The Neighborhood

Good fences make good neighbors

We're pretty sure one guy has a mail-order bride.

He's absolutely nice, yet still gives one the creeps.  She has never spoken, as far as we're aware.

Is he like this guy?

Or...this guy?

This guy?

Starting to sound like some pre-98 bubba to me...

Yikes!

Just last night, I was reminiscing with my next-door neighbor about Charles, who used to live across the street.  He was always hanging out on the front porch all day, sucking down forty ouncers and tossing the bottles all over his front yard.  Always cursing a mean streak and getting into  extremely loud fights with other residents of the two houses that he inherited from his hard-working parents.  He had two pitbulls who were tethered on either side of him and they would bark violently at all passers by.  One night, we heard screaming.  I ran out and saw one of his pitbulls attacking a woman down the street.  Both dogs were loose and causing all sorts of mayhem (they were both captured and put down - the woman was not too badly injured).  Sadly, he lost both homes during the housing crisis of 2008 (I think that was the year).

The next house down from Charles had a bunch of drama, as well.  One day, a woman came out of that house and began hitting another person with a crutch (the "victim" apparently had hit her in the head with a brick).  My wife phoned 911 and order was restored.  I think that they left the 'hood at about the same time.

I'm not a big fan of gentrification, but I gotta admit that our neighborhood has no obviously weird neighbors over the last few years.  Happy to say that some long-term residents still live here as well.

Thanks for the rather insightful side of Berkeley I never knew existed.

My Berkeley experience differs quite a bit, so thanks?!

Sorry, continue

Just the typical  Mrs. Kravitz types.

You ,,,, do.,,, not,,,,,  know,,,,,, who,,,,,, Mrs Kravitz,,,,,is. 

Comprende.

My neighbors are ok in my book.

Email me your mailing address and I will send you a cheap voodoo doll from the local hardware store/ cheap custie gift shop too.

Ole' 

>>>>Good fences make good neighbors

This.

Pretty diverse neighborhood here in my little corner of North Portland.   Mostly white trash and Latinos, with a few young hipsters thrown in, but its one of the last working class holdouts this close in that hasn't experienced the mega-gentrification that has occurred in most of the other close-in neighborhoods.  We have white trash (and I don't use that term lightly) on both sides and don't really interact with them much.

 But on the topic of crazy neighbors, the worst was in a little village in Vermont.  We were renting an apartment in a converted farmhouse on the edge of the village that was broken down into four units.  There was an older lady living next door wth her daughter who started off as sort of an eccentric, but harmless overly-nosy neighbor.  Things were ok until her daughter moved out, and things went down hill from there.

We started hearing how she was going around the village telling people we were abusing our kid and we would see her lurking outside our windows.  The landlord tried to kick her out, and we testified in court at the eviction trial, but the judge let her stay.  Soon after, my ex found her in our kitchen. She ran her off and called the state troopers (the town had no cop), who gave her a trespass warning.   At that point, we started locking the door (which you don't usually do in rural Vermont), but the crazy lady slipped through one of the windows and we found her lurking in our bedroom.  I ran her out and she was arrested but they let her out the next day and she came back to the house.  

For a few days, we lived in fear and every time we would come home, we had to clear the house room to room with shotgun in hand, but we were able to finally get a restraining order and the cops/social services sent her packing to live with relatives in another state. 

I am pretty lucky. My neighbors are all very friendly and mostly keep to themselves. I move the lady next door's cans back up her driveway and put them away.  She cooks me stuff. A Lake county Sheriff down the road but they are friendly too.  Smiles and waves etc.

Respect 

I live on the last of a series of cul de sacs.  All my neighbors are very friendly and some are quite helpful. I have a good friend two doors over, and there are two State Troopers living on my street. Folks here were eager to help one another when Sandy hit my neighborhood. And I wouldn't have the best dogs ever, if not for my neighbor who volunteers at an animal rescue. All things considered, this is a great neighborhood. 

My neighbors mostly keep to themselves. My newest neighbor moved in about 3 years ago and told me, I am antisocial and a hermit, so if you do not see me its ok. I see him once or twice a week, he always waves and says hi. We rarely see his wife, she leaves for work early and comes home late. I put them in the perfect neighbor category. 

Neighbors?  Yeah no.   I live in the middle of no where for a reason.  Shit usually goes wrong in the dynamic and if you do find a good neighbor it's only a matter of time before they sell.  

we live on the poor side of town, if there is one...

mixed latino/white.

old mexican couple next to us are great, they just yell at each other in spanish occasionally.

white trashy surf kids in front house, not a fan. they are just young....had to yell the other night at their twerking gf's....

it's mostly quiet. i live a block from the main downtown drag with eateries and bars and the such. 10 min walk to the beach, 5 min walk to pizza port.

Most of my neighbors are cows. Sometimes they stare at me when I'm outside. It's not really creepy, buy I have wondered what they might think they are staring at.
I found they like music. I usually find them hanging around the fence outside my studio after I've been playing in there. They also seem to like horns. At one Cinco De Mayo fest, a guy was playing trumpet and they all herded together and ran to the fence. A few were even mooing in chorus along with music. Again, not creepy, but interesting. 

My neighbors now are all cool - it helps that the closest one is nearly 100 yards away...the farther ones are 500' plus.

Back in the late 80's early 90's we lived on a cul de sac of apartments and a few duplex. Shenanigans abound in that small circle of weirdness. The apartment building across the street was onwed by a Pompano cop and the ' manager' of the building was slinging blow by the bucket load.  He was at the very least Bi and one of the neighbors was on the DL, letting the dealer blow him for coke...then there was the couple who lived at the end of the second floor of our building who were a kinda large wom san and a slight man. She used to knock the living shit out of him, woman on man domestic violence. We had two strippers in the cul de sac buildings and a couple of musicians who played in local bands...

lets just say that there were some crazy fucking saturday nights/ sunday mornings in Pompano Beach on 23rd ave circa '88 - ' 94

I learned many years ago friends are friends and neighbors are neighbors.

We sold our hose and moved because we fucked up and befriended 2 neighbors, we will call them fucked and more fucked.

When I moved into my new house I made it a point to talk to all my neighbors and told them I am partially deaf from all the rock concerts I have been to. I back my truck up and get my mail and they would scream my name and I would not even flinch or look. After a few years they gave up.

We have nicknames for all of our neighbors. Ashy, Sparky, Creeper, Anus, Forbidden Fruit and Pill Head.

They most likely think I'm an asshole and I can live with that.

Lol

I’ve always said “The kind of person your neighbors think you are, is who you actually are.”

Thank god for acreage and fencing

Forbidden Fruit sounds interesting.

Retired First-Responder Firefighter on one side. Two school administrators on the other. Loving it.

We only have one neighbor close enough to share a fence with, and he is cool (moved here from Chicago).  His place is at a lower elevation so we really don't see his or any of the dozen houses on our little private mountain road.

But there was a time when the neighbors in that house were renters who dealt weed, coke and meth.  The dealer dude was a typical tatted up tough guy with a nice, but trashy wife along with 2 young daughters and a rottie. 

There was the typical all hours procession of buyers, which never bothered us much.  Neither did the un-permitted concrete slab he poured to build a large grow room in the back yard area.  Not even when the swat team broke in their front door in the middle of the night and arrested him in front of his kids did I consider taking action (he got out right away and never did time, even though they found drugs and cash... no idea how that works).

But only later, when our house got robbed moments after my wife drove away and an hour before I normally get home, did I decide I needed to do something.  I believed one of their customers was watching us from the bushes between our houses (I later found paraphernalia there) and that they knew our schedule.  But I happened to get home early on that day, so the thief fled out the back door leaving a trail of our stuff in his/her wake... and of course the trail of our stuff led to the dealer's back yard.

So I went down to the county building and found (in the public records) the name and address of the absentee landlord/home owner and mailed her a copy of the arrest report, newspaper article, pics of the new front door and of the backyard grow room.  I also included a copy of the page out of our CC&Rs that stipulated that no structures may be built without association approval.  I enclosed an anonymous, typed letter stating that "we" [implying the 'association'] would be forced to take action if the situation was not dealt with immediately,.  Now, we don't actually have anything but a road association, and no other neighbors even knew what was going on, much less cared, but the 1960's era CC&Rs did have that rule, so I exploited it.

In only about 3 weeks there was a for sale sign up, and within another month the druggos were gone. 

Now our mellow Illinois neighbor uses that out building to store his antique British cars, so it all worked out.

That said, I would take the drug dealers over the pompous 'Ted Knight/Judge Smails' neighbor we shared a common wall with in the condo we used to own. 

My neighbor killed our dogwood. I asked him to replace it or at least help me replace it. He claims he called Scotts and they said no way could he have killed the tree, which is not true. He burned half of his yard out with fertilizer. I have let it the tree bed grow up weeds all summer and now we have a three foot tall crepe myrtle volunteer there. I had an action figure in the tree for a few months that i think he finally took.  I plan on decorating the dead tree for Halloween then when i'm taking down my decorations I'll take out the weeds and tree and stake up the crepe myrtle. Harmless otherwise.

1. Killed dogwood

2. Burned out yard with fertilizer

3. Stole action figure

Man. Talk about escalating things slowly...

I have lived here for 15 years and my next door neighbor is an Indian guy from the islands via N.Y. He called me Jim when we first met and I never corrected him, to him I am Jim. I thought it was an island thing to call white people, don’t they do that in Jamaica 

Of all the places I have lived my worst neighbors were in Portsmouth NH. Lived on the middle floor of three floor apartment building. The upstairs neighbors fought so hard I was pretty sure they were practicing WWE moves over my head. One night it spilled down to our shared hallway and we finally called the cops. The next morning there was blood all over their door. Found out later one guy stabbed the other one in our hallway. Then a few weeks later our down stairs neighbor - a guy came up and knocked on our door at like one in the morning to ask if we had any panty hose we could spare. I explained to him that coffee filters would work just fine to strain his free base and sent him on his way. 

These days my next door neighbor doesn't water their lawn which drives my across the street neighbors crazy. Times have changed.