November 13, 2003
A Helpful Suggestion

Diana Moon of Letter from Gotham needs advice on dealing with downstairs neighbors who keep her awake late into the night. Banging on the floor with a hammer hasn't helped:

If anyone can suggest other ways to annoy these people than banging, I'd appreciate it. I can start by jogging around the apartment with boots on.

As a matter of fact I can suggest a better way. My freshman year in college, I lived on the second floor of a dormitory that had a very nice multi-room, split-level common space (with a fireplace) in the basement. Unfortunately, the sophomores directly below me liked to have parties with dozens of dancing guests not in the common room but in their own room until 2:00 and 3:00 AM on weeknights, and I had 8:00 AM classes. Their music was loud enough to make my bed shake. When I went down in my bathrobe at 2:30 one Thursday morning to ask them to please turn the noise down, one of the two said "Hey, loosen up, have a drink" while the other said "Fuck you". That afternoon, my roommate and I were hanging around our room at 2:30 or so since we didn't have any classes for a little while, and he quite coincidentally decided to try out the tap shoes his sister had just sent from home. In less than a minute, we had a plaintive phone call from the nastier of the two troglodytes saying "Don't you know we're trying to sleep down here?". Perhaps Diana should give tapdancing a try. All the better if she has no particular talent for it, since clunky inept tapdancing would be even more annoying than the competent kind.

Posted by Dr. Weevil at November 13, 2003 08:59 PM