Not really - a few years ago a few football balls were popped after I sent them over the fence.
We had downstairs neighbors from hell. We occupied the top floor of a 3-unit apartment building. The bottom 2 floors were occupied by an extended family - an older couple, their 2 adult sons and the sons’ wives, and the infant child of one of the younger couples. The space was appropriate for that number of people (plenty of bedrooms and common areas for 6 adults and a baby, plus a full kitchen on each level). They were upfront with the landlord about the number of people who would be living there. It wasn’t a problem in and of itself.
Unfortunately, their apartment became the default gathering place for the extended family’s extended family. Imagine a big family get-together like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Passover seder, Eid, etc., with the corresponding amount of noise and trash, but a couple of times a week.
When they weren’t hosting the multitudes, they liked to listen/watch some cable TV Bible channel at high volume. From the distribution of the TV sounds, it seemed to be playing on multiple TVs in the apartment. Their preferred listening/viewing hours started in the early evening and ended some time in the wee small hours of the morning.
We bought a house and moved out midway through our lease.
Plenty. The wanna be thrash rock garage drummer. The enterprising drug dealer that had cars lined up and had a car hop take orders and deliver the goods right to their windows. The meth cooks. The unrestrained tween that broke into everything he didn’t shoot up with his BB gun. The kids across the alley that throw everything from their yard into my yard.
We have them now. Unlicensed daycare. Letting their cats roam all night (actually, they roam into our yard and set off our cats. Unminded animals are against city statute). Their dog gets out at least once a week. You can tell when it’s recycling night - you hear a steady stream of beer bottles being tossed into the recycling bin, shattering. When I mow, I have to start off by walking by where their bins are, to pick up broken glass. She’s a screecher. Her mom (who runs the daycare) is a two-pack a day screecher. He’s a yeller. Someone did not like the day lilies growing on my property, so they were destroyed. A few boards from my fence have mysteriously disappeared and magically ended up where they had missing boards on their fence.
I hate them SO much.
It’s like college roommates.
If you don’t have a nightmare neighbor, then you’re the nightmare neighbor.
I spend all weekend running the leaf blower.
The one I remember most was the lady next door who looked at me the day we moved in and said “You’re just not going to fit in around here.” When I told my then-boyfriend later he said “That’s funny considering I’ve grown up in this neighbourhood for the past 14 years.”
Figures I thought of the perfect comeback 20 years later. >.<
I haven’t seen him in a while, but there’s a guy who lives at the other end of the block who I stopped from assaulting two women.
Several. One had kids that were constant screamers in a neighborhood filled with shift workers. He did nothing to keep his kids quiet until all the night shift people got together on their night off and threw a nice Heavy-Metal-Death Party right next to his house.
The neighbors who eagerly agreed to split the cost of our mutual fence, then backed out after several months of us trying to work out details; we gave up on them, had the fence built on our own dime so of course they immediately hire the same fence guy to abut theirs to ours so they’d pay less. Problem for them is our mutual line was constructed just at our property line, so I went out early the next morning and took it down myself, by hand w/ my cordless drill.
When they rushed out to ask what I was doing, I explained that I wanted to be sure when we marketed the house later that year there were no problems w/ the listing so was moving the fence to a safe distance within the boundary. I smiled and made eye contact w/ him the whole time. Yes, it cost a little more to have that fence line put back up 2’ further in, but it cost them more to have an entirely new fence put up where they could simply have shared ours and saved hundreds if they hadn’t tried to be so clever. The fence guy told us he thought their attempt was funny but he wasn’t about to turn down the money; the neighbor had called him when he saw me taking my side down asking if what I was doing was legal and then asked the fence guy to call and tell me to stop. HILARIOUS
Later that day I changed our wifi password so she couldn’t borrow that for her home business anymore as she had been doing for months (after getting permission to use it for a week until theirs was installed). I saw the cable truck in their drive a few days later and smiled.
BTW, at no point in my teardown did either neighbor offer to split the cost in order to get me to stop (obviously I didn’t offer the deal either). It was a costly lesson in trusting neighbors for me to learn and I haven’t made that mistake again.
Twice:
In college, my roommate and I (both college-aged women) lived next door to a couple of ladies of negotiable virtue. And honestly, they were perfectly nice neighbors, but it was a lot disconcerting when their clients knocked on the wrong door. Even worse, the night my roommate left and forgot to lock the door - a guy just walked right in, and into my bedroom! (Luckily, I had a shotgun within reach. I hope that he would have left anyway, as soon as he learned he was in the wrong apartment. But a convincing argument plus a 12 gauge worked out.)
After my husband and I bought our current land, and before we even cleared it for the house, my husband went to introduce himself to our next door neighbor. Mr. C made it very clear that he was not looking forward to our presence, and that he disliked children and dogs. And for 2 years, he was a miserable neighbor - he yelled at me, got onto my husband for answering the door shirtless at 6:30 in the morning, cussed at the children, and shot at my dog. His aim improved, though: he shot himself last fall. I know that it was shocking for them, but as near as I can tell? His 5 children were mostly relieved at his death. (The day of the funeral, the kids, grands, and greats gathered at the house after the ceremony. The youngsters were playing in the back yard, and that was literally the first time we had ever heard laughter coming from that house.)
I moved back in with my parents for about a year after being on my own for a few years. This seriously offended one neighbor for reasons I never understood. He went off the deep end and became a parking Nazi, calling 911 every time I parked on the street. So, 2-3 times daily? Parking on the street was neither an emergency nor was it even remotely illegal, so when the police finally threatened to file charges against him if he called again he dug up his mailbox and planted it next to my car and called the police.
Many other parking related hijinks ensued, and eventually I mentioned that I was 1/3 his age and if he wanted to wage a campaign to see who could be more petty and childish I would enlist the help of my similarly qualified drinking buddies and win. He mostly fucked off for the last few months until I moved back out.
My parents sold that house over a decade ago. They visit the (other) old neighbors every now and again. Apparently the new owners of our old house went through the same crap with him for years until he actually went so far as to buy a non-running unregistered junk car to park in the disputed space just so no one else can park there.
My current neighbour (an absolute sweetheart) told me about the neighbour where they previously lived who had it out for her. The neighbour would complain about their little dog barking all day (which was a lie, the dog is very quiet.) So a friend offered to take the dog for days while they were at work. Apparently the neighbour complained to the landlord about the dog barking again and my neighbour asked at what time did this happen - “Well that’s pretty good considering our dog was at daycare across town during those hours.”
I lived in the top floor of a three-story condo. I had one reserved parking space, and I used to park my motorcycle sideways in the front of the space and pull my car in behind it. Opposite my space was a garage owned by the guy who lived immediately below me. Once he griped about how much space I was taking up and I told him I was still within the boundaries of the space and there are bigger cars that take more space than my bike and car together. Then once he started cursing at my girlfriend in the parking lot about how I was a “fucking asshole” for how I parked. I ended up moving the bike on the opposite side of the property into a visitor lot just to keep the peace.
One evening he was playing music extremely loud. I went down and knocked on his door intending to politely ask him if he would turn it down but he did not answer. I saw him later and mentioned it, and he said, “Well, I just don’t answer my door. That’s just my policy, I guess.”
Then one fine spring day I had my windows open to enjoy the weather and started smelling fumes. I walked out on my balcony and saw flames coming out from his balcony directly below. I couldn’t quite see but from all appearances he had lit a barbecue grill with charcoal. Once again, I went downstairs, and once again, he followed his policy and did not answer the door. So I called the fire department. I figured they would send over someone in a car who would lecture him, but they sent a full response with truck and ambulance. He must have been on the balcony because I heard them yelling up at him that it was illegal to have a grill on the balcony, although they never entered the building. That seemed to solve the grill problem.
Hopefully, not like this roommate.
My current nightmare neighbor is a guy with an overly-sensitive car alarm that goes off 20 times a day.
I made the mistake of approaching him and asking if he could fix the alarm or turn it off…his belligerent response was “I’m parked legally…what are you going to do about it?” Now I’m kind of scared that some other neighbor will take matters into their own hands (do some kind of damage to his 15 year old piece-of-crap beater) and I’ll be the one he’ll come looking for.
Shortly after we got out of college and moved to the Bay Area, we lived in an apartment complex for about 6 months. Below us was a family we referred to as the “Fuck You Brians” because that was what the female half of the couple screamed during their extremely loud arguments at three in the morning, multiple times a week. It was summer and the apartments didn’t have air conditioning, so they left their windows open. Also, their baby screamed its head off (no wonder, given its asshole parents). Being nonconfrontational sorts (and also not wanting to get on their bad side since they were directly below us) we stepped up our search for a new place and ended up renting a house shortly afterward.
My neighbors in North Minneapolis in the 90’s. White, 50’s ish. To be fair, the woman had a lot of mental health issues and could only work intermittently over the 11 years I lived there.
Disassembled his (completely full) garage over the course of a summer and fall. Of course, because he had to work, he was out there pounding on it at 6am and until midnight, despite being asked not to.
I came home from playing paintball around noon on a Sunday. I’m walking through my backyard gate and I hear “HE’S GOT A GUN!!!” really loud and very scared. It came from their house and there’s only one window open about 2". That was LOUD. I was carrying an obvious paintball gun with this huge ball hopper on the top and a big air tank.
Had five vehicles, only one of which was running at any given time, for the two of them.
I had to have one of them towed from my driveway after I had mostly moved out and came back to clean out before the sale. Was parked crossways across my 2 parking spots with the bumper pretty much right up against the door of my 1 car garage. I couldn’t get anything out of the house through the back or out of the garage. No one answering their door for probably 15-20 minutes, I called the police and asked what to do, they gave me the number of a tow company. Sorry to do it, but that parking job seemed kinda deliberate and I needed to get my stuff out that day.
Neighbors on the other side of them, who finally divorced and bailed on the mortgage, used to tie up their dog in the back yard and leave for the night, coming back 3-4am. Or leaving Friday and coming back Sunday. Thing would HOWL. Called the police, they ticketed them, but couldn’t remove the dog without the signatures of 7 neighbors. I got them, dog removed.
I’m pretty sure I WAS one, back in college. One summer I sublet a big house - Rancho Destructo. 8 bedrooms to myself and a revolving cast of characters. And a nice dining room for our band to practice. Only thing was, our guitarist worked the late shift at a pizza joint, so practice didn’t start until 1 a.m.
One time a friend told me he was taking some law class at the community college, and the example the prof used to illustrate a public nuisance was us! :smack:
Currently I have the ‘bad dream neighbors’. The people behind me seem to feel the need to throw crap in my backyard. Amongst the random garbage, I’ve found a fish (like a full 18 inch long fish) and some random forklift parts). My next door neighbors (on one side) was always fine, but a few years back they got the dog from hell. It just barks and barks and barks. Worse, it barks and nothing, literally, nothing. I’ve seen it in the backyard, it’ll sit down and just bark. To make matters worse, they let it out every 45 minutes or so. Also, you know how dogs bark at the vacuum cleaner. Theirs barks at the lawnmower and the shovel (in winter) and everything else you can imagine. I can appreciate a dog that barks, but keep it inside. On top of that, they don’t use a leash when they walk it and it’s not well ‘off leash’ trained, not even kinda.
As far as my neighbors from hell. That goes back to when I lived in a (condo-style) apartment. First neighbors, I don’t recall the circumstances, I just remember the landlord giving us the option of getting rid of them (she was fed up too, I assume). I told me (now ex) GF to think about it long and hard, the next people could be worse, she said we should toss them out. The next people were orders of magnitude worse. The kids were loud and stompy (everyone would ask if they had hardwood up there), they’d put stuff in front our garage (garbage carts, his parked motorcycle, their cars etc). But the noise really was horrible. To make it worse, at a certain point, it seemed directed at us. If one of us would leave and not the other, everything was silent up there. As soon as the other one got back, it sounded like a damn circus…like they were watching for us and then making all the racket. Maybe there were, maybe they just didn’t care and it was confirmation bias. Of course, after we complained enough to get the first tenants kicked out, they totally ignored us about the second ones (and it was confirmed by an acquaintance that worked there that they mgmt was blowing us off), so there was little we could do.
After that, I bought a house and told myself that I would never share a wall with someone again. At least now my loud and/or obnoxious neighbors are 150 feet away instead of 4 inches away.
Here’s that dog barking at, literally, nothing at all. I could understand if there was a bird or squirrel or something or if it was near the front of the house and barking at passers by, but after this video ended, it laid down in the grass and kept on barking. C’mon guys, your dog was out 20 minutes ago, it’s just barking and you have to know it’s bugging at least 3 neighbors…bring it in. But they really don’t get it. When my dogs are outside at the same time (which I try to avoid) they all run up to the fence and bark like mad at each other. I go outside and bring my dogs back in, they…don’t (or think it’s amusing). When their dog takes off down the block, they don’t even go after it. IMO, for being middle age parents of (I think) 3 kids and at least 1 grandkid, they’re awful dog parents. Dad’s not so bad, mom is for sure. BTW, when your off leash dog runs into someone else’s yard, the proper thing to do is go after it and trying to get it back NOT say ‘don’t worry, she isn’t vicious’. Vicious (or ‘not vicious’) is a really odd word to use.
I’m really surprised that no one has called the police on them yet. I have two dogs so I don’t want to be the one to do it, I think the neighbor on the other side has one as well, but what about the people behind them? Hell, I know my neighbors on the other side of me (so two houses down) have mentioned how much that dog barks. It’s a lab, so it’s barks are pretty loud.
I had a downstairs neighbor whose skank-ass boyfriend broke into my truck and tried to steal it. Several months later they were evicted for running a call service/whorehouse from their apartment :eek: