Love Thy Neighbor?
Apartment living, where do I begin… Los Angeles has enough noise to deal with already including noisy garbage trucks, police sirens, helicopters buzzing over your head over and over, car alarms that do nothing but cry wolf, and bums yelling at themselves in the middle of the night, etc. So, how do you deal with noisy neighbors?
First off there are 2 kinds of people here in LA, that be the quiet folks and the noisy brats with no in between regardless of race, gender, or social class as this post pertains to “all of the above”.
Lets be clear about one thing here, apartments are NOT required by law to have soundproofing and as of 1977 condominiums ARE required by law to have soundproofing. So, apartments owners will not foot the extra expense to soundproof a unit if they do not have to. The turn around on renters are fast and vacancies are far and few between, so landlords have the upper hand on this matter, for now anyway.
I’m sure if you yourself or if you know of someone who lives on the bottom floor can attest to the fact that it is an utter nightmare to live below someone in Los Angeles. The walls, floors, and ceilings are frickin hollow and you hear every damn thump, drop, and everything else. It’s as if a 540 pound Andre the Giant lives above you and does jumping jacks at 3am. If there are kids above you, forget it! They never sit down and be quiet and the parents never teach them about “manners”. You have people below, chill out! Show some common courtesy and some class for Christ sakes. But no, people have a “fuck you, I’ll do what I want” attitude and it doesn’t matter if you live in the ghetto or in the upper class neighborhoods as it’s all the same with the “FU” attitude. And believe me these people are quick to complain on anything that bothers them, yet they don’t understand what they do and how annoying they are?
So what can you do? Call the police? Ha, they won’t even show up unless “shots have been fired” or there is a gun involved. Most management has a “well, what can you do” attitude even though it clearly says in your lease (which is a legally binding contract) that “neighbors will not be a nuisance to each other or legal action will take place“. For the most part, this is not enforced. I have lived in Van Nuys (which is a ghetto of sorts) for a while where every neighbor around me blasted their music 24/7 with doors slamming, dogs barking, and kids running around screaming at all hours of the night and day and NOT one person would quiet down when asked to. Parents refused to tell their kids to be quiet. Don’t these people ever sleep?! Let me tell ya something, these are not my kids and I don’t want to hear them “play”! I don’t care how cute you think they are.
So I moved into a so-called upper class apartment building and it’s the same story only double the rent. I have a friend who lives below an old lady, you would think old ladies are quiet, right? Nope! This old hag is up all night long banging on shit, what he hell is she banging? I don’t know. Then she got a dog and my friend has to hear that thing bark all day and night and you can hear it running around like an F5 tornado up there as I have witnessed this rude mischief myself. Then the old bag has her grand kids come over as they run around jumping and screaming after the mutt, you can actually see the ceiling give way with each thump. Amazing… The old fart has been spoken to, but she doesn’t care to change her habits one bit which shows she has no class whatsoever. She said with a snooty fucking tone, “I let my grand kids do whatever they want, nothing I can do about it“. Shocking to say the least… It’s like being in a ongoing looping episode of “The Twilight Zone”.
Another friend I have talks of a woman who stands outside his door and smokes like a chimney while endlessly yakking on her phone. She never sleeps and is up till 2 am banging on stuff (wtf… again, banging??) and back up at 5 am making a ruckus with her over energized, sugar & caffeine laden kids. This skank’s excuse is that she don’t want smoke in her apartment, but seems to think it’s ok if that cancerous smoke seeps into my friends home, flat out ponderous! Another married couple I know who has to constantly hear kids above them that bounce a ball on the floor at all hours. These people have been asked to stop, but they won’t and do whatever they want as the parents let their brats run wild so they can grow up and be just like mom and dad assaulting people with their noise when they become idiot adults. My friends wish they had a shotgun to shoot at them through the ceiling, that’s how crazy it has made them, and these are laid back, kind hearted people mind you (they were anyway). The torture of the constant noise has turned the happy couple into Otis Driftwood & Baby Firefly (Devil’s Rejects).
Music blasting, doors slamming, kids screaming, couples fighting, dogs barking, dogs taking a crap in the yard in front of a tenants window so they can smell your pets shit later, and just banging in general (what the hell are you people banging on??) Even though the lease and the law is on the “quiet” peoples side, it gets ignored over and over again. No wonder folks go crazy here in Hollywood, the torture from the noise is out of control. There is a movie with Tim Robbins called “Noise” which is oh so similar to this.
This is assault via noise, and it seems the only way to shut these types of people up is something that can land you on death row. It can make you so insane that it’s a very real possiblitlity. If I owned a gun I would be writing this post from a prison cell, no joke.
As you can tell I am one of the “quiet” folk. You ask people to please be considerate and chill out on the noise and they look at you like your crazy and snap back with a rude defensive attitude, I just don’t get it. You literally have to be an asshole about getting your point across from the start or nothing will get done as people think they can just walk all over you. Now if your reading this with teeth grinding disgust and think I am totally crazy, why don’t you walk your noisy ass down to Barns & Noble and buy a book called “The Idiot’s Guide to Being a Good Neighbor“, read the first 3 chapters… then turn it sideways and proceed to shove it straight up your stupid clueless ass! 
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