War With My Neighbors.

This thread is for two things.
1. Suggestions on how to deal with my neighbors.
2. Stories of similair situations.

So, we'll start with some background. I live with my girlfriend and two other housemates in a two-floor townhouse. It's a nice place, and is part of a row of 6 or 7 of these. There are families on either side. On one side, there is no trouble. Only once was there an issue where the parents apparently went away and left the mid-teens kid alone. He promptly had a big "play shitty techno music" party that started at midnight. Well around 5 a.m. I gave up on pounding on the wall, and just called the cops. He probably shat himself when the officer showed up, and there's not been an issue since.

Now, the other side.
There's a mom and a dad, a herd of kids, and the obligatory pit-bull they don't keep leashed or disciplined.
They enjoy all of the following:

• LOUD shitty hip hop music with the bass turned up
  
  starting up at around 7am and continuing until they all go off to school/work/whatever.
• The same music playing at random times throughout the day on weekends/days when any of them is home.
• The same music occasionally blasting in the middle of the night.
• Them screaming the name of their dog pretty much all day and night, in rapid repitition: "CHICO! CHICO! CHICO! CHICO! CHICO!!!!!"
• Them driving their enormous SUV over the parking lot curb, through the "yard" the townhouses share, and up to their door so they can wash it every other day - thoroughly blocking everyone from getting to their back doors.
• When doing so, opening up every doorway on the gigantic SUV and BLASTING their trademark shitty hip hop music.
• Apparently having "let's fall down the stairs while juggling bowling balls" contests every few hours, lasting about a half hour.
• Standing at their back door and having normal conversations AS LOUD AS HUMANS CAN PHYSICALLY TALK. For hours.
• The 'yard' shared by the row of downhouses has a slight downhill slant. This isn't an issue unless nature coincidentally makes it rain hard the same day as a snowfall is melting. When this happens, there is too much water, and it can flood the kitchens of our houses a little by seeping in under the back doors. They soon realised that by building a little wall with 2x4's, they could divert the water flow...and so they did. Not to another area where it would just go away, but directly to our back door - making a little flooding/big puddle turn into a flooded kitchen.(I've since handled this problem.)

So there you have it. The typical uber-obnoxious asshole neighbors.
Keep in mind before you post your smarmy "tell them to stop" posts, that we have already:

1. Tapped, Knocked, and Beat the shit out of the wall dividing us. This has been ignored in the first two cases, and on the last instance - they simply went apeshit, running up and down their stairs banging on the wall for about half an hour. And they kept the music on.
2. Turned our speakers(we're all music geeks, and we have a LOT of speakers) around to face the wall, and blasted either some very heavy death-metal, or alternatively, an extremely annoying Weird Al song set on repeat. This generally causes the neighbors to turn their crap up, which we do as well. Eventually we win and they stop, but it means we have to hear our choice of music BLASTING for a long time, too.
3. Placed our guitar amps against the wall and played them a wonderful(terrible) concert. This garnered a repeat of the "run around banging on the walls for half an hour" performance.
4. Asked them about it politely, to which we receive either a very quick, 'polite' agreement, or simply a long stare - depending on which of them it is.
5. Talked to the landlord/supervisor, who hasn't even managed to get us keys to our front door after 7 months, so we don't have high expectations.

So there you have it. You've seen what we endure from them, you've seen our list of counter-measures and their efficacy. Let the suggestions fly.
Please keep them sane and intelligent. Keep in mind we have to live next to these people for at least another 5 months, and I am not convinced they wouldn't do something physical in response to anything too overt/stupid and I cannot be around to watch my house and lady all the time.

 

I have some friends who are in a bro-drone band. Another friend once has a similar problem with his neighbors, so the band came over to practice at his place... they played so loud that the constant feedback shook the walls and made every single picture frame at the neighbor's fall off. That put fear into their hearts.

 

Do as little as possible to provoke them until you find another place. If your landlord wants that type of tenant then vacate your space- I'm sure he'll appreciate what it'll do to his property values.

 

I don't think that retaliating with louder music is a solution; at the very least, it entices them to play their music louder. And besides, if their loud music doesn't bother them, then chances are, your music doesn't either.

If it's to the point where it's disrupting you, you can always call the police. Loud music, and constantly, can be considered as 'disturbing the peace', and if the police are called often enough on it, then your neighbors will get the messege and stop - eventually.

I had a similar problem to you, but not with a loud-music neighbor. We had neighbors that had motor bikes, and their driveway came up between our houses. They'd be with their biker friends at all times of the day and night, revving their motors and such, and it was becoming a neusance. We had called the police a few times when the noise was happening at night.

They also had a collection of bike parts everywhere - and I mean EVERYWHERE, and it looked rather disgusting. We, trying to be nice neighbors, had hinted a few times that they should at the very least clean up their front yard, but they never did. We did, though, one week, pass a petition around the neighborhood addressing this concern and left it in their mail box, letting them know that the neighborhood (about 60 houses) were more than a bit annoyed with not only the condition of their property, but also the noise.

It took a while, and a wicked amount of patience, but the neighbors did clean up their act. Granted, it still wasn't perfect when we moved, but it was, at least, much better.

 

Something similar to that happened to me once and I tried to deal with him first person to person,but then later he made it worst. Only by telling the manager did this get fixed, he was told to listen to his music with headphones.

 

dave eventually just called the cops on his neighbors so much that the mom sold all the stereo equipment to pay for the noise ordinance fines. mind you, dave's a pretty scary fucker when pissed off, so retaliation wasn't really an issue.

 

Rubin, that is an idea...though we have already tried a variation with our guitars/amps, and it only produced semi-success.

Cowboy, most of that is a bit more overt and destructive than I'm interested in doing. Whereas these people are obnoxious assholes, they haven't actually done us any physical harm or destroyed anything. I appreciate the many thoughts...but I'm looking for something much more subtle. At least for now. I'm not interested in starting a mega war with these people.
In some months when the lease is up and we move, well then that will be an altogether different story

Stinkfoot, our landlord has shown a true lack of ability/interest in addressing much more serious concerns than "our neighbors are stupid", so although we have filed a complaint, we don't expect much.

Cerridwen, we only probably have to deal with these people for another 7 months or so...so really long-range, gentle solutions(while preferable in another situation) won't help us. Cops are an option, but I get the feeling it would only temporarily hush them and not solve much.

 

you gotta keep calling them.

 

agreed. find out what the noise ordinance laws are in your area and call the cops whenever their music/noise gets obnoxious. every night. multiple times a night if need be

 

I'd do exactly what KC's husband did. Call the cops, let them know I was calling the cops, let them know I would continue to call the cops.

Mention the dog too. It sounds like your past being nice now.

 

Sorry, I don't really have a ton of great advice for how to deal with them, but I sympathize. Before my DH and I moved into our house, we lived in a complex that sounds similar to the one you're describing. On one side, a 90 year old woman whose silence was actually somewhat disturbing, leading to many conversations of "Go knock on her door and see if she's ok" "No, b/c if she is, then she had to get up and answer the door". But on the other side lived a woman who had the loudest answering machine known to man, and the yappiest dog. She screened ALL her calls, so we got to hear every message that was left for her (and her mom called her A LOT, so about every 3rd message was "I know you're there, pick up, pick up, pick up." cable guy style.) On top of that, when the phone rang her dog would lose it's damn mind. So, as if the phone wasn't bad enough, her dog would yap for 10 minutes straight everytime the phone rang. By the time he chilled out, the phone would ring again.:banghead: Sooo, all that being said, I have only one piece of advice I can give you. Really. Loud. Sex. (it worked for us!)

 

Escalation!

That's right, brave adventurers, a new terrifying chapter unfolds in the stark reality that is My War with the Neighbors.

Today there were fairly good. The standard stereo blasting for a while in the morning, and obligatory hour of them outside while their dog barked nonstop and they shouted its' name nonstop. For an Hour.

But just a bit ago they resorted to a tactic so vile, so obnoxious...well...I'll explain.
I'm happily watching CSI and pondering what to make for dinner, when suddenly I realise the CSI soundtrack has a whole lot more bass than usual. Wait, Batman! That's not CSI at all! That's the entire fucking dividing wall shaking because they have a stereo downstairs utterly blasting!

Generally, this would garner a simple enough response...but today they chose the musical equivalent of mustard gas: "Don't Cha"
For those of you playing along at home who mercifully haven't heard this "song", it is a bit by the Pussycat Dolls. The one which goes "DONTCHA WISH YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAS..." pretty much nonstop to a shitty generic bass beat. Jesus tapdancing deepfried Christ these people(The Pussycat Dolls, their fans, or my Neighbors - take your pick) are living stereotypes of everything wrong with America.

I bounced a tennis ball off the wall for a few minutes, but this didn't earn my victory. So I placed my guitar amp up against the wall, turned every available knob up all the way, and let the feedback pretty much deafen everyone for a mile around. This worked...but I sense it is temporary at best.

I've been awake for nearly fifty hours straight. I walked ten miles today on a bum leg, and I haven't had nourishment beyond an apple, some mountain dew, and Excedrin pills for my headache(they didn't work). I am at this point incapable of coming up with brilliant new sinister plots to retalliate should they ever stoop this low - so I leave it to you!

 

Pretend that you and your girlfriend have an imaginary dog named "Fucktits". Go outside and shout his name, fetch this and that... throw random objects for the imaginary dog to fetch, and act crazy and very loud.

Get the oddest sounding psychedelic trance you can find, blare it... and make loud sex noises shouting male names in between.

Burn lots of plastic outside when the wind is blowin towards the direction of their house.

Playing "Don't cha" at any volume is a sin. They must repent.

 

http://www.fireworks.com/


4th of july coming early. You can go to the store get some shotgun shells, break them open untill you get your order in. Change your girlfriends name to Paul Revere. You can be Napoleon.

 

Good Job, Run-DMC those punks a la Walk This Way with Aerosmith's own Stephen Tyler and Joe Perry


Hotwater

 

Rubin, you carry a vile gypsy curse on ye!
The -moment- I started reading your post, they started playing it again. Not a peep for nearly an hour, and then right back at full swing.

We're too mooshed in with other people to go with burning stuff outside or fireworks...at least not until closer till the end of our lease. But, we do often have extremely loud conversations at odd hours about odd things. We also make sure whenever we do have sex against a wall, it's against the dividing wall.


I like the imaginary pet idea, but I think I can raise the bar.
I'll put my hamster in its' ball and let it roll around outside, and follow it around screaming instructions. Brilliant, sir!

 

No! Not the vile gypsy curse!

I am now forever a slave of the dark lord satan!

 

One thing they -really- apparently get pissed at is if we play hip-hop style music loudly.
I don't really have much, but I do have a little of the 'old school' gangster stuff like "Natural Born Killa" , "Straight Outta Compton", etc. Last time I blasted that at 'em, they tried to turn theirs up, then gave up and started screaming through the walls. Couldn't hear what they were saying, so I kept screaming "You're welcome" back.


Part of the problem seems to be that there are literally 3289756 of them in there, and they all operate independantly of one another. I'd like to be a good hippy and say "Oh I'm sure it's just one" but I KNOW it's all of them.

 

you should just blast some music and leave the house and go somewhere else while the music is playings, and keep it going until like 3 in the morning, or call the cops on them, or simply move, those are all i can think of, oh either that or scare the shit outta the kids by telling them that some1 was murderd in the room they sleep! lol

 

I say that u...........get a huge head ache and sue them for it!!! lolFire water balloons at them everytime they go outside, throw a baseball through there window and come outside yelling damn kids!!! Borrow some of ur friends dogs and cage them up and let them bark all night while u stay in a hotel lol. Tan in the yard in the nude, tp and egg there house do somthing man!