Break a Leg

Disclaimer by Yuri: Drew emailed me and told me that I don't need to write a disclaimer for this one, because he doesn't cuss as much in it. The key word being "as much" which what he really means is he isolated it to one, hilariously crass paragraph. I don't mind, but, for those who appreciate the finer things in life, like a Snuff Film joke, you've been warned...

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I thought I'd talk a little bit today about something that hopefully everyone can relate to. It's something we all have to some degree or another, something that we can never be entirely rid of without resorting to drastic, in some reported cases even homicidal, measures. I'm talking, of course, about neighbors.

Maybe you can all help me out in the comments by letting me know if my wife and I have one of the following three conditions:

• ridiculously bad luck
  
• ridiculously high expectations
  
• a curse

Let's begin in the beginning, for before there were neighbors there were sub-neighbors. Yes, roommates. After living in San Francisco for a little over a year I had broken up with my girlfriend and needed a place to live. Fast. My beautiful studio apartment in the Western Addition (one block from Alamo Square Park; look it up, you've seen it before) was costing me double what I could afford and I had to get out before they raised the rent even higher than the current (gasp) $825 per month price tag.

Now kids, that was a really good deal for San Francisco even then, over ten years ago. Today that kind of money might get you a crappy in-law or a nice bedroom.

In any case, I was in a play with someone who had a room available, so I checked it out. Nicely sized, had a radiator, only around $400 per month. Yes, you did the math right, for half the studio apartment I could share a three-bedroom flat. San Francisco maths do not add up.

Turns out I had moved in with two bears. Literally. I know, that's using literally incorrectly, but it somehow applies. The shower regularly resembled the conference floor of a shaving convention, and I don't think either of these guys ever actually shaved. Guess what else they never actually did? You guessed it, clean.

My wife more or less started living with me there (I was kind of a dick that way, I admit. They were sports to not ask for more money or anything). Pretty soon we noticed that our silverware was disappearing, I mean like, gone. We once peaked in the bedroom of one of them that we suspected was doing the pilfering, but never again. That place looked like a newspaper factory, Gap, and Linens 'N' Things had all crashed into each other and exploded. I think we saw some dirty plates and cups too, and if my forks were in there I didn't want 'em anymore.

Moving on, we moved on. Just a few blocks away really, so we got to keep the same laundromat and taqueria. Our video store in fact was where we ended up shooting (many years later) that scene in Episode 8 where we tried to ship Dead Nick Shiny).

Our first experience with our neighbors was the lady across the hall continually parking in our spot. She gave that up and decided to just park in the only driveway, blocking the entire building. Then she'd go to sleep. We battled her and her twenty-something son for months there, and the landlord would call and yell at her all the time over it too. Then her son would have loud parties in the driveway, which was underneath our living room.

We actually patched things up really nicely one night when I drove to a rehearsal, leaving my wife locked out of the apartment because her keys were in the car. She sat in the hallway for ours and the same neighbor from across the hall invited her in, gave her soda, etc. After that she would cook and bring us leftovers sometimes.

Then, like a bad television show, people moved in above us. They actually moved in after midnight one night and were in and out of the garage with the noisy spring-loaded door, which happened to be underneath our bedroom. We asked the old bastard that was someone's father to shut the hell up, but in a nice way, and he said kiss my ass, in his own nice way.

They then started throwing wild loud parties every Sunday night (wtf?!), so we started calling the cops every Sunday night after they stopped answering the door when we knocked. One outstanding incident was when the upstairs guy, drunk, yelled at the cops for how much we were calling them, then offered to start calling the cops on us. The officer then informed him of the penalties of filing a false police report. Nice.

Then my wife got pregnant and we moved again, into a dreamboat of a two-bedroom with a massive living room and huge westerly-facing bay windows. We're on the top floor with no buildings attached to us whatsoever. How bad could it get?

We first met one of our downstairs neighbors when we asked the daughter to please turn her loud-ass music down. I mean, put on your headphones and turn up the volume all the way. Now take them off and imagine the music coming from the floor below you is exactly as loud and clear as when you had on your headphones. She complied, seemed nice, said she was sorry and didn't know someone had finally moved in. Cool, right? Then somehow offered that she also never drove the car in the driveway. It made sense at the time I think, we were talking about something remotely related, but whatever.

Except we always saw her driving the car. Always. Like, she saw us see her driving the car. The lying-for-no-reason only escalated from there.

Her father got pissed because I moved my trashcans to another place in the garage, said they were blocking his bicycles. His three bicycles with six flat tires. Okay. The daughter kept blasting her music, we would ask her to turn it down, but predictably it turned really sour. She no doubt got tired of us asking all the time, so then it became she would turn the music up instead of down. Kinda like she was saying "You see what I did there?"

I mean I get it, the apartment was empty for six months or so before we moved in. But shit bitch, it's not anymore, shut your ass up. Oh, and move band practice out of the garage. I didn't give a shit before but now I hate you and want it out.

It went on like that for a while, and we all eventually ended up in mediation, where the father told three different stories as to why his adult daughter couldn't be there. Then he told a great one, wherein his daughter, when she was a kid, poured rice all over someone. And he did nothing to discourage her. Because it was a phase. And the loud-ass music is a phase too so shut the hell up. Then he said he'd been living there for twice as long as he really had, told a few more untruths that made no sense. He ended up finally tossing his daughter under the bus, said she made all the noise and was a real problem to handle, and that he wasn't going to do a thing about it.

Then she moved out and she's only noisy when she comes home from time to time.

I skipped the time that she set up her drum set in our parking spot, then ignored us when we got home and opened the garage. Like a dog that just pissed on your Playstation and lies in the corner pretending to be asleep.

Break it down for me.