My Neighbor Sucks.com

Ethel and I moved in to our place almost five years ago now. When we first moved in, our immediate neighbors were a quiet, bordering on anti-social couple. Our only real interaction with them was jumping out of the way as they came screaming into our common driveway. But at least they were quiet.

They moved out and another couple moved in - like the first couple, they were quiet, but they were also sociable, even attending a couple of the community social events. Sure, they were a bit odd, he claimed to "work from home" selling things on eBay, while she traveled regularly (for the longest time, I was convinced he had killed her, just wasn't sure what he did with the body), they were quiet.

And then they moved out, and in moved Esteban and Sean (not their real names, of course). They seemed reasonable at first. Sure, we thought it was odd that two 40 year old non-gay men would move in together, but who are we to judge. Then came the smoking. Rather than smoke in their house, Sean chose to smoke on his front porch. Thoughtful, were it not for their porch being roughly 10 feet from our windows. Yup, you got it, his smoke went right into our house.. Thanks asshole.

But wait, there's more. It seems that both Esteban and Sean have drinking problems. Not the traditional sort, unfortunately. Both of them lose their hearing when they get drunk. And being so close to downtown Campbell and its wealth of bars, they got drunk often - pretty much every freaking weekend. They developed quite a routine - quiet all week, and then Friday and Saturday nights drinking til the bars closed and then stumbling home drunk and then cranking the television or stereo.

I went over one morning - about 3ish and repeatedly banged on the door to get them to quiet down. Esteban answered the banging eventually and was apologetic. The next weekend was roughly the same, except that when I banged on the door and Esteban answered, he was angry that I had woken him up. Yes, that's right, the music was blaring so loudly that we could hear it through our walls and I woke him up. Jerk.

The next time, of course, I didn't bother walking over, I just called the police. Magically, it was quiet again. That lasted for a few months actually, but a few weeks ago, the parties started again. And Spring is just around the corner, that means opening windows again and then the smoking..

But last weekend, a miracle happened. A U-Haul truck showed up and Esteban and Sean loaded their crap up and moved out! Can you believe it? They're gone! Excellent!!

But who knows who will move in next. Will it be someone better? Hopefully Can it be someone worse? Inevitably..

But I got to thinking - Esteban and Sean probably moved someplace else, and their new landlord probably asked for the name of their previous landlord. And the new landlord maybe called the old one who said "sure, they paid their rent on time, they were fine tenants" But the reality is they sucked as our neighbors and will likely suck as the next person's neighbors. And there's not a damned thing that can be done about it.

But what if there was a website - maybe http://www.myneighborsucks.com - where people could go and basically complain about their neighbors such that future potential neighbors and landlords could go to to see what others thought of a potential new neighbor. Sort of an informal background check. Wouldn't that be great?