After a summer of neighborhood street fests and the return of the irritating upstairs girls, it has become clear to me that this weeks post needs to be a reminder on how to be a good neighbor. Not just to the people who share a building with you but also to the people who share the same street, neighborhood, and even city with you. A little common courtesy is all I'm asking here, folks.
Lets start with volume control. Dear lord, people just do not seem to understand how to use their indoor voices. Your neighbors, fellow restaurant patrons, etc do not need or want to hear your conversations. They also don't want to hear your radio blaring as loud as it will go (especially any time after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning). The same goes for your TV, keep it at a reasonable volume. Also, if you're an upstairs neighbor, do your downstairs neighbor a favor and keep your high heels off until you're ready to walk out of the door. The constant clomping across the ceiling will systematically drive your poor neighbor insane. Also, if you're driving through a neighborhood in the middle of the night, try to keep the radio down and use your horn only when absolutely needed, waking up to a car horn because someone was too lazy to walk to the door is a truly jarring experience.
Along with volume control, your animals can be equally obnoxious to anyone who doesn't love them as much as you do. I, personally, am the owner of a particular yappy dog. Loud noises startle her into massive fits of the yips. However, I try my best to stifle the barking as quickly as humanly possible before it can irritate my neighbors to puppy-cide. Some other dog tips, keep them on a leash. I'm not saying that your dog is a bad dog or needs to be on a leash because it will misbehave. I'm saying that there are other dogs that are nervous by being approached by a strange dog and, even more importantly, people and small children that have serious fear of strange animals. Just try to show some compassion and keep them reined in unless they're running around at the dog park or the privacy of your own fenced in yard. Also, no one wants to look at or accidentally step in your dog's waste, take a baggy and pick it up like a responsible pet owner.
Along that line, maybe you could just in general not leave trash on the ground. It breaks my heart whenever I walk past the perfectly landscaped flower beds that the apartment and condo buildings on my block have set out and seeing them filled with cigarette butts, beer cans, vodka bottles, newspapers, and various other pieces of trash that people just couldn't bother to hold onto until the end of the block where there is a perfectly good trash can.
The same thing goes for spitting on the sidewalk. For serious, why do people think it's okay to hock a giant loogie in the middle of where other people are walking?! I have had people nearly spit on me because I was passing just as they decided to spit. There is never anything so desperate that you can't either wait for the nearest trash can or bathroom or just suck it up and swallow that shit because no one else should have to be subjected to it.
Going along with bodily functions, let me give a special mention to public sex and urination. Two things that I have personally been subjected to in my adorable garden apartment. For some reason, people of the male persuasion have been taught that it's perfectly acceptable to pee outside as long as no one can see you. However, the stairwell to my front door is where I walk every day in and out of my house and it is someone's property, it is incredibly rude to use it as a bathroom. Do us all a favor and hold it until the next open Starbucks. Also, if, for whatever reason, you just can't wait to have sex until you get home, could you at least not leave your dirty condom out on the street (or in aforementioned stairwell) for someone else to have to clean up. It's your bodily fluid, no one else should have to figure out how to clean that up.
On a lighter note, for those of you that like to keep your lawns green during the summer months, more power to you. I am all for sprinklers at the right place and time. However, walking home from work down a busy sidewalk in my nice clothes is not the place or time. Please try your best to not water the sidewalk along with your lawn.
Love and respect, neighbors!
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