Neighbors:

[false_aesthetic]

Back when I lived in Pittsburgh, my neighbors were coke dealers with 2 bull mastiffs and 3 pittbulls. Across the street was a cat house.

You know what I NEVER had to deal with?

Crime.
Domestic arguments on the street.
Fist fights.
Cars being broken into.
Feeling unsafe.
-----

Here in Faircrest Heights we have choppers with spot lights circling, a HUGE police presence and quick response times.

What have I had to deal with: shootings, someone who side-swiped ~ 10 cars late one night, entire households yelling at each other in the middle of the street and as of last night, 6 cop cars, 10 police people, a chopper and at least 90 minutes of yelling while the police people waited for the guy to calm down in the back of the car.

SERIOUSLY?! SHUT THE CAR DOORS!
-----

I miss living in a shitty part of town.

[cody.wms]

Drug dealers make good neighbors. They don't want the cops to show up and they want to piss you off as little as possible.

[Bud_E]

I had a neighbor ( a renter ) who used to have his boyfriends come visiting at all hours of the night. Several times the cops would have to come ( sometimes with guns drawn ) to break up fights. Finally one day the guy went nuts and considerably trashed the house and then moved out. The family that lives there now is great.

[nahtnoj]

I often talk to older people who speak fondly of organized crime.

[Eddie]

Arthur Ave. is a great part of town for good reason.

[theflashunc]

I often talk to older people who speak fondly of organized crime.

I'm reminded of when I moved into the North End in Boston, the city's Italian enclave. My roommate said someone was attacking women on the street in the neighborhood right before I moved up. The cops never found him. The "neighborhood people" -- as she put it -- did.

[jitahs]

My former next door was a dealer, nice as can be. Wife would knock on the door if my car was parked in the street on street sweeping day, I was nice to their kid, we shared beers a couple of times, etc. Had a cool 442 (this is a car people), never had a problem.

Current neighbor is an entitled wife-fearer raised in the 'burbs with clear ideas what kind of white picket fence and water-intensive grass to sod (Cali is a friggin desert). Every conversation is a prelude to, "I want this, I want that from you, you need to take care of drainage because my negatively-sloped yard can't handle fall line run off."

As Oaktown native Sly Stone said we got to live together. Just go do it somewhere else, m'kay?

[maunahaole]

Sounds to me like you need to pee along the fenceline more often.

[jitahs]

Sounds to me like you need to pee along the fenceline more often.

You don't know the half of it. He stopped a shared pipe, which stopped effluent from my kitchen for over a week while I learned plumbing. Sawzalling through pipe clogged with 11 legged squid-worms exploding on my face. Yep I hate 'im.

[zetroc]

I usually have good neighbors. By "good" I mean they don't bother me and are, for the most part, pleasant. But living in a semi-urban part of the Bay Area means that being a "good" neighbor means not bothering your other neighbors. It's a far cry from when I was growing up.

I have fond memories of running around the neighborhood for hours at a time, bothering the retirees who were almost universally very friendly, riding my BMX off of curbs and generally being a nuisance. The only neighbors on our block who weren't great were the semi-white-trashy ones immediately next door who let their kids run similarly amok and fought loudly, and the older German guy who owned two identical Jettas and painted his house yellow and brown while wearing a colorful knit cap. Another neighbor, Mel, was a widower who played the accordian all day, every day, but he was talented and really friendly so it never bothered me. Mr. Ehly next door gave all the neighbor kids candy (when it was still acceptable to do so) and let us watch sports games on his old Zenith console TV. Mr. Rodriguez designed and built his own mechanical lawn sprinkler that roamed around his lawn automatically, powered only by hydraulic pressure from the garden hose.

These days, living on a mostly industrial street, I have 2 houses in the immediate vicinity: one nice couple next door with a 3 or 4 year old girl who are all quite pleasant, and some loud idiots in the house behind mine. I'm pretty sure they're selling weed because guys always block my driveway with their cars, run back to their house, and run out again 30 seconds later. Maybe I'll give them a dictionary with the word "subtlety" highlighted.

My last place had a real treat of a neighbor situation. It was an old Victorian in the heart of our twee little shopping district, on the street everyone parks on when they can't find a space right in front. Built in 1885 by a doctor, it was more recently (probably 1940s-50s) cut up into 5 different apartments. Mine was the 2/1 in front, so I had a view of the park across the street. There was an engineer who was there 2-3 nights a week and kept to himself. Another apartment was used by the landlord's son, so he was quiet. And the unit directly behind mine was occupied for two years by the most annoying fucking kid I've ever met, and his dumbass parents. The kid - at 14 years of age - fancied himself a rapper and a marijuana dealer, and would invite all of his dumbass friends over every day to smoke on my porch and blast rap music. Often I'd come home and find the house literally shaking from the bass they were blasting while they sat on the front porch, 30 feet away from the stereo. They used to make music videos with their phones for their shitty tracks in which they smoked Swishers, the wrappers of which they left in the bushes out front. These videos would usually have titles like "Mean Streets of Oaktown" (which was completely inaccurate, being filmed on the mild sidewalks of manicured, boutiquey Alameda.) On weekend days I couldn't hear myself think most of the time, and being nice never helped so I started calling the cops. Mom didn't/couldn't do shit - she'd threaten various consequences and walk him to school in the mornings herself, but when she left for work he'd cut class, come back home and start it up again. Dad was often away for months at a time. I often fantasized about going over there with a shotgun and destroying his stereo.

Luckily for me they moved to the East Coast about 3 months after the loud music started. I have never been so glad to lose a neighbor.

[ryker]

I think property developers are the worst neighbors. The builder next door to me broke a window on my house, knocked down a tree in my yard and still felt fine about plugging their equipment into my electricity. Didn't shovel their snow, would take smoke breaks on my stoop, etc, etc. They gave me a gift card to The Keg Steakhouse to apologize for the trouble. I'm vegan.

[swt]

LA sucks. Just get out.

[jitahs]

These videos would usually have titles like "Mean Streets of Oaktown" (which was completely inaccurate, being filmed on the mild sidewalks of manicured, boutiquey Alameda.)

Brookfield Village, a.k.a The Killing Fields, has an accelerated learning program for them. Tell them to bring their incontinence products.

[EricKeller]

I had a neighbor in Utah that ended up drowning his wife in the bathtub. Fortunately this was after we left

[joosttx]

Back when I lived in Pittsburgh, my neighbors were coke dealers with 2 bull mastiffs and 3 pittbulls. Across the street was a cat house.

You know what I NEVER had to deal with?

Crime.
Domestic arguments on the street.
Fist fights.
Cars being broken into.
Feeling unsafe.
-----

Here in Faircrest Heights we have choppers with spot lights circling, a HUGE police presence and quick response times.

What have I had to deal with: shootings, someone who side-swiped ~ 10 cars late one night, entire households yelling at each other in the middle of the street and as of last night, 6 cop cars, 10 police people, a chopper and at least 90 minutes of yelling while the police people waited for the guy to calm down in the back of the car.

SERIOUSLY?! SHUT THE CAR DOORS!
-----

I miss living in a shitty part of town.

Soon after graduating college I lived in the State Thomas area of Dallas. That is its now gentrified name. It was the old freeman lot of Dallas. My street deadened into a barbershop called "The Chez Pompodor". There was always a Cadillac there and a fat old man with a dress hat sitting on the bench in the front. Few hairs was ever cut there but plenty of heroin was. Never had any crime probably because of the chez. I use to sit on the porch on my 550sqft home on Saturdays, drink beer and watch the dealing go down all day until. The neighborhood was great.

George the 400 lb cab cab drive who I spent drinking cheap bourbon and eggnog on Christmas one year cause no one else would. Eddie "the mayor" had the gift of gab and drove a white Cadillac. Boss who was an old scrawny muted drunk who was married to Malva 4x the size of boss. Leroy Price, my friend, who I fixed bikes in exchange for him mowing my 5x5ft yard. He only drank Henikens and listened to black racist radio. And Uncle Bob.... Never saw a man pull more wool that was so ugly and lecherous. He looked like daddy worebucks, drove a red Cadillac, and only dated hookers and strippers. He took me to church one Sunday to pray for his mother who was dying. A fat homeless lady fell asleep on me during the service. I'll never forget how uncle Bob folded that $100 bill into the tightest square and was mumbling something so emphatic and incoherent as he placed the squared bill into the collection plate...... Now I live inf'ing Marin

[lukasz]

This is some strange, inverted, "get off my lawn" thread. I can totally relate.

I grew up across the street from an apartment building full of white trash Irish hooligans the likes of which don't really exist in NYC any more, and definitely not in what is now trendy frickin' Bushwick (This still boggles my mind. People actually choose to move there!). One memorable day they ran outside with a large bowl of dough and started flinging balls of it at the Vietnamese family that owned the apartment building across the street. Sometimes they would come and hang out on the stoop with me, but as a kid I was always terrified they'd stuff me into a garbage can or something like they did to other kids. I'll take them any day over the well-off transplants yelling outside my window at all hours of the night after drinking too many $8 beers and $14 cocktails.

[RickM]

I had a neighbor in Utah that ended up drowning his wife in the bathtub. Fortunately this was after we left

Yeah, you don't have to live in the 'hood to get the gory stuff. I grew up in a rural cowtown and their was plenty of violence, drugs, despair, and drunkeness to go around. Now I live in a somewhat tony suburb of Greater Boston, and some fucking biochemist in town cut killed his wife pretty much in front of their kids and then cut her frickin' head off.

[j44ke]

My wife and I lived in Richmond, VA when it was high up on the per capita murder list. On New Year's Eve, the hour or so of gunfire into the air before and after 12 midnight was mind-boggling. I worked for a house restoration company, and we spent a fair amount of time going around to clients in the gentrified sections repairing their sheet tin roofs. Small round holes. Never found the bullets, though they found their way everywhere. Our neighbor inherited his house from his mom who had died in the house, and he rented out rooms to people to pay his bills. One night, someone was smoking crack in their room, and he dragged the guy out in the street, made him eat the rock and then kicked him all the way (literally) into the next block. Another person tried to molest a little girl who was living there for a short time with their mother, and the whole house beat the hell out of him. After a July 4th when the gunfire was particularly heavy, I met my neighbor outside the next morning. There were a few casings on the street. He said he had never been so afraid in his life. If he ever won the lottery, he was going to sell his house and move out into the middle of the country and get the hell out of there. Too many crazy people. Six months later four guys moved into a house down the street and started partying. They were students at the local community college. Pretty obvious they were selling drugs. Only problem was they were on someone else's territory and that someone walked into their house one day and killed them. I remember calling the cops about things happening in the neighborhood, and they rarely came. They would drive around the edges of the neighborhood to make sure all the black people stayed out of the gentrifying area. Once the dispatch laughed at me when I reported shooting - there's always shooting hahaha. My neighbor used to call me bossman because that's what he called all white people. I cannot imagine living there a minute longer than I did.

[EricKeller]

Yeah, you don't have to live in the 'hood to get the gory stuff.

I see people talk about the violence in the 'hood and I have no experience with that. I grew up in Appalachia -- violent, angry people are legion. Sure there is less violence, but there are far fewer people too. I was an innocent 6 y.o. ripped from the bucolic life in Iowa to a cauldron of violence. One of the first days of school I saw a fight where one kid had the other kid's head in his hands and was slamming it against the edge of the curb. There were plenty of murders, mostly love triangles and the like. A couple of our neighbors were killed in a home invasion by some guy that just decided to come into town and start shooting people. His first stop was the Kmart where he bought a shotgun, shells, and a hacksaw. I get the impression things are better now, I sure hope so.

[bcm119]

I live in an area of south Berkeley that apparently was pretty sketchy 20 years ago, but is now sort of a transition zone. I’m next to a city mental health place, so we get a lot of troubled folks hanging around our block before their appointments, sometimes peeing in our garden or curling up in the bushes to enjoy a 40 oz.

But the real problem are the folks who should have moved to Walnut Creek, but for whatever reason ended up on my block. The couple across the street moved in and immediately erected a 6 ft high fence all around their house. Of course they’ve since been broken in to multiple times, because once you jump the fence, you have all night to fiddle with windows and locks without being seen. They also called the cops about my car being on the street in front of their house, reporting it as an abandoned vehicle, because their nanny likes to park right in front of their house in the morning. I just don’t understand why people like this choose to move to an urban area and expect everyone to play by their suburban rules.