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Goodbye, Revere or Time To Leave Because of the World's Worst Neighbors
By barryfreed on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 10:27am
Over at TellHimFred.com, Barry Freed gives an account of why he's leaving Revere. He believes he lives next to the worst human beings on the planet, and gives a strong case for their nomination as the World's Worst Neighbors.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
Kids will be kids
Doesn't sound like the neighbors are as considerate as they should be, and I can understand how these disturbances could ruin peaceful enjoyment of home and drive someone to move.
At the same time, this sounds like typical suburban family neighborhood events. (I'm pretty sure us kids broke gardener retiree Mr. Westhusing's rose bushes more than once with an accidental soccer ball over the fence, and we were relatively well-behaved.) If you're going to live next to lots of young kids, either they'd better be mild-mannered, or you'd better have equally annoying kids of your own.
Not exactly
Kids will observe appropriate limits on their behavior, with some excursions, if anybody bothers to place appropriate limits on their behavior.
That said, I hope this guy checked out his new Waltham digs thoroughly ... the town matters not so much as the people who live next to you. I lived in Winchester for a time and had to regularly deal with backyard infestations of children who had parents who simply could not have cared less what they were doing once they exited their visual field.
sure they will
We used to roam our neighborhood as kids, play ball in the street, ride our bmx bikes in the wooded buffer zones between housing developments and other fairly normal suburban things. However, our parents would have freaked out if we were ever caught being disrespectful to our neighbors or damaging property. Back when we were in the City (NYC), we were told not to jump or run indoors in order to be polite to others in the building. That's what outside was for.
Fast forward to my first condo. Surprise! It has paper-thin completely-hear-through walls. On top of that, the unit next to mine is rented to a family that has a teen and a toddler. The toddler was the quiet one of the bunch. The adults and teen would stay up all night on a weeknight. I could hear one-sided cell phone conversations, loud crashes, etc. When they refused to be polite and to at least try not to be loud, or to at least TRY not to blast video game soundtracks at 7am on a Saturday, I took up the fight. I won. They live somewhere else, now. The new couple with baby next door are nice and polite.. I hardly hear them even through the hear-through walls. You just have to stand up for yourself and not be afraid to be the grumpy neighbor.
I used to live like that.
I used to live in an apartment like that. The toddler upstairs was apparently practicing for the Olympics by running laps from one end of the apartment to the other morning, noon and night. The screwy thing was, the place was across the street from a park. Had the parents ever taken the kid across the street, he could have run around all he wanted without disturbing people.
I can't imagine living in a condo like that and paying through the nose for the privilege, let alone going through all the hassles and responsibility of being a homeowner and then not being able to enjoy a little peace and quiet.
You have to lower your standards
I pay a lot of money to rent an apartment in a Cambridge building of mainly grad students. The upstairs neighbor this last academic year seems to have been running a 24/7 machine room above my bedroom. After months of detective work and diplomacy, we've reduced the vibration hum of the walls and ceiling in my bedroom from maddening down to merely annoying. I might have to leave after 9 years of fixing the place up and getting comfortable, but probably I will stay. Such are the trials of wanting to live in town without being a millionaire.
well
That's actually a pretty crappy excuse. Kids need boundaries, and it seems modern parenting consists of trying to reason with 3 year olds, or in this father's case, acting like a 3 year old. It's the parent's job to instill respect for others.
And you can't always tell what the situation is when you move in. We bought our apt in central square during the summer, when the mother and two monsters that live above us were away. If I had heard the general madness emanating from that place, I never would have bought it. Let alone the father who chain smokes (including in the car with his two little kids) and smokes out the building. Frankly, there should be some kind of parenting exam before people are allowed to have kids. It's harder to rescue a dog from the spca than have a kid...
Get affa my praa-p'ty! If
Get affa my praa-p'ty!
If he thinks that's the family from Hell, he's lived a sheltered life. Time to find a gated community.
I agree with NotWhitey.
I agree with NotWhitey. These people sound like a-holes, but worst neighbors in the world ?
when i lived in somerville...
my next door neighbors had a window that opened onto my driveway. they ran a drive-up drug selling business out of their window using my property.
they were terrible neighbors.
but i wouldn't even dub *them* the worst neighbors in the world, let alone somebody who is just loud with rambunctious kids.
that stated, moving was probably a good idea for that dude.
so..
So where do you live so I not to move next to you...
People with kids and without
People with kids and without probably should not share a condo building. I would also like to avoid people who enjoy the following - cooking fish, playing an amplified instrument, puppies, non-working "project" cars or boats, friends with RVs, beer in keg form...
We are hearing one side of
We are hearing one side of this story so I am taking it with a grain of salt (its his blog so obviously he has every right to airing only his side.) The thing is I am hearing that the parents brought the kids over to him to tell him what happened. We have no clue what the reaction was, but there must have been a reaction because then the parents back peddled like crazy. Maybe they thought their neighbor was litigious? I dont know... This sounds more like a suburban problem then a Revere problem. A real Revere problem would have involved all sorts of other elements. Ive got bad news for him, Waltham will not protect him.
Thanks for the comments
Hi, original poster here. Thanks for the comments. A couple of things:
1. Yep, I certainly do come off sounding like an old man saying "get off my lawn!"
2. Neilv- I get that kids are kids and accidents happen. But the fact that they just keep doing things that are so inconsiderate just drives me nuts. If they stopped playing rock baseball in our parking lot after they shattered my girlfriend's window, that would be one thing, but no. They just keep on doing it.
3. NotWhitey- I don't see how describing neighbors that are constantly throwing balls against our walls and broke the windshield equals a sheltered life. I don't think I'm asking for too much for our cars to be safe and to not have a constant banging on our walls.
4. Erik W- Yeah, you're right. I'm sure there are worse neighbors out there in the world. I was just exaggerating because the title wouldn't have been as interesting if I wrote "I'm moving because I have marginally annoying neighbors."
5. ShadyMilkMan- There was no "reaction" that made them backpedal, and we're definitely not litigious. They changed their story because they wanted to make sure the insurance company didn't fault them and try to get them to pay.
And you're all right, it's not the city that is the problem, it's the neighbors. Moving to Waltham isn't going to solve anything just because it's a different town..I get that.
On the other hand...
...those neighbors sound just like the sort of low-class shlubs who let their kids break other peoples' stuff so long as it doesn't affect their Judge Judy marathon. I was going to call them white trash, but I don't know what ethnicity they are...but you know what? Trash is trash - look in a rubbish barrel sometime, you'll find that all the colors are in there.
You live next to these people then
So all I want to clarify is that it’s not about being grumpy and hating kids. In fact it has very little to do with the kids. We hate the parents for being so irresponsible in their parenting. The parents have set no boundaries for their kids and actually encourage bad behavior. The kids have no consequences for negative actions.
When the father came over to tell me that he was “sorry” about the whole car back window incident, he just told me to “Call my insurance company, and they should take care of it, and it wasn’t my kid.” Really, it’s just that easy huh? Make a phone call to my insurance and done! That just shows their complete disrespect for anyone other than themselves, and that’s what we’re moving away from.
I also bet that if anyone reading this post had their neighbor come over and tell them that their kids had broken the back window of their car while playing baseball with ROCKS, their reaction wouldn’t be “That’s okay, kids will be kids!!!” It’s pretty hypocritical for people to say that were just being “grumpy” when our property is being damaged and we’re being inconvenienced when the parents of the child responsible basically say, fix it yourself, it wasn’t my kid.