I’m currently living in an apartment building and am constantly delighting/annoying people with my tales of “Walkasaurus” upstairs from me, who despite living in an 800 square foot apartment manages to cover about 20 miles a day hitting every squeaky floorboard in the process.
Guy next door I was calling “Arthur ‘one album’ Jackson” after the Monty Python “Arthur ‘two sheds’ Jackson” skit. I’ve since met him and now call him “Martin ‘one album’ Jackson”. He actually alternates between two albums, but when I first moved in it was “Best of Earth, Wind, & Fire” on repeat over and over and over. The walls here are really thin (I think our computers share an adjoining wall because once I heard him sneeze so I said “Bless you” and he said “Thanks!” LOL) so I invested in some heavy-duty headphones. The other album I don’t recognize as it’s some horrible Spinal Tap-ish Free Form Jazz Improvisation. Luckily I think he travels for his job a lot and is gone great lengths of time.
When I was a kid we lived next door to a really nice couple who I used to babysit for. We didn’t have a nickname for them but my dad referred to their yard as “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” because they had like a million gnomes and birdhouses and spinny things and gazing balls, etc. It looked like a garden center threw up over there.
The house on the other side was the abode of the “Good Christian Family”. I babysat for them too and they were really over-the-top. Like the only shows the kids were allowed to watch were like “Superbook” and I think “Davey and Goliath”. The only movie they were allowed to watch was Annie. PERIOD. The only things they were allowed to play on the piano were hymns, etc etc etc. I can’t believe the world of shock they must’ve been in when they entered the real world.
The funny thing is once I was talking to the mom at “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” and had mentioned something about “Good Christian Family” actually saying that and I gasped realizing what I’d done but she was already screaming with laughter and said “That’s what we call them too.”
One summer at the condo the apartment next door was occupied by some guys my wifed dubbed the “Gaga Boys,” because every afternoon they’d get home from their bike rides and put on Lady Gaga really loud. They liked loud music, but their schedule consisted of waking up at 5am and going on multiple bike rides throughout the day. Because of that, they were quite by 7 or 8pm. For all I know they could have been professional cyclists in town to train, or just college kids with nothing to do. My town has both.
A number of years ago we lived next door to the Screamers. The four-year-old would scream at the dog, the eight-year-old would scream at the four-year-old, the mom would scream at all three, and when the dad came home from work he’d scream at all of them, plus his mother-in-law. It was a living cliche, and sad.
Not necessarily annoying, but whenever one of my neighbors gets mentioned and the other person can’t figure out who that is, I’ve heard some of us described and the description quickly understood as:
“The alarm system” or “the watcher”. 80+yo woman, 90+ bedridden husband; she rarely leaves the house and is surprised whenever she misses someone’s comings or goings.
“The drunkard who can’t stand his brother”.
“The drunkard who likes to sing”. Enthusiastically, usually somewhat on key, but often in bits and pieces as he can’t remember the lyrics.
“The driving school guy”, aka “the EMT”; his wife is obviously known as “the wife of the driving school guy.”
I’m either “the brunette lass who’s never home” or “the brunette lass who’s not the wife of the driving school guy”. I’m in my mid-40s, but that makes me younger than every adult in the house except the driving school guy and his wife.
My next-door neighbor is “the psychologist”. We also have “the moors” aka “the Palestinians”, “the fat lady” and “the two sisters who live together and don’t talk to each other”.
Oh this is good too. What is your annoying (or not) neighbor name? Mine, for the people who live adjacent to me is “The Giggler.” I’m always loudly cracking up at youtube and blogs and whatnot late at night. For the people who pass my apartment and see my Bieber and One Direction clings on the front door: The Pedo. For my landlady: “The one who has never been late with the rent so we have not evicted her yet.”
We used to have an honest to goodness Wacky Neighbor living downstairs - completely harmless, but just a little loony. Her first name also happens to be the same as mine, so despite the fact that we got to know her pretty well, we still called her Wacky Neighbor until the day she moved out.
All the way down in the garden apartment (Chicago has many of these apartments that are in the basement, but our basement is only dug half a floor down, so the windows are at the level of the sidewalks outside. We call 'em “garden apartments”, even if there’s no garden) used to live The Irish Lads. There were supposed to be 2 or 3 of them for 3 months on student visas from Ireland, and it turned into 10 or 12 of them (in a 2 bedroom unit), plus at least a girlfriend each, for almost 6 months. It was rather horrid - they stole stuff, used stuff without asking and broke it, left a used condom in the grass after schtupping on our bench, had naked passed out girls sleeping it off in the laundry room… Really, not learning their names was self preservation. Kept the rage at a simmering generalization.
After Wacky Neighbor moved out because she couldn’t stand The Irish Lads, and then The Irish Lads moved out a few weeks later, we got The PSA. These folks are really sweet folks, until they start drinking. Then it’s shrieking and domestic violence (bidirectional) and broken glass and smashed up furniture and blood everywhere. Lovely. Luckily, they’re “working on it” and we haven’t had An Incident for a couple of months now.
I think our landlord realizes he needs to screen applicants better. Either that or we’ve got a reputation now. The garden apartment has been vacant for months since The Irish Lads moved out, despite a lower than market average rental price being asked.
Cabbage Head used to live next door with his wife and three children. He rarely had anything to say to me other than “hi” but I did once engage him in conversations about dogs. Whenever my wife was out in the yard without me and Cabbage Head spotted her he was sure to approach her and attempt to engage her in conversation. One day I let him borrow some paper for his printer though I can’t really remember the events that precipitated that. Anyway, weeks later, my wife leaves the house in my car and leaving hers in the driveway. Just after she was out of sight I hear a knock on my door and when I open it I see a very surprised Cabbage Head standing there with some printer paper.
Why do we call him Cabbage Head. No, it has nothing to do with the Kids in the Hall Character but that’s a good guess. There was a single woman who lived across the street from us. We were talking to her one day and my wife mentions that the creepy man next door always tries to talk to her when she’s alone but never when we’re both in the front yard. The single woman said, “Yeah, Cabbage Head is always coming over here when I’m in the front yard and his wife isn’t home.” I’m not sure why she called him Cabbage Head but the nickname stuck. Once in a while I would hear Cabbage Head arguing with his wife and I guess she finally got fed up with him because he’s gone now. Maybe he’s buried under the house?
Our neighbor behind us has a large dog that they put outside from time to time. It likes to bark, and the arrangement of the buildings results in an echo that is distinctly separate from the original bark:
WOOF <woof>
WOOF <woof>
We call him Echo Dog. (Yeah, real creative, I know).
Sometimes he does this at 4 or 5 in the morning, making it difficult to sleep. I’m trying to grow a pair so I can call the owner and ask her to keep Echo Dog quiet at night…
I used to say “The Crazy People” but now my wife asks “which ones?”
The way our houses are laid out, there are like 4 which you might consider next door, so we use The Christians (not annoying, except their dog once in a while), The Crazies (doesn’t matter who lives in that house, they all wind up being crazy, including that last guy who chased his wife down the street shooting at her car), and The Gaybors (our gay neighbors. Not meant to be derogatory. Wonderful people). We also use Crazy Fred the Undertaker (because he’s both) and Crazy Paula (are you starting to see a pattern here).
Not an annoying neighbor, but we had one who only recently moved out whom we referred to as Cool Guy for many years. He drove a sporty car, had his hair in a ponytail, and seemed self-confident and gregarious. Our dogs were drawn to him and he would squat down and let them climb up and lick his face, so they adored him. We eventually learned his name was Dave, but he immediately became “Cool Guy Dave” because there was another Dave in his building already. I suppose Cool Guy Dave isn’t the worst nickname to have. He eventually married and had a kid; they just moved out to a bigger and better place. The dogs still look for him on our walks.
I call my next-door neighbors “Boris and Natasha”. There was a couple that used to live on the other side named Mark and Marcia. I called them Mork and Mindy. There was this other fella living behind us; his name was Mike. I called him Mr. Roper. Mike (Mr. Roper) had a sorf of affinity for animals and fed strays, including a big Seagull that came around like clockwork at sun-up every morning. I called the Seagull “Mike the Seagull” and indiscriminately called all the cats (both the strays and his housecats) “Mike the Cat”.
I’ve got something like that, except the second woof is actually made by a second dog. They’re both big, scary looking dogs, too. The neighbor (City Guy) decided that since he lives in ‘the country’ he needs dogs. The only problem is that this is not ‘the country’, it’s the suburbs, and City Guy clearly has never had a dog before, let alone two big, scary looking ones.
Our neighbors used to both be named Mike, so on the west side we had Old Mike or Evil Mike and on the east side we still have Young Mike or Good Mike.
Old Mike reported us to the city for widening our driveway (bounded by a fence and our house, there was no where to widen it TO), opened our back gate on at least two occasions letting the dogs loose in traffic, cornered my son one morning and insisted that he tell us we had to pay to have his tree cut down because there were branches growing over our house and would pace along the sidewalk in front of our house when our contractors were doing some work interrupting them and insisting they were doing something (it changed day by day) that negatively impacted his life.
Young Mike loved us because we didn’t complain about him working on cars in his driveway and because we agreed to level out a hill in our front yard that interferred with his wife’s ability to safely exit their driveway. He boosted our car once, cleared our sidewalk while he was doing his a couple times, and helped my husband service our snowblower. Awesome guy.
Ironically with all this history Old Mike did the most for us and Young Mike is no longer so happy with us. Old Mike died and the sale of his house and the one behind us enabled us to sell ours to the developer for a nice little profit. Young Mike is unhappy with us now because he’s going to be living next to a construction zone for a couple years and after that the two tiny bungalows are going to be transformed into 16 4 storey townhomes.
The upstairs neighbors have the Loudest Toddler Ever, whose name is Thor the Thunder Toddler. All he does is cry, stomp, and throw Legos on the floor, as far as I can tell.
Two houses down the road from us is the Bumpus house. It used to house successive assortments of, well, Bumpuses. The family living in it now seems rather quiet and normal, and we hope they stay. But it’s still the Bumpus house and probably always will be. (Despite the fact that its first occupant was Mr. S’s brother, who built it years ago. He’s not included among the Bumpuses.)
We had some folks move in down the street that we called “The Hillbillies.” Ours isn’t a fancy neighborhood by any means but it’s solidly middle-class homes occupied by middle-class people. The hillbillies moved in when house prices bottomed out, and even though they had like 10 people living there it was still too much house for them to handle. At least too much yard - they got several cites for not mowing their lawn.
Someone was always screaming at someone at that house, and something was always broken down in the driveway (car, van, grill, bike, etc). There were a lot of kids but I think they were actually decent kids, despite the yelling.
Anyway, surprise surprise, one day (like a couple months ago) the hillbillies vanished and there were notices posted on the front door and windows and on Nov 1 a truck came by to remove all the junk they’d left in the house.
It sucks for the kids, because I think they really loved living in such a nice place with nice neighbors and other kids, but it was damn awkward to have this big corner house in our quiet little neighborhood occupied by this big, loud, messy family.
My mother used to refer to a next-door neighbor as the Jukes family. They weren’t all that bad, except for a succession of mangy ill-tempered dogs, whose yard poop was allowed to accumulate for many months at a time.
We currently have one nice neighbor and another I know little about because of distance.
He eventually married and had a kid; they just moved out to a bigger and better place. The dogs still look for him on our walks.