Now that's it's getting warmer we've been sleeping with the windows open. As it turns out, the woman nextdoor likes to stand outside in the middle of the night smoking cigarettes and gabbing on her cell phone. It sounds like she's in the room with us!

I'll be setting up a fan to mask the noise. That's been enough to take care of noise problems for me in the past.

i live near a busy st and fire station, so the one downside of summer is louder noise cos of open windows! a trade off i gladly make for warmer weather... and the ac helps!

on the other hand, my formerly quiet downstairs neighbor just recently started playing loud music at all times of day & nite. her system has a booming bass too. anyhoo, i suspect a new stereo and/or new boyfriend! planning to send her a friendly email very soon :) she probably just isn't aware of how the sound/bass carries.

I lived below this woman who always seemed to walk around her apartment in high heels--and she was a real nightowl (and nightMARE), too. Between her and her boyfriend's stomping and loud music playing, I was going insane.

I tried being nice and gave them a peace offering--cute slippers, which were well received over some drinks one night. But after a couple of days, it just went back to "normal" for them. They were actually kind of mean about it, saying "that's city living" and that I was unlucky to not have the top floor. So I just gave up the big space and cheap rent and moved out after my lease was up. That building was a house of cards waiting to fall in the next earthquake anyhow.

I hope they broke up. Or that she got deported or something. Still makes my blood boil.

bark bark barking dogs toooooooo early in the AM.

seriously, do people not know that the sound of footsteps-particularly those wearing shoes- carries through the ceiling, especially with hardwood floors?! and do those same people seriously think that sorting and bringing down the recycling at 2am will not disrupt others? it's a brownstone, people! i don't even care about yelling, talking, or music, but that other stuff drives me nuts.

I live above a crosswalk. I don't know about other cities, but in boston they chirp when it is ok to walk (for the blind population I think). That damn chirping is so much worse than my downstairs neighbors dogs.

We had a live/work loft in a cool building, and the unit below ours was rented by some "art students" who threw a professional rave with 1000 guests (at $10 each), bouncers, and two djs. It went until 7 am on a weeknight. I called the police four times, and when they finally showed up at 6 am, they had no warrants and the bouncers blocked their entry. By the time they got in, the party was over, and my nerves were totally shot.

Lots of familiar problems here.

@mjr,

I live in a condo with over 200 units and it took just one person to ask if time limits could be place on the garbage chute because his unit was close to one. The association granted his request on the spot. Hopefully you could do the same in your situation.

Now, if I could get my neighbor to throw down a couple of area rugs and stop smoking I'd be happier.

And if the mean yapping accessory dog next door fell out a window I'd be happier too.

There was only one time I had an upstairs neighbor and he turned out to be a concert pianist....who practiced at home.

At first I tried to tell myself how lovely that would be. But I couldn't be more wrong. Sometime within the first two days, I discovered the reality of having a piano overheard, thin floors, and someone practicing the same piece of music for hours on end. It was maddening. Luckily it turned out that around the time I moved in he had planned to move out.

My former downstairs neighbor was either a bartender or a hardcore barfly. The lease for the apartment stated that the building's quiet hours were 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., but nearly every night, he'd come home after the bars closed (2 a.m. in Seattle) and blast techno music. I left him a polite note, complete with the relevent info from the lease, my name, my apartment number and my phone number. Nothing changed. I made a few late-night pajama-clad visits, knocking on his door and pitifully begging that he turn down the volume. Still nothing changed. Finally, I started practicing at 8 a.m. sharp after opening the window to the airshaft (which was shared only by my apartment and his apartment.) I play the bassoon, a squawky but soulful instrument, and made sure that I started with the boringest of scales and droningest of arpeggios. This, at last, spurred my neighbor to action. He complained to the landlord that I was too loud.

high heels on hardwood in the apartment above...unfortunately, the gal's neighbors haven't tried to resolve the situation peacefully and everyone upstairs is involved in a feud. after she kept me up late one night walking around in heels and having s*x, i went up and politely told her that i could hear everything, even her phone conversations. things have quieted down considerably.

too bad the developer told me that my ceiling is concrete. it's actually her hardwood, whatever structural woodwork, and my plaster. he'd lie to his own mother...

This morning - a screaming arguing couple woke me up.

I didn't even have the windows open! I didn't bother to get out of bed and look but they had to be standing in the street having a scream fest. Don't people have any shame - or pride for that matter?

I always get an apt on the top floor because I don't like people walking on my head.
My crazy neighbor (I've shared about her before - she really is crazy - though I try to be sensitive about it) below me plays music so loud it sounds like i'm playing it myself accept I would never play it that loud.
Her only way to complain about me - is that she can hear me walk. Ooooh. Really? You live in a 60 year old building with wood floors. You should have expected that. (there was a unit on the top floor open when she moved in, so I have no sympathy for her in that regard.)
I'm always either barefoot, or in slippers - except for the 30 seconds it takes me to dash out the door when I'm dressed.

I live in a 100 year old house that was converted into two apartments. Needless to say, no soundproofing! I can hear the downstairs neighbors and their 350235089 drunk friends stumble in from the bar, ready for a white trash after-party at 3:30 AM. Not to mention sex! I just hope they can hear me doing it too!

We live in a tourist neighborhood, and on weekend "nights" (really more like 2 a.m.) drunken young people stagger around the streets singing.

The solution? (Okay, not actually a SOLUTION, but it makes us feel less victimized). We have two giganto Super Soakers loaded and in place at our window. . .

I already posted to this thread, but I forgot the BEST neighbor hood noise I've experienced. I used to live in the Fenway (aka, the neighborhood around fenway park, where the red sox play). The street noise was the greatest. Ppeople all over the place all summer having a grand old time. We could hear the game from my house, I didn't even have to turn on the TV. It was the best apartment ever. I think my GPA was like a full point lower for the two semesters I lived there... but it was so worth it!

hey ironsides
really? you hope she got deported?
wow. and you're calling them mean?

I used to have a downstairs neighbor who was an opera singer. And a soprano opera singer. Who would come home at night and proceed to practice her scales as high as she could go for a few hours, every night! I have no idea how her vocal cords did not just give out. We finally managed to get her to lay off the singing by practicing right along with her. My former roommate and I aren't bad singers in our own right but apparently a taste of her own medicine was all she needed to get the point!

I insist on living on the bottom floor, due to a young child with frequently visiting friends and a click-clacking little dog. I've always had good luck with the upstairs neighbors... Except the time that a mysterious rapid banging sound started every night around midnight for about ten or twenty minutes. We discovered about a week later that it was the upstairs neighbors (a young couple) jumping rope. Yes, jumping rope.

We never had the courage to ask them to stop. Luckily, they did on their own after only a couple of weeks, never to jump rope (or make any serious noise) again in the following 2.5 years.

Maybe it is spending my whole life living in a downtown neighborhood - people walk infront of both where I live now and every house my family ever lived in all night long, but I almost miss street noise when I am away from home. Other than the fact that the other two people who live on my floor come up the stairs at all odd hours of the night I don't mind neighbor noise either - I actually like hearing the down stairs neighbor playing the flute.

People who fall back on that "it's city living" argument need to be run out of town on a rail. My own apartment manager did that to me when I complained about HER blaring the TV day and night.

She's also the only person in the building who consistently ignores the time restraints on doing laundry.

art,

yes, normally i would take your suggestion, but there are only 3 apts. in this house, so i don't want to start some kind of war. and besides... i don't want to complain, juuuuuuust in case i ever "need" to be noisy some time ;-)
all joking aside, though, i could always politely ask them to do their recycling at a more humane hour...

The only time street noise bothers me is on Friday nights. There must be an 18 and under club nearby or something. (I'm new to the neighborhood.) I was going to sew myself a flying squirrel suit a la Wylie Coyote so I could launch myself out of the third-floor windows onto unsuspecting offenders, but I think maybe I'll give the super-soaker idea a try first.

I did want to add that this winter ever night around 11 or 12 I would hear a noise that I could only explain as a shopping cart with a squeek - sort of a high pitch squeek with a rattle. After a month or so it either went away or I just stopped noticing. But sure enough now that it is nice and I am out side more, the other day I saw a man walking through my neighborhood pushing a bright red shopping cart!

My upstairs neighbors live in 250 square feet, as I do. I do not know why or how, but they are constantly walking about. I don't know how anyone can walk that much in such a tiny space...and they walk as if they have lead boots on. I don't know how to approach them to to beg them to please get some rugs...I imagine them running a factory or pacing like animals in the zoo up there...augh. It is awful, but I know they have no idea how bad it sounds.

~ running out to get a Super Soaker... ~

I'm lucky enough to live on the top floor of my building in downtown SF, but right under the building roof deck. That has not been an issue so far except for one night - a drunk gaggle of Academy of Art students decided it was a greaaaaaaaaat idea to have a standing long jump competition on the roof. The first thump, I thought there was an earthquake at 1:30am. The second thump, an aftershock. The third, I'm in my robe and on the roof and they saw me and started apologizing profusely.

Being a single woman, I like being in an active area of town at night. It's well-lit on the street and there are other people around at all hours. I would freak out if I had to walk down a dark, quiet street to get home at night like in the outer districts of SF.

I'm still in a dorm. For the past two semester I've been falling asleep to various tinks and bangs. At the beginning I chalked it up to moving the furniture around but it was still happening after a while. I thought it was sex until a few weeks ago.

I was about the knock next door and ask them to keep it down [it was already midnight] with the hammering when my door gets knocked on. We thought the noise was coming from our shared wall but it was my ceiling. One pajama'd stomp by 3 angry ladies upstairs and a loud bang on the door revealed the source of the noise.

The guy above me is a farrier. He's a blacksmith who specializes in horse shoes.

And I already thought my school was weird.

I live in new york, above a really tacky bar that will go until 5 or 6am some weekends. Like, I literally live right above it. They play the worst music (mostly superhits of the 80s) at a deafening volume, sometimes so loudly that I can hear the lyrics and the bass makes my apartment vibrate. I would much rather see the bar go than the noisy neighbours across the hall who use the stairwell as an addition to their home, making children hang out there for hours during family get-togethers on the weekends and chain smoking cigarettes in their underwear the rest of the week.

I live below 3 toddlers who run back and forth all day in their hard plastic shoes. When I knocked on the door one night to introduce myself the mother screamed, "They wasn't even RUNNIN'!"...BEFORE I had a chance to utter one word! I used to leave gifts for the girls (including little slippers) outside their door, but mom never got it.

So I started staying at my boyfriend's. At my boyfriend's apartment, his upstairs neighbor wakes up at 5AM to exercise with barbells. Who does that? We can hear all his grunts as well as the "SMASH!" when he drops a weight on the ground. Turrible.

So, I decided to escape...starting next month we're moving from our Queens apartment to a cottage in Long Island. The commute will be hell, but I can't imagine complaining about nature noise!

Oh ratita, after trying to be nice and patient for a year, I felt terrorized in my own home--something no one should ever feel. I always thought of home as a sanctuary before that experience with the heels.

If only she hadn't been so meanspirited about it. (She also terrorized the other neighbors in the building and parked her car in front of and in the garage that she didn't pay for.) Sure, there's "city living," but there's also being thoughtful and cooperative with neighbors--isn't that the real meaning of "city living"?

Makes me think of good ol' Sesame Street. That was a city street where we could all get along with each other...

People shrieking, singing loudly and fighting outside the bar across the street wakes us up several times a night between midnite and 4:30 AM. And then the construction next door starts promptly at 7:00 AM. I am starting to really work up a good head of hate for my neighborhood.

Oh yeah...I have to add a happy ending after all the venting above. We now live on a quiet street just one block away from all the action (why is it one block seems to make so much difference?)

The upstairs neighbors are SOOOO incredibly nice and considerate--they're also the landlords! Now the only running around I hear is their cat. But it makes me smile 'cause it makes me think of my cat.

i live on the groundfloor apartment in south harlem. the neighborhood is changing very quickly but i seem to live on a corner where, after 9pm, it becomes Mardi Gras and people of all ages - including children - walk around in the middle of the street as well as blast their car stereos.

also my upstairs neighbor does gymnastics at all hours of the night. how do i know this? his idiot brother proudly told me so. again, who does this in NYC?

the good news is my apartment has 14' ceilings and I pay under $1000 for a big 1 BR. i try to remember that when i have to call the cops :)

sorry i meant "a" groundfloor apartment, not THE groundfloor apartment...

I live on a major street, near a major hospital and two gas stations nearby. This equals a lot of street noise, mostly at night and I endure the drama that insues at night while most people seem to get into an argument with their signifigant other while stopping for gas.

Oh, I also didnt mention the lovely BART (subway) train that goes by till 3am.

I'm not complaining, I love my beautiful 1930's flat that I pay next to nothing rent for. Give and Take.

I live in London, and the worst noise I have EVER heard is urban foxes! I am woken up at least two or three times a week by the loudest howling and screaming, it's horrendous! Scares the crapola out of me!

that reminds me of An American Werewolf in London. i would be terrified of that, lol.

As of this morning, I was all set to move out of my apartment simply because my Smoky McSmokester neighbor smokes up my apartment with his favorite pasttime. But, I'm thinking I'm going to stay put. I love everything about my apartment besides that. I'm thinking air purifier.

I've got no noise complaints, aside from the occasional loud blaring tv in two adjacent apartments. With cheap rent, and compared to the above stories, I just may have it made!!

I am currently living in the worst apartment I've ever lived in for noise. And I've lived in some noisy ones.

When I toured the property, I was told that this was a quiet place to live. Biggest lie. Several of my neighbors are not only noisy (almost constantly!), they are also very mean. When I knocked on their door one afternoon to ask them to turn down their television, they refused to open the door. Then they tried to turn off their TV and act like they weren't home. When I (not surprisingly) wasn't fooled by this, they yelled at me to go away.

Numerous neighbors turn down their booming bass for as long as it takes me to walk back to my apartment, then they crank it back up.

The management, unfortunately, has been less than helpful.

What makes it worse is that my building, and my part of it, is right next to a major road that was hidden by some trees, so those few moments of peace I might get when my neighbors are quiet, is destroyed by souped-up engines, cars' basses, and stuff like that.

I once lived in a place that had rats and all kinds of bugs, and I would so take that place over this one.

They sent lease renewels out when I had lived here for only three months, and before I realized how bad it could get here, I signed. So I've been living in this crap hole for 2 years. I finally get to move in August, and I am thrilled. But I'm terrified that anywhere else I move will be just as noisy. It's just so stressful living amongst all the racket.

I live on the second floor of a two story house converted to apartments and I am always worrying that my cats will bother the downstairs neighbors :( Luckily, they haven't complained yet.

As for street noise, I definetly think it should be considered when you think about signing the lease.

When I was in college, I lived in apartment complex next door to a hospital. My window looked out onto the ER parking lot. I soon became immune to the sound of ambulances.

I later moved to a more interior unit in the same complex. I thought I'd get relief from the noise until I met my neighbor-- an aspiring rapper who mixed his own beats.

For the past 10 months of living in this apartment, we have daily had to deal with the torturous screeching of the loudest toddler & baby duo accompanied by foreign language domestic disputes. daily. early in the morning. after work. during dinner. going to sleep. all the time. every single day, through the heating vent which blocks zero noise. they might as well have been in the room with us.

the foreign mother & children have since moved back to the motherland & the father has got some new white momma & white babies which make drastically less noise.

even though my next-door neighbours have regular late-night acoustic sing-songs, i don't think i will ever be annoyed by neighbour noise again, because i have experienced the WORST.

A friend was a young professional violist living in the German Jewish section of Washington Heights. In the elevator her elderly neighbors would say, "I didn't hear you practice last night, what's the matter, is anything wrong? You shouldn't skip practicing, you know."

I used to also get a friendly reaction when I took cello lessons as an eleven-year-old from neighbors in the elevator of our upper west side apartment (eons ago). They would smile approvingly and tell me that they liked to hear me me practicing, but alas, I found it almost unbearably embarrassing to think that anyone had listened.

ear splitting rug munching children....left at full throttle every weekend...all day....screaming contest....20 kids under the age of 10...oblivious drunken parents.

Right now we have the joy of dealing with both incredibly ignorant above stair neighbours and an intolerable amount of outside noise.

The outside disturbance is thanks to the fact that we live directly across the road from a major Sydney train line (with trains running from about 4am to 2am, each day). Admittedly we knew of the train line when we moved in, but since we have been there they have been constructing a new train line, which they keep bungling and have had to extend the dealine several times. They are also now cramming late night/early morning work sessions into the mix to make up for all the stupid mistakes they have made during contruction, such as making the track too steep for our trains to go down and not laying the sleepers properly so that the tracks would lift when a train went over them. I think the morning that they removed the old sleepers was the worst. A garbage truck type vehicle slowly chugged down the tracks as two workers picked up the sleepers and threw them in the back. It was BANG BANG BANg as steel hit steel and this carried on for about 2 hours, starting at 4am! We also don't have to check our clocks at night when we go to bed as each night we get the 11pm cargo train rumbling past for half an hour. Fun times....

As for the neighbors, pardon my french but what a bunch of ar$eholes. We have been living in the building since September 2007 and we have had to go up there twice last year and four times already this year to tell them to STFU. It seems the man of the house hasn't thought to utilise his lock up garage, prefering instead to do all of his carpentry work in the apartment - each and every night! They also love to stomp, slam doors, hammer various surfaces, bang a lot, speak loudly in a foreign language and all the other benefits of having neighbors that don't seem to understand or consider that the people underneath may be able to hear everything that they do, even after we have told them this is the case. They also have a strange quirk of having houseplants all over the frickin apartment and they water them like clockwork at 11pm each night, which to us sounds like someone taking a pi$$ on the floor.

Did I mention an ensuite shower that drips constantly throughout the night? How can they deal with a dripping tap in a room adjoining there main bedroom I have no idea.....

After much wasting energy in trying to politely ask them to keep it down at least late at night, we have written a complaint to body corporate. Hopefully that should sort them out. If it doesn't, and if they are renters, we can techinically get them evicted. Here's hoping it doesn't come to that.....

I sympathise with all AT posters, it seems no-one is immune from the noisy neighbour...A solution that works most of the time for me is my pedestal fan, which I switch on if I really need unbroken sleep. White noise seems to work for me, although the down side is that it can be irritating in the middle of winter.

You know, I'm REALLY cool about noise as long as it's not in the morning. I need my sleep. I NEEEED it.

My next door neighbors, however, have this insufferable little dog that never shuts the hell up once it gets started. They'll put him out to pee around six or seven and leave him there for hours, and it'll bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, and, uh, bark. It's so annoying. The same neighbors are also in the habit of hiring some company with a really large loud lawnmower to cut their grass. Of course, it always has to be cut at some ridiculous hour of the morning.

Aren't there laws about when you can start making noise like that? Surely, it can't be allowed before nine. :(

Unfortunately, the noise is coming from inside the house!

In my last apartment, there was the couple who lived below me and had raucous parties every bloody weekend.

With karaoke

One partner LOVED him his karaoke -- too bad he was always just a little sharp or flat (like fingernails on a blackboard).

I thumped my floor one night, errr, make that early one morning and he came right up to see me. And tell me I had just embarassed him in front of his guests.

From then on, I just called their landlord and/or the building manager to complain -- the couple eventually broke up and I guess the remaining tenant couldn't afford the place on his own and eventually left.

The new neighbor turned out to be a real doll -- yay!

The house two doors down is the only rental on our block. Unfortunately, the landlord will rent to anyone who receives housing assitance because it's a sure thing.

Currently there are at least 6 adults living in a small 2-bedroom house. They have parties every night. They smoke pot on the front porch and the back deck. At least once a week, someone gets into a screaming match.

They recently got a dog. After listening to it bark for 2 hours one night, I got out of bed and stormed out of the house. I went around back to see if it was their dog and when I turned the corner, they were all on the porch and started climbing all over each other to get back in the house. I knocked on the door and calmly explained that we get up at 5am and would appreciate some courtesy.

Now, it's gotten ugly. After a recent 3am argument between two girls, I explained to them that I'm tired of paying for their housing, their parties and their pot. From now on, the cops will have to deal with them.

my neighbor has a barker which she leaves in her beautifully lit back garden (lovely asian lanterns glowing at 3am, should be photographed for this site).

i'm across from a school that uses the park for recess and gym (think screams at recess; now remember screaming recess).

in the same park softball goes under lighting with illegal kegs until 10pm (occasionally with an audio star spangled intro), then it's off to one of the bars within a block that has bands.

we share a common wall with boisterous neighbors beside and below.
we're on a busy street for access to 280 and fire engines and police routinely blare by on their way to unknown catastrophe.
and on monday at 3 am, recycling thieves steal all of the bottles left for city pick up.

sorry....i wouldn't change it.....except for the bottle stealers (and they are just trying to survive). i've decided to love the noise. the tinkling and breaking glass. the thousands of birds that nest in the trees across the street during winter migration (even the crazy ones that start chirping 2 hours before sunrise. the cars. the sirens.

i'm alive in an amazing city. if someone is truely out of line, i guess i'd reason with them or call the cops ( i did once when a ballgame went violent).

unhappy? move to the suburbs (and get ready for a whole new set of problems or even the same ones). by the way, noise sensitivity is amplified by the stresses not dealt with in other parts of your life. me, i sleep like a baby.

My question is, are obnoxious neighbors ever grounds to ask for a slight reduction in rent?

i live below the bad seeds indoor track and field team.
The children run, jump, land hard, slam, thud, pound, shriek and throw things all day...the whole place shakes. The adults walk hard and bicker in intense, loud, long torrents. They drop weights, objects and move furniture frequently.
At least they stop at 10-11 and don't beat the kids (physically).

Since they've been their 20 years and we are the white gay people below and they are church going, they have always been hostile, it's hopeless. It did feel good to let out a huge "WTF?" just now, which i so very rarely do. Asking them to leave less gum and food scum on the sidewalk in front of our door led to a backyard trashing, flower tear out and a shrub removal (to their other place in Concord).
They pay significantly less in rent...but i guess if we don't like it we should leave.

The best apartment noise ever was sleeping directly above the Martuni's (piano bar) piano....hearing Sondheim and such all the time was fantastic. (Even the overwrought vibratto'd "Don't Cry for me Argentina"s were amusing).

I was formerly with Ironsides on the stompy upstairs neighbor - would never take off her heels in the house (even in winter she had high-heeled boots), and apparently slept like a log so her radio (which went off 30-60 minutes before mine) would BLARE through the floor in the AM. like others have said, I likes my sleep.

we had a brief discussion about it, too, in which she gave me the "have you ever lived below someone before?" crap as though I were an idiot. of course it's my problem for being bothered by it, rather than her fault for being rude. i don't think she had a rug in her entire place, and heels wood floors = loud noise -- is this a complicated concept?

new place, the downstairs neighbors are a couple who are very quiet and it's wonderful. i'm on the top floor now, and i never wear shoes in the house and don't walk heavily, so i think everything will be fine. save the couple on the first floor who have a black lab that they barely take care of, and are now expecting a baby! hooray for responsible breeders!

My apartment walls are so thin, I've woken up when the neighbor sneezed!

We also have a church next door with a Christian rock band that plays every Sunday morning. It'd be nice to live in an apartment for a whole week before signing a lease, eh?

We have a flute-player next door. It doesn't even annoy me. She/he practises daytime, so it's not a prob. In one of my apartments I had a neighbour couple who'd argue every day, and for some reason they always did the arguing in the bathroom. Bathroom=air vents=everybody can hear.

I've never lived next to a bar, but I've heard that it's horrid. People drunk & arguing & throwing up & singing... yikes.

Oh yeah, and my mom's upstairs neighbour plays floor ball indoors!

I grew up in North Beach, and the front room was so ridiculously loud on weekends from out-of-town partiers straggling around, shouting. Luckily, that's our livingroom, but I really sympathized with any guests we had!

For us, our neighbors downstairs were far, far worse. I'm not at all an angry person in general, but I HATED them (and still do, when I think about them again). I think they were from the suburbs and had no clue how to be courteous city-dwellers, especially since we made sure to be polite ourselves, so they probably didn't realize how much noise carried. It was frequent that they'd keep us up so late that we were only getting around 5 hours of sleep (I had an industrial stockpile of ear plugs, but it didn't help with the strong beating vibrations of bass when they pumped up their music at 2 am!). Then one night when I came home late and drew a bath, one of them had the audacity to come up and scream at me for it, including plenty of offensive slurs in the process. UNBELIEVABLE. Total, total assholes.

Now the people in the 2 other units where I recently bought a condo are beyond amazing--they ROCK--but the people with whom I share a lightwell from the building next door are another story. It's almost amusing, sort of. . .they are just sooooo loud, and it's not that they necessarily hate each other, but the way they communicate is like, "Wash your motherf***ing hands!!!" or "Where did I put my god-damned f***ing purse???" all at the top of their lungs. They don't like using normal tones of voice then they can SHOUT. My mom jokes that when I have kids they're going to be 2 and walking around shouting, "Wash your motherf***ing hands!!!" in their high little voices, lol.

Although, one night, I guess one of the older members of the household (there are like a dozen people living there), came home drunk, and at like 5 in the morning he was screaming about how he was going to "Burn this whole motherf***ing place DOWN!!!" That wasn't as amusing.

Hannah Jane--Oh my GOD urban foxes! I used to live near Richmond Park and that's pretty much their kingdom. They make such insane screechy sounds and they're always having sex! When I moved to Kensington it was such a relief--just the clipclopping of horses from the Hyde Park stables, but that was a much nicer sound.

@ doogle I live in Queens too. The noise in my building is ridiculous. The hardwood floors are so squeaky that it's actually written into our lease that we have to have rugs in every room. My downstairs neighbors argue a lot -- like intense screaming matches on a regular basis. This causes their two infant daughters to start crying for hours on end. We asked them to try to keep it down and, not surprisingly, they started yelling at us. As much as I hate them, I so feel bad for those girls. They hear more obscenities than I ever did until I went to college!

I live downtown SF and on Friday and Saturday nights, I don't even THINK about going to bed until 2 a.m. because when the bars let out all the drunks yell and scream. And then there are the sirens from the country's busiest firehouse on Bush Street. But I never ever hear my neighbors. I barely heard my neighbor pounding on the floor for a couple of hours...okay I did, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt for lawful apartment living. Only after 11 p.m. did I decide to see if he could quit building that bookshelf. Turns out he was an elderly man and the refrigerator had fallen down on him. He was trapped under the appliance and had been feebly calling for help. Needless to say, I summoned EMTs, the building manager and we got him to the hospital. While he did return to the apartment in a matter of days, he passed away just this month. Now I will have a new upstairs neighbor. Has my quiet apartment (from neighbor noise) been because it was an elderly man? Or is it quiet because my 100 apartment building is solidly built? Also, area rugs are required by lease for our hardward floors.