Neighbour Time

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I live in an apartment building; your typical Montreal building, 6 units, outside staircases. The walls aren’t really all that thin, but occasionally, we do have the dubious pleasure of being able to hear our neighbours, and that’s what this thread is about.

Early-to-mid afternoons, the neighbours below us (or below and across, I’m not sure) have what I have come to call “Music Time”. Apparently there is a male who lives there who thinks he will one day be a great musician, and/or he gets together with friends and they have a band. The problem with Music Time isn’t the band per se; they aren’t that loud. No, the problem is their singer. That man cannot sing to save his bloody life. It’s a horrible, off-key (and I have near perfect imperfect pitch!), irregular, and just generally TERRIBLE singing. Wailing, or yelling might describe it better. Just an ungodly howl, clearly trying to be emotional and deep, but failing miserably. I’ve been making fun of him for months now, to the point where when he starts bellowing, I just start laughing. It’s like they’re taping a show of “How not to ever ever become famous” down there, because he is well on his way to complete “never-heard-of-him” status!

We also have “Piano Time”. We had Piano Time in our last apartment too, and both times it’s the people directly above us who play. Usually around 4-5pm, and rarely more than 45 minutes to an hour or so. The person at the last apartment was good, so it could be quite pleasant (except when they were practising some particularly difficult segment over and over and over again, but generally, we’d get entire songs, with very few stops). The person here… not so much. They aren’t terrible; they are well beyond “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, at least, but what they do play tends to have a lot of mistakes and starts-and-stops. It doesn’t annoy me very much, except that it’s now part of my day, and sometimes I just wish they’d skip a practise or two! Actually, I’m mostly impressed at the fact that they were able to get a piano up to the third floor of this building!

What else?

We do have “Sit on the Balcony with Dirty Feet on the Railing and Smoke and Talk” time from our neighbours. Perfectly acceptable behaviour, since the balcony is theirs and they can smoke and talk if they want to. I just get annoyed because our balcony faces theirs, and since they are only about 4 feet away, it sometimes sounds like they are in our kitchen! And I don’t like looking at dirty feet (these girls apparently aren’t familiar with “soap” or “shoes”; the one girl’s feet are nearly black all the time). They also have a bad habit of conducting SotBwDFotRaSaT Time at 1am. On a Tuesday. Kind of sucks when you have to get up and work the next day! And one girl (a friend, not a tenant) has a very bizarre laugh, so either I end up laughing hysterically whenever she starts up, or I get annoyed at having to hear it!

I’m sure there are other little stories and routines but right now those are the ones I can think of. It might not sound like it, but generally, I like my neighbours and love where we live. It’s just sometimes… well, better soundproofing would be nice!

So, what odd neighbour habits, or neighbourly routines have crept into your lives?

2

During my apartment days, oh so many years ago, I had an upstairs neighbor who liked to erupt into his rendition of Patsy Cline’s Crazy in the wee hours of the morning. He sounded much like the singer you described. He was so bad, I wondered if he was trying to sound bad on purpose.

3

Loud motor vehicle time.

The boys next door, across the street and behind me like their loud cars, loud dirt bikes and loud ATVs.

You really have no idea how loud an ATV is until it goes zooming past your office window at 3PM. It’s just…loud.

The boys also are fearless enough to ride their fast vehicles through rain and snow, too. I think even in the dark now.

I’m not too pissed about the loud stuff. Some older folks live amongst us here and I wait for them to complain if it gets out of hand. It’s just annoying. It’s really no worse than when I lived underneath a freeway and crotch rockets would go zooming by or a really loud truck.

If that’s the worst my neighbors can do, I’m content.

4

It’s been over a decade but our previous place was a duplex where we shared a wall with a really nice single mom and two kids. Normally we never even noticed them other than “hellos” in the driveway, then one Sunday morning we heard this low moaning than eventually turned into desperate pleas to a diety. This went on for a month or so and it just kinda signaled to us that it was time to get up and do something elsewhere in the house rather than sleep late.

She eventually asked one day, apprehensively, if we could ever hear her friend. Didn’t bother me so much but I hope her kids weren’t bothered by the symphonic orgasms the man was making in Mommy’s room.

5

SotBwDFotRaSaT?
:confused:

6

The house next door to out old house had a “mother in law” cottage out back, occupied by the grown unmarried son of the homeowner. He was learning to be a drummer. Fortunately, he wore headphones, so we didn’t get treated to endless repetitions of whatever song he was trying to learn at the time. The drumming was only really bad in the office, so it was tolerable.

The sad thing was, we lived in that house for 10 years and the guy never got any better. He made the same mistakes in “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” at the end of our time there as he did when we first moved in.

7

Sit on the Balcony with Dirty Feet on the Railing and Smoke and Talk

8

My last apartment was in a student housing apartment complex, and was quite… well… ghetto. Think huge stereo systems in cheap civics or other assorted 80’s-90’s pieces of junk, blaring hip hop and rap from noon until 4am. Unfortunately, I directly faced the parking lot where they did this, and the hastily built complex was anything but insulated. My favorite night was the night they decided to throw crap at the windows. Thank god they threw eggs at mine, unlike a few they smashed with rocks.

My current apartment is really nice, only complaint is my neighbor two doors down (I live in a series of 4-plex’s) and his huge outdoor parties friday nights. The walls are thick but the windows aren’t so outside noises transfer in very well. His buds take over the parking lot, and glass beer bottles carpet the entire outside area saturday mornings. Most of the time I have to park on the street, which is VERY busy with extremely popular bars and cars parked up and down, and drunkards stumbling around from 10pm-3am.

Oh, and my neighbor in my building is trying to break into the DJ scene, but thankfully the walls are thick enough that all I get are slight vibrations for maybe 10 minutes a week.

9

When I first moved into this rental townhouse complex four years ago, I was in a two bedroom unit with neighbors under me (“Garden level”), on either side and in front.

The neighbor on the south played music EXTREMELY LOUDLY on Friday and Saturday nights. Until about 3am. Now I’m not going to complain until after midnight, and I certainly did not complain at all at first. But by the third weekend, it was getting really old. When I complained, and then called the police, it started a war of accusasions, lies, threats and retaliation that continued until I moved out of the unit. Since I’d moved there upon separating from my psycho ex and was in the middle of a divorce full of lies, slander, accusations and threats, it was really a bad time to be me.

The people below me originally thought that it was ME playing that music, and complained about me. They were from Guatamala, and the woman sang in her church choir, so she’d regularly practice in the afternoons. I had no issues with this whatsoever and never complained about them. However…

The people on the north side were an older couple. The woman would sit in her study, which occupied the front of the unit directly over both our doors, and listen - and sing along to - MARCHING MUSIC. Big booming overpowering music. I never complained about that either.

But…MMW (Marching Music Woman) constantly called the police about the people below us, complaining about how the music from below “hurt her heart”. Claiming that the bass line was harmful to her heart and was causing her medical problems. I would have stayed the hell out of that one, but MMW kept telling the police that I was a witness, because I heard it too.

What was worse was that she was extremely racist and very Christian about it. If it was her style of music, or if it was CHRISTIAN music, she claimed that she would have no problem with it at all. When I pointed out that IT WAS CHRISTIAN MUSIC, only in Spanish, she blew it off and insisted that she didn’t want to hear it, that it was causing her medical problems.

Yeah, you stupid racist cunt, her practicing her spanish gospel songs hurts your heart, but your fucking booming marching music is just fine. Idiot.

The bad part for me in all this was that the complex management decided that I was a “problem tenant” because of all the cross-complaints from the people around me, and from the retaliating liar who was a friend of the then complex manager.

About a year later, I moved down the block into an end unit with only one neighbor. No one off my living room, I can watch TV at 4am (Which I do because of my work schedule) and no one has ever complained. The complex also likes me now because I’m two doors down from the rental office, and I’m the one who calls the police about issues at 2am*, because I’m home and awake, and they’re not here.

  • So far, calls have included: 2am fights in the parking lots, kids damaging cars and lights by throwing rocks, people trying to break into the rental office and problems with the people who rent the ‘party room’ in the rental office building.
10

The worst apartment neighbors I ever had were Mr. and Mrs. Pyromaniac.

One Independence Day, they decided to celebrate by throwing lit firecrackers off of their second-floor balcony and onto the next building’s roof. That was fun.

Later on that summer, they decided to have a barbecue… on the same balcony. Problem was, a storm came up. Lemme tell you, nothing says “Summer Fun” like seeing the wind whip up four-foot-long flames along the side of the building you’re in.

11

I just have one summer in an ordinary apartment building. A young lady moved into the suite below mine, and had some really good sex. Summertime, and the windows are open… moaning escalating into “oh, god! oh, god! oh, god! oh, god, oh god, oh, god, oh god ohgodohgodohgod!” Finally the fellow below me yelled audibly

GIVE IT A REST, LADY!

She did, for about ten minutes. Then the pleasure commenced.

I had a really good mental image of this, too, as I’d gone out onto my balcony to smoke and look moodily out into the night and be full of single-gal angst, and noticed that I could see directly into her dining area. Which was fine, except she was sitting there at her kitchen table, with the lights on, the blinds open and not a stitch on!

She was rather attractive, but at the same time, I was quite surprised. There was another building across the parking lot, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one with a view.

12

I could write a book about my many and diverse neighbors, but I’ll still to one thing for now. I also live in a 4-plex complex, and I have this one set of neighbors in my building- a young couple. I live on the ground floor on the left, south-facing, and they live on the top floor, on the right, facing north. The complete opposite of my apartment- the furthest away you could get. They have had sex every single night for the past 3 years. How do I know this, you ask? Because these buildings are so cheaply and shoddily built that when I lie in my bed and they’re going at it (for hours. every night.) my bed literally shakes and rocks back and forth. If you were standing there, you’d see my body moving back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Now this kind of freaks me out. I don’t know much about building construction, but my overactive imagination has the building crashing down on my in my bed frequently. I would think that this shouldn’t happen with sound construction, but I could be wrong. I’m not one to complain about it, or begrudge anyone else’s getting their groove on, but it is annoying. Quite.

13

The downstairs neighbours have been having an extremely loud, rather vulgar series of domestic disputes. These have a tendency to take place around ten a.m., and can be clearly heard through all the windows in the back end of the house. Subjects of dispute have included whether they are both too fat, whether he likes the dog more than he likes her, their IKEA purchases, the fact she can’t get a job here because she doesn’t speak enough French, and whether he ought to have married “some anorexic witch from Westmount.” I don’t know if they know I can hear them, and I don’t know if they care.