Neighbors

[kenny weir]

Used to be that multi-cultural Melbourne meant I could gobble all kinds of interesting digestibles.

Now we're in a new neighborhood I feel like it's more like the real deal - Chinese on one side, Italian on the other.

The Chinese folks are gonna take a while to get to know; Maria on the other side is somethin' else. She's already showering us with fresh basil, oregano and tomatoes and even fish stew last night. I figure it's only a matter of a few weeks/days before I can sweet talk her out of her tomato sauce recipe.

So how's your neighbors? Good? Bad? Does anyone have folks they can yak jazz with over the fence?

[Jazzmoose]

I live in one of those neighborhoods that's "in transition" as they say. The town has highly rated schools, so it attracts a lot of new residents with money. They buy the houses, pull 'em down, and build their new "starter castles" on them. Needless to say, there's a bit of friction between the older, blue collar residents and the newer upscale crowd. Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that the more money a neighborhood has, the less "neighborly" it is?

[J Larsen]

I lived in Harlem for a while. A very short while. No money there, and it wasn't exactly neighborly. Not that people were hostile by any means or that there was a lot of violent crime, I just don't find EXTREMELY loud block parties at 3:30 AM on, say, Tuesdays to be very neighborly. And yes, that really happened - nearly every night. The music being played on the streets would be so loud that I could actually FEEL it in my bed. So I can't say that neighborly-ness is a strictly monotonic function of neighborhood wealth.

Before anyone might reply to me, I am aware that there are nice parts of Harlem. This wasn't one of them. Long story as to how I wound up there - I had a friend who had had a place there for ten years and I was in temporary need.

My neighbors now are okay. I get a lot of really loud Latin pop and 80s American top 40 music blasting through my walls, but not to late at night. Those are just the sorts of things you have to accept in apartment life.

[Jim Alfredson]

My wife and I live in a relatively quiet neighborhood and I hardly see my neighbors. The one on the south side of our house is a very nice middle-aged woman who was living with her elderly mother. The mother recently passed. But Jackie is still there with a new boyfriend.

Our neighbors on the north side though. Holy moly. They seem like nice people, but I cannot understand where they are coming from.

Number 1: The house looks like total shit. Every other house in the neighborhood is very well kept. This place looks like a crack house. They finally put actual stairs leading to the porch instead of cinder blocks.

Number 2: They have three or four couples living in the house, each with 1 or 2 kids. And they did have 3 dogs (HUGE dogs I might add) and they just got another puppy. All in one house.

Number 3: Their backyard when we moved in was a gigantic pile of trash. They finally cleaned that up after numerous calls to various officials. Now it's just dirt. When it rains, mud. Luckily it's winter so it's covered with snow now.

Number 4: All the adults that live in the house drive MONSTEROUS SUVs. Brand new. I don't get it. The house looks like shit, yet they are all driving $30,000 vehicles. Except one. She drives an older Mustang all suped up. And she revs the very loud engine at 6:30am before going to work. And squeals away... every morning.

Number 5: Since they all drive huge vehicles, they are constantly parking on their lawn. Which just looks ugly.

I'm trying not to sound like a snob, but the little neighborhood we live in has been around since the 1920s and has some really nice houses in it and everyone takes pride in keeping their houses nice except for these people. You can't say it's money because they all drive really nice trucks or a Mustang. It's just laziness. They have four dogs and I never, ever see them walking any of them. They just sit around in the postage stamp backyard all day. And these dogs, like their trucks, are HUGE!

Blows my mind....

[Serioza]

lovely neighborhood turned into place where people asking this sort of parfume once too often