Yes, you're allowed. It's probably out of ignorance, not malice. I had a neighbor who was completely unaware he was shaking my furniture with his subwoofer, and I never had problems again once I politely pointed it out to him.

I despise ignorance. Seriously, 12:30 last night, and all I can hear is the thumpthumpthump, thumpthumpthump (it's not even that I hear it, it's that I FEEL it). It doesn't occur to them that they have someone living below them who doesn't want to feel their music EVER but especially late at night? I won't lie, I went apeshit crazy neighrbor and banged on the ceiling.

And I have complained about this before to them- once, several weeks ago.

Yes, yes that's absolutely fine. Just like it's okay for me to complain that the guy next me appears to own two CDs:

1: The best BritPop album EVAH consisting of only the most well-known singles from 90's UK guitar bands
2: Some kind of banging drum-and-bass shite-ola

All that amazing music out there and he apparently has heard none of it. Tosser.

I miss my old neighbors. They were crazy drunk post-college hipsters, but at least their madness occured while I was sleeping.

And I swear, I am never EVER living under someone ever again. The next place I live, I'm in the penthouse, or in my own building.

Once, in college, I knocked the lamp out of the ceiling of the guy underneath me by repeatedly dropping a steamer trunk filled with books (it weighed about 200 lbs.) on my floor in response to his blasting "Brass Monkey" by the Beastie Boys at 5:30 one Saturday morning.

He came storming upstairs and started yelling at me about respecting your neighbors. I said, "Oh, I'm sorry, were you fucking your girlfriend, needed some noise to cover it up? Believe me, your neighbors would rather hear her disappointed sighs than your crappy taste in music."

He pushed me, so I slammed the door on his arm. Wild West, muthafuckas!

Good thing we were friends, too. That shit coulda escalated into something unpleasant. Like when I blasted my neighbors' "Parent's Weekend" dinner party with Magma, Attahk and the Coolies, Doug, after they hooked a dryer chute to my window, filled the dryer with week-old socks and underwear, and steamed my room with junk funk.

all I can hear is the thumpthumpthump, thumpthumpthump (it's not even that I hear it, it's that I FEEL it)

Gah, I used to live in above neighbors like that, who cranked their stereo all night every night, and occasionally threw furniture around and hooted. My bed vibrated with their bass. Finally, I figured out a stopgap solution: I put my tiny computer subwoofer on a shelf of my bookcase platform bed, turned the volume low but the bass up, and lulled myself to sleep with my own music.

I love my current apartment, where we occasionally hear a distant twang of music, or (through one narrow patch of wall) laughter and blenders from a neighbor's kitchen. Everything else is muted by closed-off stairwells or crawlspaces.

I'm so sorry you're having to deal with this. After a conversation with my (then) landlord, I finally started calling the police for my neighbors' infractions of the local noise ordinance. The officers were perfectly happy to come around when I or another neighbor called, and after ten visits, the landlord was able to cancel their lease.

My neighbors in Phoenix complained a couple times about the bass from my stereo. It was relatively early in the evening, 9-10pmish. I wasn't really playing the music that loud, but the subwoofer was up against the shared wall. I moved the speaker a couple inches away from the wall and kept it down a little, but I was a little annoyed. At some point you just have to accept the noisiness of apartment living--especially during 'normal' hours. But I'm not noise sensitive at all myself, so perhaps I'm not the best judge of these things.

I won't lie, I went apeshit crazy neighbor and banged on the ceiling.

Well, now they're just doing it to piss you off.

Believe me, your neighbors would rather hear her disappointed sighs than your crappy taste in music.

Oh, I shared a bedroom wall with neighbors, too, and could occasionally hear him providing her with three solid minutes of sweet lovin', him hollering and her... not so much. Worst of all, right outside our bedrooms was our shared deck, where they retired for a post-coital smoke and a desultory discussion about how he rocked her world. They'd sit in my chairs against my screen door and carry on a variant of this conversation:

"That was good for you, baby?"

"... yeah."

"No, I mean, really good, yeah! You liked that!"

"...sure, baby."

I lived in a studio apartment on the first floor in the East Village once, across from the Theatre for the New City. On one side of us was a very unhappy couple who fought noisily all the time and on the other side of us was a very happy couple who had loud, loud sex all the time. By standing in the center of our apartment, you achieved perfect balance.

Thankfully, the bass has now stopped.

Maybe there's a bunny upstairs!

When I first moved to Japan I lived next door to newlyweds, and it was so hot! Every night, I would drift off to sleep listening to their torrid lovemaking. So much better than porn; I mean, you could just hear the love through those paper-thin walls. I wonder how the other neighbors felt about it.

My upstairs neighbor is learning to play the clarinet. Such awful screechings, such belabored scales ... it is a painful thing to listen to this child practice. Every day.

But at least I don't have to listen to (a) people having sex or (b) other people's terrible taste in music. Only clarinet squeaks. I have no right to complain.

I went apeshit crazy neighrbor and banged on the ceiling.

I'm so glad to hear that I'm not the only "normal" person who's done this.

sometimes it's nice to be hearing impaired. I can just take my aids out. (obviously, this doesn't work with floor-shaking bass.)

I'm so glad to hear that I'm not the only "normal" person who's done this.

Omigod, I used to do this all the time when I lived downstairs from the neighbors from hell. The woman actually came down, leaving on the blaring music and loud guests who were drunkenly stumbling around in high-heeled shoes at 3:30am on a Wednesday to lecture me about how inconsiderate I was being in not coming up to knock on her door to ask her to be quieter.

Which meant she was not only creating a huge disturbance but also demanding that I get out of bed, find warm clothes (the shared hallway had an open door to the outside), locate my glasses and keys, and trudge up a flight of steps at 3:30am on a Wednesday, and I was the one being inconsiderate.

Argh. Gah. I hated those neighbors.

Which meant she was not only creating a huge disturbance but also demanding that I get out of bed, find warm clothes (the shared hallway had an open door to the outside), locate my glasses and keys, and trudge up a flight of steps at 3:30am on a Wednesday, and I was the one being inconsiderate

THAT is the reason I banged on the ceiling. Why should I have to put on clothes to tell you to SHUT UP after midnight on a weeknight? Give me a break.

I had a downstairs neighbour who played New Country at full volume at all hours of the day and night. After being kept up until some ungodly hour on a work night (we thumped on the floor, but again did not want to venture out in the cold to go to her basement suite door; she just turned it up), we got up at our usual time of 7:00, picked the most obnoxious punk album we owned, put the big-ass speakers face down on the wooden floor, and blasted it. Never another problem.

The best one I heard, though, is from a friend of mine who plays bass, among other things. He lived on the main floor of a bungalow, and his downstairs neighbour apparently worked a late shift, coming home around 1 and blasting his music until around 6. Said friend had tried going down and talking to him, but the guy just told him to go forth and multiply, and kept going. This friend, we'll call him 'Dave', had a very small but concert-level powerful amp. One morning at about 10 (when neighbour would be sleeping), he set it up and played a keranging chord on his bass, then packed everything up and put it in the closet. The cops showed up, he showed them around, explained that he, too, had heard the noise and was wondering where it came from. They left, he waited about half an hour, and did it again. This process was repeated about 4 times, by which point the cops had figured out that he was up to something, but couldn't find any evidence of it (his stereo was a tiny ghetto blaster, and he didn't seem to have anything powerful enough). On their last visit, they explained that 'whatever was making that noise'--meaningful look at Dave here--had shaken the neighbour's pictures off the walls. Fighting back laughter, Dave saw them to the door. A few minutes after they left, he pulled the bass & amp out one last time, played the classic 'shave and a haircut' riff, and put it away. Never a noise problem again. Next time he saw the neighbour he said, "You know, you should be really careful who you mess with. Never know what they may get up to."

That's a tough situation, you're kind of damned if you do or don't.
Personally, I will never, ever bang on the wall or ceiling though, because then you instantly become and will forever be known as The Neighbour Who Bangs on the Wall, which is just a step above the Neighbour Who Turns Out All Their Lights on Halloween. And nine times out of ten it backfires on you and they increase their obnoxiousness just to bother you because they don't see the reality of the situation but instead they just see you as a bitchy nag.
I'd call the cops or talk to the landlord, since you've already spoken to the culprits once and they didn't respect it.

I don't care if they think of me as the Neighbor Who Bangs On Walls. I tried to be friendly to them when they moved in and they didn't seem to want to get to know me, so I don't care. The landlord is a reasonable well-meaning fellow, so if they get ridiculous, I know he'll back me up.

A few minutes after they left, he pulled the bass & amp out one last time, played the classic 'shave and a haircut' riff, and put it away. Never a noise problem again.

Ah ha ha haaaaaa!

My noisy, drunken, girlfriend-hitting bastard of a neighbor was evicted over a month ago. I've been sleeping like a baby.

"I'm in the penthouse, or in my own building."

Go for buying a building. With a little creativity in putting together your financing (co-investors is one possibility), it may not be nearly as costly up front as you might suppose.

Anybody want to start a Bunny REIT?

Knocking on the wall, I use the Golden Rule. If I were making noise, I hope that a neighbor might give me a polite rat-a-tat-tat on the wall or ceiling before escalating to the next level, whether it's coming to my door, calling the police, or complaining to the landlord.

If a neighbor has been unresponsive to a couple of rat-a-tat-tats, though, I don't pound. In my limited experience, it doesn't do any good; they know they're bothering you, and they don't care, or they take pleasure in it. And it makes me feel like a jerk.

... especially that one occasion when I pounded really really hard and woke the other neighbors, who then lodged a noise complaint about me, not the party downstairs. Ha.

The fact that I have never lived in an apartment is directly related to the fact that I have never been convicted of murder.

Apropos of all of the above, my drunken, drug-dealing, crap-hounding, domestically-disputing neighbors have moved out! (Actually, they were kicked out. By her parents, who have disowned her and who sold her house out from under her.)

This is a bit of a relief, since the culmination of their 'activities' was Larry's arrest at gunpoint in the driveway about 3 or 4 weeks ago.

And the new owner of the house is putting up a fence between mine and his, so I can sit on my porch again!

I've been on the giving end of a huge subwoofer, and I welcome complaints, and happily turn it off immediately. I gave my neighbors each a small piece of metal with which to bang the pipes as a signal, so they don't even have to talk, also I can't hear the phone at louder volumes. Otherwise, if they aren't there I might be missing out on some good listening.

If I'm going to test at full power I notify everyone in advance (although I have gotten complaints from people who don't live on my block, let alone in my building, this is a club-sized system.) My neighbors tell me when they will be out and I plan along with them. After a rough transition we have stabilized on a pattern that works for everyone.

Thank god for Victorian over-construction. Our house is attached an apartment building on the right side but but there are two foot thick brick walls between us and them and we never hear a thing. Unfortunately we also live only three blocks from a 65,000 seat football stadium which can get pretty loud but that's usually only noisy on Saturday and Sunday afternoons during the Fall.

mudpuppie: "Putting up a fence, eh? Great! We'll be fine neighbors then. Welcome to the neighborhood."

Heh. I'm still thrown for a loop when I go into suburban neighbourhoods in the US and *don't* see fences. Where I grew up, every single house was fenced off, and everyone was very friendly with each other. It still looks weird to me otherwise.

In my old apartment, my downstairs neighbor called the cops on me at 1:30 am on a Saturday for my music being too loud. That's fine, I turned my music down and bought a stand for my subwoofer.

The next morning, I found a note on my door from said neighbor. It was 4 pages long and asked me, in many different ways, to be more considerate. Dude, I got the message when the cop showed up.

I'm still thrown for a loop when I go into suburban neighbourhoods in the US and *don't* see fences.

Let's hear it for Columbia, MD!

mudpuppie: "Putting up a fence, eh? Great! We'll be fine neighbors then. Welcome to the neighborhood."

Seven years of domestic disputes that take place in the driveway 10 yards from my front door, having to pretend not to witness drugs and money changing hands, sweeping broken glass away from my doorstep after the two next door have thrown bottles at each other....

Robert Frost be damned. I'm unapologetically looking forward to the fence. I don't care how wonderful the new neighbors are.

It was 4 pages long and asked me, in many different ways, to be more considerate.

My friend J came home quietly one night and the next morning woke to a many-page letter from the downstairs neighbor, raging about the "consternation" she suffered upon hearing J's car pull into the building lot around 11:00 p.m., and excoriating her for not having more consideration than to visit such "terrible consternation" upon her neighbors. The word "consternation" was used at least four times in as many pages.

We had a hearty laugh over it that evening, though it was well nigh eight o'clock, so no doubt we put a deathly grip of fear on her downstairs neighbor to hear such a caterwauling in the dead of night.

I really truly love my current apartment, with so few crazy neighbors and so little neighbor noise.

no doubt we put a deathly grip of fear on her downstairs neighbor to hear such a caterwauling in the dead of night.

I imagine you caused her no small bit of consternation.

Terrible consternation.

(not only Columbia, HJ, but that was the first.)

I imagine you caused her no small bit of consternation.

*fanning* I do declare you caused her to suffer a serious episode of the vapours.

Well, I gots the Grip and the Ague, and the last thing a man in my condition needs is a fair dose of consternation!

Once't, I was off to the see the doc for a tincture for my dropsy, when these rounders appeared along the highway and zzzzzzzzzzzzz.......