apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I live above a restaurant who used to BLAST mexican music all hours of the night. They stayed open til midnight during the work week and 1am on the weekends. It wasn't busy so the staff would take it upon themselves to blast their favorite tunes on teh speakers installed onto their walls and ceilings. These weren't flush little ceiling mounted speakers but huge boom speakers at concerts secured into the exposed brick and beams. I got SOOO sick and tired of the little gay waiter's LOVE for everything Ms. Jenny Lopez.

I once went down there and had a screaming match with the owners girlfriend who managed the place and called the police several times. Eventually I would take it upon myself to go into the basement and turn their electricity off. One of my guests even said "This is ridiulous" when he came over for a quiet dinner and wine. We ended up leaving as I couldn't sleep in my place that night.

We went at it many times and there was a lot of drama which I made the owner of the building aware of. He talked to them about it but it never made a difference. I posted reviews of the restaraunt that were scathing and vicious on every review site I could fine. Eventually their business went dead and they finally closed towards the end of last year.

Home is so much better and serene.......

Best of luck! I used to rent a fantastic apartment in Chicago that had stunning views of the city and the lake, low rent and parking in the building. It was a dream situation until our neighbor, with whom we shared a wall, let her boyfriend move in with her. Since he had no job, it was 24/7 noise, cigarette smoke and whatever else he decided to smoke. He would crack the door so all of the smoke would air out of his apartment into the hallway. His party friends would hang out in the hallway and smoke till 4am on weekends and week nights. My huband once told them to get out of the hallway and they told him to f*ck off. We complained to the building super who was receptive to our complaints. The super had a talk with the boyfriend, but it made little difference. One night I swear he was burning plastic - is that what a crack pipe smells like? At 10pm our place was so filled with toxic stench that we rented a hotel room for the night. I complained to the building management, but he said there was nothing legal he could do. As far as I knew, this jerk wasn't even on the lease, yet he drove us out of that incredible apartment once our lease was up for renewal.

you had a right to complain especially if it is a reputable hotel.

My best friend is a GM in a high profile hotel and she would not hesitate to move a guest and tell the others to pipe down or get out.

I'm currently renting a fantastic loft in Downtown San Diego right next to a a spoiled DUI convicted loser. His mom pays his rent. I hear random, blasting music at all hours of the evening. He know he's loud and he's told me to tell him if it gets noisy (I have) but I believe most sane people would not crank up their music at 4am.

There's a lot more drama to this story (cops, shady visitors, piss test request) but I'm hoping he messes up again (he disappeared for 8 months) and I won't have to deal with his noise.

I've always wondered why his mother got a place for him in downtown San Diego when she knew he has a drinking problem?

The price and the size of my rental unit is perfect so I'm not budging. Unless someone steals my Eams coffee table.

Two stories -

Once I stayed in a hotel in Cleveland, Ohio. I was kept up most of the night by the people upstairs... uhhh... relating. The next morning, when I heard them leaving for the day, I rushed up the stairs to catch a glimpse of them. It was the tiniest, sweetest couple I'd ever seen. I mean, they were TINY.... too tiny to make all that noise.

There is one house in my little neighborhood that is trouble. The husband goes to jail so the wife invites all sorts of unsavories over for awhile. There's a large blonde woman who gets into an eff-word screaming match everytime she's over there. I always think, "what if I was showing my home to a prospective buyer today?"... and she doesn't even LIVE there. They're always stumbling around drunk or high (the wife goes to a methadone clinic) and yelling.

Then the husband gets out of jail and peace is restored... until the next time he gets arrested.

It gets so bad that we literally keep a baseball bat hidden in the drapes... and we have an alarm and 2 (completely harmless but loud-barking) dogs. We even told the single woman across the street to let us know if she needs anything since she lives right next door to them. She's considering selling her house.

But, what can we do? The cops have been there several times. The landlord lives around the corner and walks by there several times a day... his 91 year old mother lives on our street. He doesn't care because HUD pays their rent. If we take matters into our own hands, we WILL suffer some sort of retaliation. While I'm not all that concerned for my own safety, our property is vulnerable.

The good neighbors, the ones who care, just try to stick together and watch out for each other.

i'm currently at war with my neighbor. shes occupied one of the abungalows in my 3 unit building for nearly 20 years, so naturally, she feels like she can do whatever she wants. she is CONSTANTLY booming and banging. her phone rings at all hours and she never answers it; it goes to her answering machine which says something in loud, robotic Spanish. she pretends like she doesn't speak English (though my landlord says she does), so when i try to talk to her, she waves me away. she sends her daughter over to spy on me and ask me questions. she leaves trash all over her yard, which blows over into mine. she SLAMS her door every morning which wakes me up and has some obnoxious bird that chirp-chirp-chirps! all the damn time.

i let my landlord know how irritated i am with her every time something happens. supposedly, they're trying to get her to move out so they can re-do her apartment and make more $$ on the place, but nothing has happened for the 8 months that i've lived there. they keep saying that they're "working on finding a good lawyer" who can get her outta there, but its all talk so far...im totally annoyed by this woman every day i live there.

SO, i just get back at her in little ways. i park in "her" parking spot (which is just the space on the street in front of her door), i use all the hot water to wash my dishes (for some reason, my kitchen sink is connect to the water in her unit), and my BF and i make no effort to be quiet when...well...you know. i hope she moves out soon!!

In college, my housemate and I used to live next door to not one, but TWO scream-death-metal bands. The houses weren't connected but they may as well have been; our landlady owned both of them and both were old and leaky. They would open their windows at 8 p.m. and have "band practice" till 1 a.m. or later EVERY NIGHT. Random people would arrive at their house at all hours, and sometimes at ours. Some of them would leave right away with small bags. We learned not to leave stuff on our front deck because it disappeared and ended up on theirs.
We spoke to other people on our street--mostly older folks and families--and they all said they couldn't stand it and were afraid of the people that lived in the house. The neighbors were not receptive to our requests to turn the amps down, unsurprisingly. We started calling the police.
The first time the cops came, a man we didn't know knocked on our door and asked if we had called the cops on them. It didn't stop us from calling them the next time, plus the landlady, who was slow as molasses at doing anything. It was only when we made it clear that we were not renewing our lease, a full year later, that she evicted them, plus reduced our rent. Given her inaction, we decided not to give her a second chance. It was disillusioning.

Swan - take heart...HUD only pays rent for people who follow some very strict rules. If you're certain they are recipients of HUD/Section 8 money, turn them in - they will lose their benefits.

OED - we've considered that many, many times. I failed to mention that they also have two little kids. We don't really like the thought of the kids being on the streets so we don't call. Luckily, the kids are rarely around when the bad stuff starts happening.. I don't know where they go but they don't seem to be at home.

My downstairs neighbor is a "professional" She never brings "business" to her apartment (according to my Super, who knows *all* of the building's goings on), but she has a crazy boyfriend (manager?) and their "relations" and arguments are legendary. A few months ago, one argument got especially ugly. There was screaming (Spanish soap opera-esque), slapping (she slapped him silly) and things smashing to the floor and off the walls. Thankfully, it ended with him storming off...just as my fingers were dialing 911. The next day, I was concerned about the violence escalating, so I spoke to my Super, who assured me he'd take care of it, since he had sooo much dirt on her. To this day, I don't know (and don't want to know) what he said, but whatever it was, it worked like a charm. Knowledge sure is power.

my next door neighbor is my landlord/coworker's step son who is a very young kid that knows nothing about anything. his roommates are SELF PROCLAIMED CRIMINALS and they play basketball on our PORCH (dribbling up and down) all night (the porches are connected). they have loud parites all the time and park where we can't get in our parking spot (our unit is the only one that has a parking spot off the street - (small four unit building). it's obvious it's a parking spot, but he and his friends insist on parking behind it - often blocking me in or out. last night i put a note on one of their druggy friends's car - i wonder what will happen.

my boyfriend's neighbors kids are dealing again. the parents or maybe the grandparents like leaving the youngest kids outside on cold nights until the kids are wailing and then finally let them in. there are drifts of trash everywhere all the time. they've called the cops, or child protective services when they hear the kids getting hit, but there's not much you can do. the neighbor on the other side, a proto-slumlord, is gutting her house and the work guys were stealing electricity - not much noise other than the usual construction during the day, but the electric bill was 5x what it was usually.

my general take on loud neighbors is to ask them in person to be quiet, letting them know what times on weeknights and weekends are my limits. when i was back in my loud college days, we always warned our neighbors when we were going to have a party and gave them our phone number to call so we could turn down the music before anyone felt the need to call the police. we also told them what time we'd be turning down the music in advance so they'd know when it would be quiet again.

i've had great experiences with some people - the kids in the apartment across the alley from my apartment who would party on weeknights with live music and lots of people smoking in the alleyway would always shut the door and encourage the smokers to be a bit quieter; most of the time they'd offer me a beer and i'd laugh at them bitterly (ah, grad school) and go back to bed. then again, i've also had to resort to the circuit breaker technique to stop an especially loud party.

Rentals: In my experience going through the super leads to war. The super only tells the annoying people that they are annoying people. If you're really lucky, he'll mention you.

Property owner: When you own, the cops are your only option. Luckily, I have other crankier neighbors who call quick and often. I'm always the good guy by default.

Asking nicely, whether you rent or own, leads to war. Obnoxious people don't change their ways in order to be nice. Even if you're hawt.

The real solution is to move. I think that's awful and unfair. I've done it three times. lol I used to live next to a nightclub. Didn't bother me at all. You have to be beyond insane to annoy me.

Hotel annoyance can be a good thing: upgrade!

I live above the complex's "security guard" -- a volunteer sherriff who gets a break on rent for flashing his badge at people. He also happens to be married to the nosiest person in the complex. Right after I moved in, I got complained on for "excessive yelling and banging" -- high five to my boyfriend for that one. But they blast music during the dinner hour and have a yappy dog, and I feel like I can't complain lest the long arm of the law find me.

I most recently got a letter from management politely requesting that I remove a small cooler from my balcony. This was two days after I watched a 9-year-old kid on the other side of the complex jump from his balcony to the ground repeatedly, just for fun.

Awesome ending to my noise story:


If you read my post above, I told my story about my crazy loud neighbor.

Well...on Friday at 7am... the FBI and police surrounded my building and even went as far as posting agents in the dry cleaning shop below the loft units and apprehended my crazy neighbor.

I slept through the whole event. I've heard the crazy guy went as far as trying to escape through the windows (we're on the second floor).

End of story. A happy ending...and I slept through the whole thing!!!

Some people in the apartment building next to mine (about 15 ft away) like to have loud parties. A week ago they were blasting loud 80s music at 2:30am.

This weekend my mother had a graduation party for me. Mostly family and her friends. At 7pm the cops circled the block twice to check us out. It was daylight, a Saturday, no loud music and everyone was on the porch or in the house! There were kids at the party. Frankly we considered it harassment and yes we are a racial minority in the neighborhood.

I think maybe if you were complaining about a one-time party in your own apartment building, you might have a right to feel like a hypocrite and not want to rock the boat, but as a hotel guest, you have every right to have a quiet and peaceful stay.

I have a hotel story, not exactly noise related, but it's too good not to share. One weekend, I was staying at a hotel in a cheesy east coast beach resort town (i.e. not high class digs) during senior week. About 1 or 2 in the morning, we get a knock at the door. A kid is standing there and said his friend locked him out and could he climb over our balcony to get in to his room. We gave him an unequivocal no and told him to talk to management. About a half-hour later, the night manager, Thomas, comes and knocks on our door and asks to do the same...we were dumbfounded. I think I said "Does the hotel's liability insurance cover this?" (We were 4 or 5 stories up). Fortunately, the kid got into the room where his friend had passed out. Needless to say, the day manager was appalled that her night manager had allowed such a thing. We got a free night. Lesson learned--find friends with beach houses.

In the other half of our old twin lived a little old lady until one day when she moved out and the band moved in. They were very nice, they made us cookies, talked w/ us on the porch, etc. but they'd have parties. They always invited us and we had plenty of warning. Sometimes we'd sleep elsewhere. I was once woken up by their finale at 3:30am, it sounded like someone screaming into a mic. Big applause, dozens left the house, and that was it. Not too bad, eh?

The kids on the street were something different. Firecrackers all summer long, including starting at 2 am, just for fun. They'd play music out on their porch very loudly, they'd play ball in the street and would hassle cars that honked at them, they climbed on top of and into a truck that was waiting to be picked up by charity. A woman slowed down and told them to get out of it, etc. and they did, but they were right back to it the second she disappeared. They also lit a basketball on fire and bounced it around the sidewalk covered in dry leaves. One girl made a racial comment to me (we were in the minority there). I pretended I didn't hear - but I was in shock.

We moved.

swan-
it's heartening that you're concerned for the kids, but that's what child protective services are for....turning them in may improve the children's lives...

I am in a similiar situation to many previous commentors, but over in New York City. Blaring music for 8 hours a day, the bass so loud the floor and walls shake, smoking marijuana and drinking in the hallway, and lets not even talk about the party they once at that lasted until 6am.

All this from one lousy neighbor. Its a shame too because no one else on our side of the hall seems to care. And these people have children that have to sleep! It never ceases to amaze me. We've called the cops, the super, the landlord,etc.. and nothing was ever done. Finally, we just gave up.

Needless to say we are moving out on friday. The landlord had the audacity to ask me why. The new apartment is bigger, nicer, and has security. Also, instead of 3 walls with neighbors, we're now on the corner so we onyl have 2 neighbhors. I'm really crossing my fingers.

Many times I've had to put up with noisy neighbors so believe me, I feel your pain. I've lived in many places and it seems that no matter how great it seems for a while, at some point some noisy nasty neighbor will spoil it.

Just a month ago, not one, but TWO apartments on my floor were rented to noisy people. Thankfully, at least this time I don't share a wall with either of them and with the air conditioner on in the bedroom at night I'm still getting my sleep. We will see what happens when the weather changes and I don't run the A/C.

A new anti-noise law went into effect in NYC on July 6, 2007 http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20070705_noiselaw.htm http://nyc.gov/html/dep/html/air_and_noise/index.shtml - just call 311 with your complaint.

A friend had a padded silk covered wall - so she wouldn't hear her neighbors "relations."

Maybe AT could do a contest on the most creative design solutions for noisy neighbors?

Coming from a "noisy" household I read the previous posts while cringing. We are THE LOUDS over here, and we are about to stop being renters and become buyers, moving into our first home (townhouse, one wall shared) in two weeks. Trouble is, our little guy is three years old and has autism; he's a pretty happy kid and when he's happy he hoots and squeals and is genuinely pretty joyful -this is about 75% of the daytime hours. This child is *not* quiet and we don't have funds to formally soundproof any part of our unit, which is 40 years old and constructed chiefly of paper and brick veneer. I'm hoping once we put down rugs and soft furnishings and hang draperies then our place won't be the harsh, clanging, echo chamber it is now. I don't relish upsetting my new neighbor; we're going to do our absolute best not to be an intrusion but we're most assuredly going to change her surroundings compared to what she's been used to -- utter silence, in fact, since the home has been unoccupied for months.

Theres a big difference between being noisy at home and being noisy in a hotel room - in a hotel you should complain immediately if someones making a nuisance of themselves

When they ar being obnoxious in their own home its a slightly different matter - I have had many an obnosious neighbour and no matter what you do, scum will continue to be scum - nothing is going to change the way they behave so unless you can get them evicted, often the best thing to do is move - sad but true

Jendavid99 - your noisyness is 100 per cent different to those awful people that are bad neighbours - don't stress about it - joyful children noises are entirely different to what most people would consider bad neighbours

Jendavid99:

You can buy drywall (sheetrock? gyproc? has many names...) that has great sound-dampening qualities & just install it over the existing wall between your units. You'll lose a half inch of floorspace, but might save your neighbour's sanity... I don't have experience with this brand, but here's a link to give you an idea of what I mean: http://www.quietsolution.com/html/quietrock.html