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After returning back from tour earlier this month, I was delighted to find that I had some new neighbors who have moved in to the apartment directly below mine. A couple, probably in their late 20's or early 30's. The other people in this building include screaming lesbian couple directly across the hall that always park in our parking space, and another couple in their early-mid 20's (much like us) who have a daughter who is just a couple months younger than ours (we have no problems with these folks, as they're mostly quiet, except for the baby, and keep to themselves.) This apartment building is probably the cheapest in our neighborhood ($695/mo for two bedrooms), and is right off of one of the busiest streets in the neighboorhood. Even without us, the other couple with the baby, and lesbian death match, it's fucking noisy.

Two Saturdays ago, at 4:30 pm, the man living downstairs comes up and knocks on my door, asks me to please turn the Motorhead down. He is sleeping because he has to work tonight. We had no problem speaking over said Motorhead, but I turn the stereo down anyway as a personal favor to him. I reiterate: it's 4:30 on a friggin' Saturday, and the stereo is at normal conversational levels. Whatever, I turn the volume down and disconnect the subwoofer, because I am not interested in having an adversarial relationship with my new neighbors.

The following morning at just before 10 am, the woman comes upstairs and ask us if we're moving. It is our daughter's first birthday, and she is crawling around the living room floor while Sesame Street is on. My babymama and I exchange "WTF" looks, and tell her that we are indeed not moving. Lady then asks us what that thumping noise in the bedroom ten minutes ago was. We politely inform her that all three of us have been sitting in the living room for the last hour, watching Sesame Street with our daughter on her first birthday. She tells us that she's recently been in a car accident, is having back problems, and is doped up on painkillers. And we've woken her up twice this morning. At 10 am. WTF.

Fast forward a week. Brian Horsewhip is visiting from Bellingham and staying the night at our apartment. On our way back from Dick's, we pass the man downstairs, smoking on the front steps. I say "hello," he scowls at me. It is now apparent that we are probably not going to be friends with our new neighbors.

Late on Wednesday night, while watching David Letterman after Maerin is asleep, we hear noises downstairs. It's "Like A Virgin" (I am NOT making this up!) playing REALLY FUCKING LOUD, and the man screaming blind stinking drunk at the top of his lungs. "How dare he," my domestic partner and I say to each other "complain about us making a small amount of noise during daylight hours on the weekend, and here he is, screaming at the top of his lungs with Madonna playing full blast at nearly midnight on a fuckin' weekday? WTF? Is he trying to prove a point to us?" We hear a loud knock on his door downstairs. I don't look, but it's either the police, or (more likely) the other young couple in #1. The noise stops shortly thereafter. We go back to watching Letterman, and decided that the people downstairs are officially cocks.

Then, about an hour and a half ago this morning, our daughter wakes up crying in her crib. Mommy gets up and takes baby to our bed, while I head to the kitchen to fix her a new bottle. On my way to the kitchen, I hear the guy downstairs start pounding on his ceiling (our floor) with his fist. Granted, it is 4:00 in the morning, but she's a fucking baby for christ's sake. Babies cry. It's unfortunate and inconvenient, but it's a cold hard fact of life, and they don't know any better.

I am unable to go back to sleep because I am really pissed off at this fucking dickwad and am fantasizing about the following three things:

1.) Going downstairs and pounding this guys fucking face in.

2.) Going downstairs and trying to goad this guy into a fight, and then calling the cops on him.

3.) Or calling our apartment manager and telling her exactly how big of a cock this guy is.

Fine people of EA Forums, I can always count on you to deliver creative solutions to everyday problems. If any of you have any ideas about exactly what the fuck kind of asshole this guy is, and what I should do in my current situation, I would be forever indebted to what may be the finest community on teh intarwebs.

Have them over for dinner.
Tell them about your childhood.
Offer to give them a backrub at the next sign of trouble.
Talk about the end of the world alot.
Insinuate that his wife was touching you.
Greet your babymama and child in front of them by "buttsniffing".
Tell them you are a mormon.
Next time he knocks on the door with a problem, begin crying and wet yourself, clutching his hand and laughing.

I sympathise, there is not much worse than having nightmare neighbours, especially when you have kids. We live above a couple that expect our 19 month old not to make any noise at all. I can appreciate it must be annoying sometimes, but you just can't stop a child from dropping toys and running about. They are very polite about it, but come up it seems every single time there is a bit of noise and I'm biting my lip each time trying not to tell them to fuck right off. We've even laid down a thick carpet to keep them happy and they still come up on the odd occasion. If you can discuss the possibility of sound-proofing/laying thicker carpet it may help? - but that does cost.. and with kids it's not like people can spend lots on this. It's hard, I would say don't lay him out whatever you do, note all the problems down and speak to the authorities about it.

In the first apartment I lived in with my boyfriend, a student apartment, there was this old handicapped lady that lived upstairs. Apparently she was very bitter that we had the downstairs apartment because she had trouble with the stairs. I have no idea why she didn't ask for a downstairs apartment; people were moving in and out of them all the time. We probably would have even helped her move.
Anyway, she was always telling the apartment manager that we were too loud, that our cigarette smoke drifted into her windows, that our cigarette butts were on the lawn, numerous other complaints. He sent us memos telling us to only smoke outside, to turn the noise down between 10pm and 6am, to pick up our butts. We did all of those things because we're not bad people, just young people living in a crappy apartment.
Anyway she ended up moving out and a rich college girl who brought 20 drunk friends home from the bar with her every night moved in and we wished the old lady would come back.
That's my story.
Go with #3.

Two ideas:

First, the serious: steel yourself up to just confront him in a diplomatic manner and put it to him straight. This is easier said than done, and I'd hate doing this, but... If he can't handle that, then you can approach the building manager or proceed with your beatdown plans. The guys sounds like a real cocksucker. Or just wait for him to pull his crap and call the cops. The police would be fair enough to know that whether you're listening to Motorhead or Bach at conversational volume, the guy needs to deal or find a place with thicker walls.

Second, the fun stuff: I recall seeing a website a few years ago that you could have various exotic poop sent anonymously to people you don't like. There's that. Or, you could pull a Sterling Morrison, and next time he starts assing-out, put your amp out your window and start playing the most vicious feedback you can manage. That he lives beneath you limits your options, since most assaults on his 5 senses could disrupt yours and your neighbor's lives as well. Unfortunately, this leaves straight up vandalism.

I don't recommend this second set of options.

I've moved twice because of shitty neighbours. Both times the experience of living by them was so stressful that Mrs Rabbit and myself considered the least damaging course of action (for our mental health) was to simply leave them to it.

I would suggest that you do this:

First go and talk to the people, not so much to solve the problem, but to ascertain exactly how fucking retarded they are.

Next (assuming the talk hasn't solved anything) talk to the other people in your block to see if they're having trouble with them too.

Then tell the building manager about the problem (either solo, or with other tenants) and see if he'll deal with it.

If still no joy, move.

In addition.

A few flats back, we had trouble with the downstairs neighbours music being ridiculously loud in the sitting room. It went on a while and after a few nights of it I stormed downstair and (way too aggressively) took the matter up with the couple who lived there. Thing was that it actually wasn't very loud in their flat at all, but was being carried by the timber and brick in the building.

Might be worth asking the guy to perform some experiments with music etc.

I taped up my nuts and did front flips for twenty minutes at three a.m., when the neighbor knocked, I answered the door with an "assitant" removing the tape froom my groin , while I conversed nonchalantly about the situation. I asked if they wanted to hold hands. eventually they came to realize the futility in trying to co exist wiyh humans.

I would ignore the people and go straight to the bldg manager.

We had a total c*nt above us one time (in Seattle!). She complained about people smoking (in our apartment--she could smell it drifting out the window), people leaving the flimsy gate open in the front yard (she was a 'woman living alone'), working on my car in the driveway, ANY music, etc.

I told our landlord what a pain in the ass she was, before Upstairs (we called her Upstairs) could complain about us, and our landlord ended up valuing our long-term tenancy more than her pain-in-the-ass tenancy.

You might be surprised. The bldg manager might make it uncomfortable for them to stay, if you are good tenants who pay the rent on time.

Don't get me started on arsehole neighbours.

I recently had an altercation with my neighbours, over them leaving piles of rubbish on the communal balcony/walkway. All of the neighbours had left polite notices asking them to remove the rotting rubbish, but they persisted with the bullshit, so I decided to knock on their door.

A 45-minute argument ensued; that's to say we had words, after they initially denied the rubbish was theirs. One of the neighbours offered to punch my lights out; an offer I declined. I then forced them to remove the rubbish down the single-flight of stairs, and put it in the communal bins.

The next day I see one of them taking a bag of rubbish down to the bins. I then mentioned to him that he'd missed a bit, pointing to some crap in the corner. I also mention that I know his landlord, Terry. The guy doesn't look too happy.

A couple days later two of the guys slow-walk in front of me, up the stairs, you know, taking their time, being pricks, etc. More words.

And a few days after that I see one of them in town on a skateboard and before I know what I'm doing I body-checked him and he's lying on the floor swearing at me. I walk off super-quick, saying something to the effect of, "Watch where you're going, you fucking prick!", knowing full well that I'm being the prick.

Why the fuck did I do this? Fuck knows. My wife is very unhappy with this behaviour.

They then precede to leave even bigger piles of rubbish in the communal space, next to the rubbish chute. They also start leaving out empty body-building formula jars--I think they're trying to communicate something to me. Whenever we see each other, we flick the V's.

So now, I've the reached the point where I've asked the housing trust to write to them and threaten them with a fine. Which is what I should've done in the first place.

From now on my wife deals with the neighbours.

tmidgett wrote: The bldg manager might make it uncomfortable for them to stay, if you are good tenants who pay the rent on time.

This is very true. In our current place (a duplex), the upstairs guy (we call him california) I guess was constantly complaining about cigarette smoke. he's not a bad guy but he did blame me for some mysterious dings on his car (there's no garage...when you park outside in michigan you're gonna get dinged up). anyway i found out our landlord stood up for us and told california that respectfully he didn't think this was the best place for him to live. i guess cali was calling the landlord over there to fix shit like every day, and he prefers our low-maintenance tenancy where we either fix shit ourselves or live with it.
i mean this guy actually asked for caulk. and the landlord's the one who pays the heat.

So yeah we've got an old hippy lesbian with cats moving in and she smokes so hooray!