The Downwardly Adjacent Renter is an Ass...

... or, how you too can be yelled at for beating on the floor to request a reduction in bass emissions.

See, the apartment I live in is kind of crappy. The walls are thin, the floors squeak, it generally lives like it's been built out of cardboard and chicken wire. That said, we try to keep things quiet in here. I walk gingerly throughout the apartment, I take care not to run my amplifier too loud after 5:00 (and even then nowhere near the 450 watts it's rated for), I don't listen to loud music at all hours of the night.

That obviously isn't why I'm writing.

Jeff walked into the apartment this evening and immediately started beating on the floor due to the obscenely loud subwoofer operation in the apartment below us. Good old 89, prior known for its knack for running music entirely too loud for entirely too long entirely too often. Usually on Sunday, usually starting around 11 or 12 and lasting until whenever in the evening they had apparently gone deaf and needed to sleep off their hearing loss.

Not surprisingly, this didn't stop them; it never does. I say "never" meaning "in the three or four times we've resorted to that, it hasn't worked." It was actually so bad last year, I had to go to the office to figure out what the procedure for noise complaints was. They told me, "We don't handle that, you're going to have to call the police." We eventually found a correct phone number for "hoco popo" non-emergency calls, although by that time, they had cut back on the bassfest.

Until this week.

Whenever that was that they did thumpthumpthump in the last seven days, they did it until 11:45 or so. At night. We were like, "this is some shit right here" and then it stopped. Think nothing more of it?

Then today. Jeff beat on the floor, and what happens? Nothing.

Then... Knock Knock.

The asshole actually has the nerve to come up here and become offensive with me simply because we've beaten on his ceiling a few times. I explained to him that "you run the bass loud enough for us to hear it and feel it through the couch, you've run the bass until 11 or 12 at night on several occasions, and we actually suspect that you were the impetus behind the people that live down there [note: staggered terracing means we have a half neighbor] moving out." He said "No, you say past midnight, except once that's a lie, it's lies." He said "Those people, they move out and [unintelligible, not? do?] complain to management, that's bullshit, you come down here and knock and I'll turn it down but I can't help it how this place is made, how you hear, you know you guys we can hear you walk and we don't complain."

I don't get it. I don't get how us walking is akin to you playing your arhythmic shit bass for hours on end. Walking is necessary for life, bass isn't. I live in a damn apartment, not above a concert hall, so keep it to a dull roar, alright? The only shame about the way I handled myself (aside from the fact that apparently I hold absolutely no "cred" with [expletive deleted] who live below me) is that I should have explained to him that the only way you get to complain around here is by calling the cops, and that's what the management says, so it's not something we're making up. Be glad we didn't do that."

Sigh... I hate living here. Nobody around here is at all aware of the people around them. It makes me sad and fills me with desire to go back to my small mountain town with stories of the intolerant ways of the city.