Revenge in upstairs and downstairs neighbours.
The big screen tv story reminded me of this gem.
I was living in a loft in my 20’s not the trendy kind but the shabby (not shabby sheik kind). I had three neighbours, one on the same floor, D’Arcy who’d always invite everyone to his parties to mitigate complaints. I usually refused as I worked weird hours (shift work) and explained to him that the old stone walls were 4’ thick and I literally can’t hear his parties but thanks for the invite.
This leads us to my upper and lower neighbours, while the walls were thick the flors were about 4” thick with what were maybe 2 sets of 2”x12” boards running perpendicular to each other over some old large timbers. You could literally see through the small cracks where the floor met the walls into the upper and lower units. Not enough to see anything but you could tell if the lights were on. There was also a no kid policy, I have no idea if this was actually enforceable or not.
So John downstairs liked to smoke the devils lettuce and sing along out of key to The Who. I think who’s next was the only record he owned. He was pretty easy to deal with, usually I’d go down and tell him to knock it off around 1am so I could get some sleep if I had to work first shift. One evening after having enough of the racket and smoke since he was not answering his door I called 911 and I found out later that HIS downstairs neighbours did also. As I heard the police banging on the door I got up to tell them they’d have to go see the landlord who lived in the building to get keys because John wasn’t answering. They laughed, waited for the brief silence between songs and kicked the door so hard I thought it would break. When John opened the door it was like a smoke bomb went off. I don’t know if it was just related to the weed but he left in handcuffs and never returned.
This leads us to upstairs guy, named because I never learned his name. I assume he was divorced and had his kid on alternate weekends. As kids will do (and I did) kiddo woke up early Saturday morning to watch cartoons at full volume. This was annoying but I get it. What really got me was he was riding a tricycle around the loft. When I went up to ask him semi-politely if he could maybe ride it in the park “upstairs guy” told me to F off. Right in front of his kid who incidentally was riding a big wheel. So I did just that. Now remember those thin floors? Big ass speakers pointed up with the bass on full easily drowned out looney tunes. Upstairs guy comes down to complain. I said “YOU can F off, but since you’re a moron and your kid doesn’t know better I’ll turn it down. But no more big wheel mmmkay? Because I may be the adult here but I’m NOT the bigger person and I’ll play techno until 11pm.” He said fine and left.
TL;DR techno beats cartoons.