- Jul 12, 2006
- 111,866
- 31,364
- 146
Cliffs:
1-shitty worthless irresponsible neighbor
2-threatens my girlfriend
3-police/lawyer getting involved
4-profit?
Yeah, so the first thing that came to my mind was the ongoing drama between Waggy and his worthless neighbors. Here's our situation:
Girlfriend and I moved from Chicago to Berkeley back in August. We moved into a duplex unit with decent space/rent for the area. We even have our own backyard! A good bit better than we expected. The unit is is part of a group of apartments. Ours has one long common wall, opposite an upstairs bedroom and a decent bedroom below that (which was converted from a garage).
The day we moved in, we met our neighbors who seemed to be rather affable: typical aging hippies, rather common for the area. Wife is a middle-school teacher, dude....I have no idea. He stays at home, so my immediate thought was that he's a grower, or he's on disability for something worthless like dry skin, and that he likely carries with him a marijuana script for this disastrous, life-threatening condition. Anyway, he mentioned first-off: if the music's too loud, just bang on the wall.
Well, over the next several months, the music was quite loud. It was never loud late at night, though, so was initially not that big of a deal. Also, the dude has good taste, at least, unlike previous neighbors in Chicago who would blare fucking death metal and techno non-music shit. She can usually work in the bottom bedroom or even upstairs bedroom where we sleep, as these do not share walls and we very rarely hear anything from them in these rooms.
My girlfriend is still without a job, and so she's at home, applying for jobs (~150 over 7 months), and studying for the big financial mathematics exam. She recently passed the first exam, probability, well above the typical curve for passing. All of this to get into actuarial work.
So, this affects her more than me, as she has to deal with it throughout the day. Admittedly, I have put off mentioning this to our neighbor. I was going to go by a few weeks ago, while the GF was out of town, but I was getting home late every night (7:30-8pm) and passing out.
2 nights ago: Dude is blaring his stereo at 1:30am, yelling and screaming. Of course, this really pisses me off. I go downstairs and bang on the wall several times. No response, save for turning up his music. "Allright, I'll go talk to him tomorrow," I say. My GF says, "fuck that, I'm calling the police."
Police arrive ~2am. Old hippie neighbor is livid. we hear things being tossed around his room, doors slamming, yelling, music turned up to 11. cops return to our place and tell us that crazy old hippie man slammed the door in their faces 5 times. The wife was restraining him, apologizing, saying he had too much brandy. Police ask if we know of him having a mental disorder. Lack of respect, personal responsibility? Sure. mental disorder pending...
Yesterday: old hippie dude wakes up around...10am? starts blaring music and banging on walls. My girlfriend says it sounded like he was using a hammer, as the pictures and things hanging on our walls were rattling. He's yelling threats that she can hear through the wall. My GF is at her wits end, goes outside for a cig, and dude comes into his backyard (we share a fence) and starts yelling at her, threatening to kill her when she least suspects it.
So, this is a whole new level. The landlord knows about the noise complaint by now, and soon gets word of this life threat. I call her at the end of the day, (when she tells me all of this), and run home. The landlord is on his way, as are the cops. The landlord is currently talking with his lawyer, and his sergeant pal with the police. The patrolman that arrived last night filed a report involving the death threat, but we all thought it best he not pay another visit to hippie dude, who by the way, was blaring his music all day to spite us, as well as all last night.
Background on worthless hippie neighbor:
early 50s, 2 kids (14, and maybe 10?), wife. They've been in this place for 14 years, before the current landlord took possession of the units, and as such, is paying half what we pay in rent. Needless to say, he's been quite the nuisance for others, and the landlord has been trying to get rid of him for some time, but such is quite difficult in Berkeley. In fact, the landlord is, I'm sure, licking his chops that we are having these problems right now, though he is worried about our safety.
Unfortunately, the wife really is a decent person. She's actually mature and responsible, but for whatever reason, has found herself stuck with this lunatic. kids are involved...
The current plan is to aid the landlord in any way possible to get him evicted, and to find a new place to live (i'm not going to take death threats from immature lunatics lightly). The GF is currently staying at a friend's house where she can study.
Problem with Berkeley is the world-famous rent control and tenant rights issues. My argument is that his rights are no greater than ours, and as such we have as much right to our own happiness as does he. I feel that we should also start charging him a portion of our rent due to his music being in our space.
Question: What is the going rate on aging hippie pelts? Has the market dried up?
Should I go ahead and call DCSF on him like waggy's neighbors did to him? (Hell, I can't sleep, what must those kids be going through?)
Update:
spoke with the GF ~2 hours ago. Our other neighbor (next unit, our front doors face each other, shared driveway space, we've gotten to know them quite well recently--moved in a few months after we did), called my GF and let her know that hippie dude was knocking on our door. It seems he came by 2x today, and was also seen speaking with our landlord.
Apparently, he wants to chat. I'm willing to talk with him, but likely only if landlord/police are present. I'm of the mind that this is past the time of amicable resolution. I'll be chatting with the LL soon to see what the deal is.
Sunday Update:
We returned to our place briefly on Friday morning to grab a few things and head off to Napa for the weekend. My bro's pal has a large mansion up in the hills, so we made a relaxing weekend out of it.
As we drove away on Friday, mental hippie was spotted near a truck at the end of the shared driveway for our units. Some young kid, maybe nephew, was loading a surfboard onto the truck. No glances were exchanged as drove away.
Landlord tells me that he and his manager were around most of that day and never heard a peep. He was back around 5pm yesterday and still nothing. (dude had the music blaring nonstop from ~1am last Wednesday to late Thursday/early Friday).
Apparently, the lawyer delivered their 3-day eviction notice on Friday, detailing the death and noise complaints. Also, the LL's seargent buddy was supposed to show up on Friday and deliver his own personal ultimatum. No details on how that went.
We'll be returning later tonight, hopefully sleeping in our place. We'll see how that goes. We checked out a new pad last Thursda;, rent is ~$500 less than we currently pay, so that would be good. Smaller, only 1 BR...and no mancave or back yard like we currently have
We'll probably be moving within the next week, after only 7 months in this place. Sucks....
1-shitty worthless irresponsible neighbor
2-threatens my girlfriend
3-police/lawyer getting involved
4-profit?
Yeah, so the first thing that came to my mind was the ongoing drama between Waggy and his worthless neighbors. Here's our situation:
Girlfriend and I moved from Chicago to Berkeley back in August. We moved into a duplex unit with decent space/rent for the area. We even have our own backyard! A good bit better than we expected. The unit is is part of a group of apartments. Ours has one long common wall, opposite an upstairs bedroom and a decent bedroom below that (which was converted from a garage).
The day we moved in, we met our neighbors who seemed to be rather affable: typical aging hippies, rather common for the area. Wife is a middle-school teacher, dude....I have no idea. He stays at home, so my immediate thought was that he's a grower, or he's on disability for something worthless like dry skin, and that he likely carries with him a marijuana script for this disastrous, life-threatening condition. Anyway, he mentioned first-off: if the music's too loud, just bang on the wall.
Well, over the next several months, the music was quite loud. It was never loud late at night, though, so was initially not that big of a deal. Also, the dude has good taste, at least, unlike previous neighbors in Chicago who would blare fucking death metal and techno non-music shit. She can usually work in the bottom bedroom or even upstairs bedroom where we sleep, as these do not share walls and we very rarely hear anything from them in these rooms.
My girlfriend is still without a job, and so she's at home, applying for jobs (~150 over 7 months), and studying for the big financial mathematics exam. She recently passed the first exam, probability, well above the typical curve for passing. All of this to get into actuarial work.
So, this affects her more than me, as she has to deal with it throughout the day. Admittedly, I have put off mentioning this to our neighbor. I was going to go by a few weeks ago, while the GF was out of town, but I was getting home late every night (7:30-8pm) and passing out.
2 nights ago: Dude is blaring his stereo at 1:30am, yelling and screaming. Of course, this really pisses me off. I go downstairs and bang on the wall several times. No response, save for turning up his music. "Allright, I'll go talk to him tomorrow," I say. My GF says, "fuck that, I'm calling the police."
Police arrive ~2am. Old hippie neighbor is livid. we hear things being tossed around his room, doors slamming, yelling, music turned up to 11. cops return to our place and tell us that crazy old hippie man slammed the door in their faces 5 times. The wife was restraining him, apologizing, saying he had too much brandy. Police ask if we know of him having a mental disorder. Lack of respect, personal responsibility? Sure. mental disorder pending...
Yesterday: old hippie dude wakes up around...10am? starts blaring music and banging on walls. My girlfriend says it sounded like he was using a hammer, as the pictures and things hanging on our walls were rattling. He's yelling threats that she can hear through the wall. My GF is at her wits end, goes outside for a cig, and dude comes into his backyard (we share a fence) and starts yelling at her, threatening to kill her when she least suspects it.
So, this is a whole new level. The landlord knows about the noise complaint by now, and soon gets word of this life threat. I call her at the end of the day, (when she tells me all of this), and run home. The landlord is on his way, as are the cops. The landlord is currently talking with his lawyer, and his sergeant pal with the police. The patrolman that arrived last night filed a report involving the death threat, but we all thought it best he not pay another visit to hippie dude, who by the way, was blaring his music all day to spite us, as well as all last night.
Background on worthless hippie neighbor:
early 50s, 2 kids (14, and maybe 10?), wife. They've been in this place for 14 years, before the current landlord took possession of the units, and as such, is paying half what we pay in rent. Needless to say, he's been quite the nuisance for others, and the landlord has been trying to get rid of him for some time, but such is quite difficult in Berkeley. In fact, the landlord is, I'm sure, licking his chops that we are having these problems right now, though he is worried about our safety.
Unfortunately, the wife really is a decent person. She's actually mature and responsible, but for whatever reason, has found herself stuck with this lunatic. kids are involved...
The current plan is to aid the landlord in any way possible to get him evicted, and to find a new place to live (i'm not going to take death threats from immature lunatics lightly). The GF is currently staying at a friend's house where she can study.
Problem with Berkeley is the world-famous rent control and tenant rights issues. My argument is that his rights are no greater than ours, and as such we have as much right to our own happiness as does he. I feel that we should also start charging him a portion of our rent due to his music being in our space.
Question: What is the going rate on aging hippie pelts? Has the market dried up?
Should I go ahead and call DCSF on him like waggy's neighbors did to him? (Hell, I can't sleep, what must those kids be going through?)
Update:
spoke with the GF ~2 hours ago. Our other neighbor (next unit, our front doors face each other, shared driveway space, we've gotten to know them quite well recently--moved in a few months after we did), called my GF and let her know that hippie dude was knocking on our door. It seems he came by 2x today, and was also seen speaking with our landlord.
Apparently, he wants to chat. I'm willing to talk with him, but likely only if landlord/police are present. I'm of the mind that this is past the time of amicable resolution. I'll be chatting with the LL soon to see what the deal is.
Sunday Update:
We returned to our place briefly on Friday morning to grab a few things and head off to Napa for the weekend. My bro's pal has a large mansion up in the hills, so we made a relaxing weekend out of it.
As we drove away on Friday, mental hippie was spotted near a truck at the end of the shared driveway for our units. Some young kid, maybe nephew, was loading a surfboard onto the truck. No glances were exchanged as drove away.
Landlord tells me that he and his manager were around most of that day and never heard a peep. He was back around 5pm yesterday and still nothing. (dude had the music blaring nonstop from ~1am last Wednesday to late Thursday/early Friday).
Apparently, the lawyer delivered their 3-day eviction notice on Friday, detailing the death and noise complaints. Also, the LL's seargent buddy was supposed to show up on Friday and deliver his own personal ultimatum. No details on how that went.
We'll be returning later tonight, hopefully sleeping in our place. We'll see how that goes. We checked out a new pad last Thursda;, rent is ~$500 less than we currently pay, so that would be good. Smaller, only 1 BR...and no mancave or back yard like we currently have
We'll probably be moving within the next week, after only 7 months in this place. Sucks....
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