Describe your neighbors

[Onlooker]

I live in west Cambridge, MA, which is generally expensive. It is overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly educated, and overwhelmingly liberal. There are far too few salt of the earth types, and there are quite a few Boston brahmins who don't look you in the eye and talk down to you with their bizarre accent. There are a lot of students, mostly square Harvard types, but even they, in their youth, haven't lost all their individuality. There is still a counterculture, but it's not very visible, and was mostly wiped out by the defeat of rent control. There are a good number of rich snobs who may be liberal, but are of the type that Reagan Democrats legitimately despise. Cambridge is very tolerant of its homeless and street performers, and they add an enormous amount of personality to Harvard Square. My neighbors are very civilized, at least on the surface.

[MrCoffee]

1. to the east...chickens. to the west...about 30 types of parrots

i'm thinking about getting some ostriches and letting them run around.

[redqueen]

2. next door, young couple with a dog... quiet

downstairs, middle aged guy who drives a bike who likes to play his music LOUD and likes to party out on his porch and leave beer bottles around all over the place

[GoddessOfGuinness]

3. Mixed bag...

We're in a blue-collar middle-class town that's become a suburb of Washington over the years.

Next door on one side is a postal worker and his sort-of-live-in girlfriend...Both are very quiet and pleasant. He makes beautiful decoys for the art of it...He's not a hunter.

On the other side of me is a young woman who is a landscape architect and her female housemate, who moved in a couple of years ago. I'm not sure if they're partners or not...could be. She always gives my kid a humongo-sized candy bars for Halloween...a real sweetie!

Across the street is a minister and his wife (both very liberal) and their two doggies. They're very pleasant, helpful people...Great folks.

The black gentleman across the street was recently divorced; but his daughter comes to stay with him every other weekend. He's a really nice guy who once told me he's had a difficult life...made a lot of mistakes and learned things the hard way.

Next to him is a family who moved here from the Phillipines a few months ago. We're on different schedules, so I rarely see them.

A couple of doors down is the widow of a blue-collar good-old-boy guy. She's very nosy, but basically has a good heart. Her son lives with her. I think there was some serious abuse in the family when her husband was alive. I feel sorry for her.

We've got a house full of college students on one corner of the block. It's a different group every year; but they're great kids.

We've also got a handyman and his family, a Latino family who moved in last May, and a Korean (or Vietnamese) family on our block.

And there's a house on one corner for sale...big old farmhouse with a swimming pool. Want to buy it?

[SOteric]

4. 1) Frat boys,

2) Grumpy Dude with the world's best behaved dog,
3) Religious Couple with two small children,
4) Weird noseyparker woman with head trauma,
5) Couple who fight and cuss in public,
6) Wannabe Rockstar Guy,
7) Couple with one of those little yap-yap dogs that people use as a fashion statement,
8) Uber-Quiet Korean woman with no visitors who barely speaks English but puts the American Flag out on all appropriate holidays.

[EstimatedProphet]

5. Idiots on Harleys and in big trucks

Up and down the street all night. As loud as they can be.

[greatauntoftriplets]

6. I live in an apartment condominium....

Across the hall a couple who has been here a long time. She is retired, he still works but celebrated his 65th birthday last year. Extremely nice people. They have different names, not sure if they are actually married. I don't ask.

Young couple moved in next door two weeks ago. They had a tiny U-Haul truck. TINY!!! The place must be mostly vacant of furniture. Happily, this place is built like a fortress and I don't hear anything from there...except last Sunday when I was doing laundry and had to go downstairs to the laundry room over a period of time, the sound of something beeping from their place. No clue what it was but it was damn annoying. I wondered why they were out at 8 on a Sunday morning. I could not imagine living with as little furniture as they must have brought.

[cloudbase]

7. Quiet and friendly.

Pretty good folks all around. Everybody more or less follows "live and let live."

[baldguy]

8. On the right, an old widow who sweeps her lawn after she cuts it - every other day

That's "SWEEPS" - with a broom.

On the left I have a nice old couple - friendly & chatty - but the gentleman can never remember my name.

Across the street is a young family with a boy in my niece's class - she talks about him all the time, but claims that she doesn't like him. But she talks about him ALL THE TIME.

Behind is another young family with kids. About once or twice a week a ball or a frisbee lands in my yard and they come over to get it. I caught them feeding hot dogs to Zelda (see my avatar?) through the fence.

[lizerdbits]

9. I'm suspecting drug dealers on one side

One of the guys there, when a certain red car pulls up, will go sit in it like he's getting a ride, stays there a few minutes, then goes back inside. Once I noticed several different cars coming and going, not like friends stopping by for a while, but for like 5 minutes. 5-6 on one day a few weekends ago when I was going through a closet in a room over our driveways with the windows open so I could hear each car pulling up and see someone go in for a few minutes. Their music was ridiculously loud, sometimes coming on at 2:00 or 4:00 am. I finally called the cops because it was so loud they couldn't hear me practically injuring my arm banging on their door. Apparently 11:00pm on a weeknight is a great time for bongo drum and bass guitar practice. Surprisingly these guys all look in their 30's, I was expecting teenagers with that kind of noise at those hours. Not too many problems since. I've been tempted to go over there recently because they have been getting later and later with the loud music. The loud patio parties aren't as bad either. I've talked to one guy since who has a very loud voice, enough to wake me up by talking on the other side of my wall. I've tried moving my furniture, but they were too loud for that to help.

The people on the other side seem to be nice, some thundering bass but only on weekends during the day that I've heard. I've never had them wake me up.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. Nobody I have anything much in common with, other than race.

Yuppies with SUVs and pickups.

Biffs and Muffs, I call 'em. They've overimproved the houses which look perfect, and the yards which might be standing by in case Tiger Woods needs to putt.

Church going, married, employed with good incomes, raising little kids (They are the third generation in this hood, built in the 50s). I was the second generation that came along in the 80s. Most of them I have barely even spoken to.


I have a 12 year old Japanese car with bumperstickers expressing such sentiments as "Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican" and "I Love Opera" and "Buy American".


I figure they think we're scum because we do our own lawnmowing. However, our educations are equal to theirs.

[femmocrat]

11. An eclectic mix.... rural area, but growing.

Across the road, 4 very big, expensive homes on 10-acre "mini-farm" lots (sub-divided former farm). Either side of us, farmers. Further away, everything from reclusive rich people on secluded estates, to lower middle-class in small houses or mobile homes, and everything in-between. We have lived here over 20 years and really don't know anyone very well. People are friendly, but keep to themselves. It's still pretty quiet and peaceful, except for fireworks and hunters.

[Gonzo Gardener]

25. Howdy neighbor!!!

:hi:

I'm sorry about the fireworks but after living in So Cal for 12 years where even sparklers were illegal I can't help myself. I promise not to aim the bottle rockets over your rooftop anymore and no more artillery shells after 1:00 a.m.

:rofl:

[TK421]

12. Mostly business owners out front of my apartment, and crack dealers

at the end of my driveway. There is a pizza joint two doors down from me, and a hair salon right next door. There is also an Indian Restaurant three doors down to the right of my apartment.

[Wcross]

13. Rural here.

Jerry lives down the road, seems like a nice guy but I don't know what his wife's name is. He is about a half mile away. The other side neighbor is a church a half mile down the other way. Floyd owns the land across the road but only cows live there. He lives at a place on the other side of the county and just keeps cows on this place. The worst neighbor disruptions are from cows bellowing for their calves or Jerry target shooting (very infrequently). I can see no other homes lights neither summer or fall. Very secluded and private.

[Mutley]

14. The guy on my left mows his lawn Every Day in the summer.

And I do mean Every Day.

People on my right aren't home much. But they have this really cool German Shepard called Jake. They let him roam free around their front yard, and he never leaves the property. And no, he doesn't wear a shock collar. He just likes to stay close to home.

The only other person I know is across the street from me, and she works at the same place I do. She's a sweet-but-not-quite-all-there little old lady.

[Scooter24]

15. Highland Park, TX

Very similar to your home town. Wealthy (average income over $200k a year), mostly Caucasian (97% vs. 0.9% African American), and highly educated (77% of the population have a degree). Also home to one of the highest-rated High School's in the nation, the Dallas Country Club and the famed Highland Village shopping center where one woman can easily buy herself a $20,000 ring from Harry Winston, a $5000 suit from Chanel, and a $500 pair of Jimmy Choo shoes before getting her obligatory Starbucks and then go grocery shopping at Tom Thumb for her family. Haha.

My best guess is that this town is about 65% conservative, 35% liberal. The community is mostly warm and welcoming only to those who fit their ideals and mold. Politics doesn't influence many community initiatives nor do they become a staple in a conversation, but with the income many of these people generate, politicians can really cash in here.

My immediate neighbors are a couple of lawyers, a couple retired computer engineers, a few non-working wives whose husbands seem to be gone for weeks at a time, and also a few retirees. Everyone here lives busy lives, filled with work, play, school, vacations, and various social events.

It's not perfect by any means, but I am blessed to call this place home.

[DemoTex]

32. I trained my dog to "go" in Dick Cheney's yard on Euclid.

I lived eight blocks from Cheney. I used to see Dick and Lynn in the Highland Village Starbucks. I was there once in my 1965 356-SC, parked by the door. I was sitting outside with my dog. Cheney came in and got a coffee to go. When he left, he walked over to my pristine 356 for a look-see. I sat and watched. When he got to the back of the car, he became visibly annoyed. He had spotted my "Texas Democrat" bunpersticker.

I was just back in H-P last week visiting my old neighbors. I only spent an hour or so (had a medical appointment with a specialist). I can't get over all of the tear-downs. I was floored that the house at the corner of Armstrong and Byron (next to former Exxon CEO Chuck Sitter) was gone. My house was leveled almost three years ago.

[BuddhaGirl]

16. pretty decent neighbors

but the lady next to us has a big dog who barks, barks, barks. She is a surgeon and has odd hours so sometimes the dog barks hours on end. We've had several conversations with her about this, and for awhile it's better, then gets bad again. It sucks when the damn dog starts barking at 7am non-stop :mad:

There's a young family across from us who are pretty nice. The woman "walks" her ancient pug, who's kind of pitiful looking (wheezes and tongue hanging out the side of his mouth) in one of her kid's old strollers around the neighborhood. It's kind of cute.

[bluedigger]

17. Nashville

Nest door is a large black '70s Marine vet - really quiet and very nice - I think he does maintenance work for a utility.

Across the courtyard is a small 40 something country song writer - collects the rent for our New Jersey slumlord. He had a song "retained" by Goerge Strait recently and often hosts other writers after his bartending shift at the Legion.

The front apartment is vacant - used to be a crackhead (apparently) but he finally got evicted. Had an old hooker there last winter as well. Above that place is a young future country star. Haven't really interacted with him much, but he has a huge Ford pickup that is an obvious salvage title and takes up way too much of our limited driveway space.

There's another place in the front with a separate entrance so I never see the guy who lives there. Rumor has it he's a dirtbag and on the soon to be evicted list.

The last apartment is a complete mystery, but based on the variety of vehicles and their short residency, I would not be surprised if there was an incall/outcall business there.

Our apartment building is wedged between a light industrial factory - quiet except for their delivery trucks, and a dysfunctional auto sales and repair business specializing in cosmetically and mechanically challenged Jaguars. Two liquor stores within a block, which is convenient for the wino's in the alley. Couple of bars and other businesses as well.

My brother's first comment was "So, how's the ghetto?"

[Matariki]

18. Afraid of trees. n/t

[wildhorses]

19. good ole boys ...

:shrug: and all that goes along with it :eyes:

[SteppingRazor]

20. My neighbors are a couple of goddamn Quebecois snowbirds...

who just got back to Florida last night at midnight, banged on my door while I was sleeping (I had to get up for work this morning), and demanded to know who was parked in their parking space. Said car in said parking space had absolutely nothing to do with me. Why they insisted on waking me up, I shall never know. But it threw off my entire sleep system, and so here I sit typing this to you at 1 a.m. the next night.

Bastards.

[backwoodsbob]

21. live in the middle of the woods

my only two neighbors are two members of the wifes family.

I fondly refer to the homestead as deliverance mountain :P

[XemaSab]

22. Mexicans and students

n/t

[NewWaveChick1981]

23. Freeps on one side, godless libruls on the other.

Mr. Freeper's famous here (I've talked about him before). :) The neighbors on the other side are about the same age as my husband and me, and they're godless libruls just like us. :D Our neighborhood is very nice, quiet, and upper-middle-class. It's mostly white, but it's about 30% minority as well. Mr. Freeper and his wife love to complain about stuff, and the "this neighborhood is getting dark" attitude is terrible. :eyes: A Pakistani family moved in about a block up from us, and they are very nice. I have spoken to them on my fitness walks, and they seem like great people. However, when Mrs. Freeper saw them one day out walking, wearing their "different" clothing and taking a group walk, she immediately branded them "terrorists" and came over to our house to find out if we knew anything about them. I said, "Yes, I've talked to them, and the husband is a computer programmer. The wife is a stay-at-home mom, and several relatives live with them. He works at XXX Co., and they just moved here from Virginia." She looked at me like I was a "heathen terrorist" too and said, "Why would you even want to talk to them?" I said, "Ummm....because they're nice?" Ahhhh...the power of Fox Noise.... :yoiks: :( All in all, though, it's a live-and-let-live neighborhood where most people at least speak to each other. MOST people. :P

[mainegreen]

24. Nice old lady, funny chef, and a bunch off assholes I call the cops on every week.

Last week one of the assholes jumped out a second floor window when the cops showed up. They did not find that amusing and hauled his ass off to jail in the paddy wagon.

[distantearlywarning]

26. An eclectic mix

of working class African-Americans, hippy liberal artists, and overeducated Ivory Tower types who are affiliated with the universities.

It's kind of a cool neigborhood. The only bad part about it is it's proximity to a really, really bad gang-controlled neighborhood across the tracks.

[trof]

27. On the right - invisible. On the left - delightful.

A couple in their mid 30s, our daughter's age.
Her mom died when she was a young girl and Miz t. is her surrogate mom.
And we're surrogate grandparents for their little girls, 3 and 5.
Miz t. keeps a big box of popscicles in the freezer and around 3 o'clock almost every afternoon our doorbell rings.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

28. I live in a 24 story apartment building.

I live on the 11th floor...
My neighbors to west of me are two gay boys we dearly love. They borrow stuff from us a lot. They love my dog. One makes commercials for the local Fox Affiliate. The girls across the hall from them are very sweet, love to play with my dog, and are very sociable. The girl to the East of me is in the Air Force or the Army. She's in Human Resources. I didn't realize they had an HR department in the military, but I learn something new every day.
Down the efficiency hall is a security guard and a lady who I believe is legally blind. She has large glasses and is very friendly. Down the hall is Miss Mary. She's an elderly woman, lovely, and I like to sit with her in the lobby with the other older people in the building. They are fun and rotten as can be. I don't really know any one else on my floor. The ones I did know went to other floors and I rarely see them anymore.
The people who congregate in the lobby and play dominoes or cards are the best. My "boyfriend" Howard is in his seventies and very funny. He always acts like he hates my dog and razzes me to no end. I love living here. We lived here for two years and never spoke or saw anyone. Then we got Prudence and we have talked to a million people we never knew existed. She's a great conversation starter. And there are lots of other dogs in the building. Prudence has like 4 boyfriends who like to come sniffing, and she totally hikes her leg for them. It's hilarious. There's Charlie the mix breed that looks like he's part pit part boxer, but puppyish, but not a puppy. Then there's Sebastian the cutie, excited pub, Emmitt, whom I believe is a long haired chihuahua, and Oscar who is a black schnauzer. We all walk them at the same time in the evening it seems. I'm going to miss this place when we buy a house next year.
Duckie

[1gobluedem]

29. Mine....

I live in Ann Arbor, MI, in a very nice neighborhood about 10 blocks from campus; a mix of professionals, doctors, and UM faculty. Even though my neighborhood reportedly has the highest number of Republicans in the city, there are plenty of impeachment and anti-war signs on every street. Next door on one side is a graduate student co-op of bioengineers who throw a wine and cheese party for the neighbors once a year and, whenever they have other parties (not often), pass out contact phone numbers so we can call if they get too noisy, across the street is a longtime townie; she's 82 years old and knows everybody in town, keeps tabs on all the neighbors, still skis, and gets up at 6a on snowy days and snowblows the sidewalk and everyone's driveway unless we get out there early enough to do it ourselves. Behind me are a couple in their 80s who are nudists, at least part of the time; Mr. Nudist brings the compost out in the early morning au naturel, but will jump behind a tree if noticed. On the other side are relocated suburanites who bought the house about two years ago; it's huge with eight bedrooms and bathrooms and an au pair suite on the third floor. They've done a beautiful job of ripping off the hideous glass sunporch the previous owners built and replacing it with a two story open porch that matches the house.

Most of them are public radio listeners too; I can look out my front window and see at least three of our donors' houses. I love my neighborhood.

[skygazer]

30. I live in a funny little group of homes

It used to be a little resort with a big central lodge and a bunch of cabins. Now the landlords live in the lodge and they rent out 5 of the cabins.

Landlords - very nice people, churchgoers but not pushy or preachy, are kind of like surrogate parents, watch our cat when we vacation.

Cabin #1 - GardenBoy. This guy is strange, always wants to talk, never has anything to say. Spends hours in his little front yard building elaborate little paths and walkways, little wooden bridges over little dirt ditches, planting grass and shrubberies that die. He never, ever, ever has his shades or drapes open, and instead of parking in his driveway, his truck tends to be kind of skewed so it hangs out into the communal driving area.

Cabin #2 - Engineer dude. Never home. I see his car maybe once a month. Keeps to himself, will wave but never smiles.

Cabin #3 - Messy Woman. Also never home. Has more crap piled up outside and around her cabin. She's a scatterbrain, completely disorganized, nice but flighty.

Cabin #4 - The Night Yeller. Nice guy, we take care of his cats when he's away. He's a youth group counselor for a Christian group, leads kids on trips and camp getaways. Has an impressive collection of old bibles. Watches sports late at night and yells very loudly, cursing like a sailor - he must be watching tapes because we hear him at 2 or 3 in the morning - he'll wake us up yelling.

[China_cat]

31. To one side, an unmarried single mother of a grown

child who hates green and growing things and constantly complains that she has no one to help her (to me...'you have a husband to help you, I don't have anyone') with things even though she's often said that there's no way she'd ever get married.

To the other side, a Bush-loving bigot.

Across the street, one house that's empty about 6 months out of the year and one where the teen-age retarded son is locked out of the house while his mother works.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

33. super religious, they hide when they see us.

[ZombieNixon]

34. Above, people who like to leave beer bottles on our part of the garden.

In front, ice cream shop that recently closed for the season. Owned by my landlord, or maybe his son. :P Next door, bar.

[cobalt1999]

35. Old.

I'm in my forties and I'm the youngest male on the block by about 15 years.

[huskerlaw]

36. Apartment houses

with normal middle-class people on 2 sides, million dollar plus houses to the back. A major TV studio across the street.

All decent people, as far as I can tell. Except for the creepy guy across the alley who built a castle-style million dollar home and then decorated it with gargoyles and HUGE dragon statues. And when I say castle-style, I mean, it's built out of rocks and looks like a freakin' castle. Size-wise, it's pretty average. I should take a picture. It's crazy.

He also likes to play with his muffler-free motorcycle at 8 am every Saturday. I want to tell him to shut the fucking thing off, but he looks like a really scary guy. Probably isn't, but something about his tattoo-covered body and Gandolph-esque beard tell me to keep my mouth shut. :scared:

[MorningGlow]

37. A split personality

To the east, a retired, well-to-do couple in a GORGEOUS, huge Queen Anne home, with a deaf dog and a cat who poops in my garden (harumph). Despite the cat poop, and the fact that all they do is golf and drink highballs (yeah, I'm jealous) they are very nice.

To the west, a pothead we have dubbed Muffler Man because he has a shitbox of a station wagon and drove around for months with no muffler. Gee, THAT was fun to listen to as he went in and out, in and out, all day and all night. (We think he's a dealer who delivers.) (Or he is just weird.) His house is his former childhood home; his mom still owns it, so he lives there rent free. And he doesn't trouble himself to part with any money to improve it in any way. His three rugrats, of whom he has partial custody, have a nasty habit of throwing rocks and kicking balls in the general direction of our house, promising more broken windows than we've already got (we inherited them from the previous owners--actually their renters). But if I yell at them they look appropriately terrified and scatter instead of plotting revenge. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

To the north, more well-to-do retirees. Also nice. Wife cackles when she laughs. I call the husband the unofficial mayor of our town, because EVERYone knows him...and unfortunately all those everyones feel the need to honk a hello as they drive by whenever he's on his porch.

To the south...dunno. Our yard is deep so I don't see them much. They also seem nice, but the husband humiliated me by trimming our hedges that adjoin their property. :blush: Apparently I didn't make them look nice fast enough. If they could see the INSIDE of this house, they'd understand why our yard gets short shrift for now.

Overall, a quiet neighborhood, although our house is the last line of defense before the rental units. (:puke:)

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

38. 85% of my subdivision is reportedly Desi (South Asians who have moved to the US)

I see lots of aunties in saris walking around. Our next door neighbors are Chinese, and I have seen other Asian families in the neighborhood. I'd say this percentage is accurate. For the record, I'm white and my husband is Pakistani, so I'm heavily involved in this culture - I hope I haven't offended anyone.