apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Checking in from NYC - When we had to deal with an incredibly noisy next door neighbor we called the cops, repeatedly. We started off w/ the landlord but after doing nothing (its incredibly hard to threaten legal action against a noisy tenant apparently) for weeks on end we ended up calling the cops.

I'm so glad we moved :)

Once I did make my boyfriend call the cops. It was 4-freakin-o'clock in the morning!!! You could hear the college kids across the yard go "Hey Bro, pass the bong!" At that point I had enough and told him if he didn't handle it, I would and it was not going to to be pretty. Soon after the cops were called the noise was extinguished.

And my mother doesn't call the cops. Our neighbor had a huge loud party... so she marched over there in her robe with our Great Dane and threated them with police force in a very thick German accent.

I think if you are going to do anything past 10pm, you need to tell your neighbors... and then, nothing should extend past midnight (unless it's a New Years Party).

I wish we had noise laws in my neighborhood. I live in one of the best areas in my city. But we get so much motorcyle noise in the warmer months!! Drives me nuts! We get sirens from ambulances/firetrucks all year long. I don't know what the #@$%'s up with that.

I find that the daytime noise in suburbia (lawnmowers, leaf blowers, car stereos & horns, construction activity) is more disruptive than anything at night (but I guess we don't have any wild partiers in my 'hood). I wish there was some noise level limit for daily life, but until I get that dream job in rural Idaho ....

The same thing happened to me in Texas- I heard this odd sound at about midnight and looked out our front window and a guy had a ax and was chopping down our neighbors tree. He had a case of beer on the sidewalk next to him. When the yelling and chasing started I closed my window and went outside to wait for the cops for my neighbors. It was just a drunk dude wanting to show off- but I always wondered why he had an ax.....

Oh, and we don't call the cops around here until after 2 am. The cops won't do anything until then anyway because we don't really have any "noise laws" to break.

Robyn,

I grew up on a farm in rural Idaho...it was truly amazing how many city folk moved there, then complained about how noisy and smelly the farms were.

We drove our tractors as long as there was light. We shooed birds away from our fruit trees with a propane cannon. We warned off watermelon theives with a barking St Bernard and an overhead shotgun blast or two.

It's not as quiet as you may think!

Last time I spent a week in the 'burbs during the summer, I heard the following (on and off) all day long: kids yelling and screaming from neighboring swimming pools, dogs barking, kids yelling at their dogs, parents yelling at their kids, bad electric guitar practicing, motorcycles, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, pounding bass from passing car stereos. And I thought I was going to experience idyllic suburban peace and quiet... nope! Quite pleased to return to the city where there's a lot less screaming and barking. phew!

SMM, your description of the burbs made me laugh out loud because it is RIGHT ON THE MONEY. Ha! My neighbor plays "Stairway to Heaven" on his crappy electric guitar pretty much every single day--and nothing else.

Being in NYC, I don't mind loud noise until 11, 11:30 pm on weeknights. Weekend should be fair game, unless it's a truly insane loud party.

You'd not believe the amount of blasting car stereos we get past our window day and night! How do those drivers still have any hearing left???

I recall having the cops called on us in the east village once while we were watching a comedy at 10pm on a Friday night. (it was not the tv sound, but the laughter that got to the neighbors, i think...) Can you BELIEVE that?

Is this East Pasadena we are talking about? hahaha

I was in SoHO around 10 sometime last month and it's no more dead than Oldtown Pasadena. In the summer Urban Outfiiters and some stores do open till 11 and as for soho stroes start to close at 9 and by 11 it just u and piles of garbage.

so dont be so hard on your self my fellow Pasadeans!

You never know how sound will carry. At the quiet parts of the night when people are wound down and the traffic is nil my neighbors can sound like they're right next to me. Other times their shouts sound fairly distant.

My neighbor was using a nailgun after midnight. He was pretty pissed that I asked him to stop, and didn't seem to believe I could hear it. Yeah, I came over in my robe after midnight just for fun.

Modern suburban life has a lot of noise - leafblowers, lawnmowers, snowblowers, car horns and alarms, etc. I feel cranky about noise before 8 and after 10 on weekdays/before 9 and after 11 or 12 on weekends. If it's really noisy, like a party that seems out of control, I'll call the cops, because drunk people can be unpredictable. I don't usually notice the noise of kids playing.

I try to balance my complaints against the knowledge that we are occasionally noisy.

Due to my position with the Army National Guard and the return of units from deployment, about every third day I get up around 4am to be on active duty by 5:30am.

My downstairs neighbor cranked his stereo up last night, I went and asked him to turn it down, explaining why, and the music somehow became louder. Unlike my neighbor, I know where the complex circuit breaker is located and flicked his power a few times. Apartment got quieter after that.

Ha! that's a good one bramasoleiowa!

The walls in my apartment complex are insanely thin. My bedroom wall is shared with my neighbor's bedroom - they happen to be musicians - and while they don't play in their apartment, which is very kind of them, they do keep odd hours. Last week at 4AM they were simply having a conversation in their bedroom that woke me up. I could hear everything, nearly word for word.

Since it's really the fault of the thin walls, I couldn't bring myself to go over and ask them to be quiet. They were just having a conversation, which seems fair, even at 4AM. But that talking kept me up until 6AM.

Anyone have a solution to that? Is it worth a polite conversation with the neighbors? Or should I just accept that occasionally, they will have a conversation in the wee hours that will wake me up?

I love my ipod for times like that, MissHoneychurch...I pop in the earbuds, put on a quiet This American Life podcast, and it helps me drift off.
Although it may not work for everyone, I find that masking noise I can't control with some I can does help. If nothing else, it's less frustrating.

The woman who lives below me plays piano and usually begins practicing scales at about midnight, or later. It bugs me, of course, but what bugs me even more is having to tell someone something they should already know. Like, uh, normal people don't practice their freaking piano after 11:00 pm. Even in the goddam SF Bay Area. So I bought one of those cheap-o white noise machines from Bed, Bath, & Beyond and now I am happily like "whatever."

Even better, I just bought a condo and I move in a month. I already scoped out the woman who lives below; she's not a pianist.

Living a few blocks from Berklee College of Music, the rotation of college students can be a blessing and a curse. A few years ago a flautist moved into the building next door and played the most beautiful lyrical classical music. We've also had a competent jazz saxaphonist within earshot. Last Fall, our luck turned with the arrival of the funk 'master' of electric bass with a penchant for repetition between the hours of 10pm and 3am. Grace, I can totally empathise with you!

Its midnight. Someone you don't know is outside with a charged chainsaw - and not only do you go outside to investigate, you take them on? Noooooo.

Thanks for the suggestion, Chatoyante. I'll have to test that out. Although, I think I need something a little more boring than This American Life. That show will just suck me right in.

i live a few blocks from UC Berkeley (on the "nicer" north side), but i'm usually witness to something obnoxious every other day.

my favorites:
1. labor day weekend (my birthday weekend), my boyfriend and i were woken to the sounds of people on the street below calling "mike pearce?!" over and over again. they were just walking up and down the block calling his name, looking for him. we live on the top floor, and it was like they were yelling in our ears. this went on for about 15 minutes before i asked my boyfriend to go down to our mailboxes and see if mr. pearce lived in our building. he's our neighbor across the hall. my boyfriend went out to tell them, then came upstairs to tell pearce himself, only to be told that yeah, he knew they were out there, but he was leaving soon anyway, so he didn't think he needed to bother to tell them he was up and almost out the door.

the bastard also throws house parties that last until 4 am. i think the super is kicking him out, so i don't feel so bad anymore.

2. our neighbor downstairs wants to be an opera singer, but she's really, really bad. she practices every night, poor thing, but never improves. meanwhile, her shrill soprano filters up to our apartment. it usually only happens either late morning on the weekends or dinner time in the evening, so it's not the end of the world, but those are usually times when my boyfriend want to catch up and spend time together. nothing like trying to watch a movie or snuggle with books only to be blasted by bad singing through the floorboards.

also, this doesn't have to do with sound, and i might be the world's youngest fuddy-duddy (exhibit a: use of the word "fuddy-duddy"), but just because berkeley is berkeley doesn't mean people can go around smoking pot like cigarettes. i think it smells like flaming dog poo. it's EVERYWHERE.

end rant. thanks.

The easiest way to deal with most noise while you are sleeping is quality earplugs. I keep several sets in my nightstand. Its the simplest way to let everyone go on about their business and still get a good nights sleep.

My ex-boyfriend's neighbors are small time dealers who have people coming and going all the time, with a lot of shouting. They also have small kids who they like to lock outside the house in the cold until they are screaming and crying to be let in. Needless to say, the ex and his house mates call the police frequently and child protective services a few times too.

The neighbors have responded (we think it is them, but have no proof) by taking a cat, slitting its throat and leaving it dead in a box on the doorstep.

Yeah, I know, that's pretty screwed up. It was someone's house pet too - it had a flea collar. They're trying to find the owner. And yes, they called the police about it.

i live in north san diego county, near enough to hear the artillery practice at camp pendleton. there's nothing like dozing off at night to the sounds of war practice. i've lived in several cities in many different apartments, and the neighbors i've had in san diego are by far the loudest. i never go to sleep without my earplugs. when the noise gets past the earplugs, i call the police.

The halls of my complex echo a lot, so normal conversations of people walking down the hall get amplified, which I really can't get too annoyed at, since it's a design flaw of the building and not anyone else's fault. However, some nights I'll be woken up from a dead sleep by drunk girls yelling "wooooo!" and that is so very annoying. What is it about alcohol that makes people feel the need to go "wooooo!" anyway?

I have grown up in the city all my life and I like ambient noise. The sirens from ambulances and police can get very annoying, but overall, I prefer noise. It makes it feel like you are living life - not just sitting in still motion.