hear noise from a neighbor, don’t live in an apartment. That said, I’ve had plenty of noisy neighbors over the years and it didn’t bother me.