Nutty Neighbors: Mr. Echo and the Woo Girls

I know I haven't blogged in a while. I've had too many papers and rough drafts to grade, and frankly, I've just been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately. I managed to squeeze in a quick trip to Alabama to visit the family for Thanksgiving, but otherwise, it's been work, work, work.

So I haven't even shared with you that I have new neighbors. I can't go into all of the details because I don't even know all of them. They moved in about six weeks ago, but they remain a mystery to me. I don't, for instance, even know how many people live next door. It could be as many as five or as few as two. There's sort of a revolving door on that apartment. I do know that they're all young, early 20s, I'd guess. And they're very restless, it seems. They can't seem to stay put for long stretches of time. Some people in our building come home at the end of the day and just want to relax. Once they're inside the apartment, that's pretty much it for the rest of the night. Not these kids. They go in and out almost all day and all night, never staying in the apartment for more than a couple of hours at a time. I guess I should be grateful that, unlike the previous tenants, these kids don't slam the door each time they walk in or out.

I'm beginning to wonder if any of them have a job. None of them seems to have a regular schedule. If they are students, I don't know when any of them goes to class because they always seem to be here except when they go out at night. If they leave during the day, it's usually only for a couple of hours, and that's not long enough to be work-related (unless, of course, you know...). How could anyone afford an apartment in this building without a job? Mommy and Daddy must be very generous to fund such an extravagance. I'm still living here thanks to rent stabilization, but the going rate for the two-bedroom apartments here must be more than $2000 a month nowadays. (I just checked: the range is from a little more than $2000 to more than $2900 for a two-bedroom. Yikes.)

I've dubbed them "Mr. Echo and the Woo Girls" because they do tend to talk very loudly. (I briefly toyed with calling them Mr. Echo and the OMGs as an homage to a very frequently stated phrase.) Mr. Echo's real name is Logan, apparently. I know this because they talk very loudly, but I think I mentioned that already. He, in particular, has a very deep, resonant voice that seems to echo throughout the apartment and into the hallway. The Woo Girls--number still to be determined--are the kind of girls who like to yell "Woo" whenever someone makes a statement or suggestion. You know the kind or you've seen the recent episode of How I Met Your Mother that addresses this in more depth. These are the girls who, when you say, "Who's ready to party?!" yell back, "Woo!" (Although it's more like "Wooooooooooooo!") Thankfully, so far, this has not been incredibly frequent.

Twice, though, I've had to knock on the door to ask them to turn down the music. Yeah, I know. I'm an old fuddy-duddy. But they do love their bass when they play hip-hop music (yeah, typical suburban white kids), and it's a bit tough to concentrate with the thumping going on next door. What I noticed when they opened the door was a bit surprising. They have no furniture. The living room, which is a very big space in these apartments, is empty. That's why there's such an echo. There's nothing to block the sound. I wonder if they even have beds or if it's just a series of mattresses on the floor. For me, it would be pathetic to have to live that way. I'd find a smaller place and spend less on rent so that I could afford some furniture.

I was duly punished for asking them to turn the music down, just so you know. When Logan showed up yesterday--his arrival announced much like Norm's used to be on the TV show Cheers--they started playing music again. It wasn't quite as loud as in the afternoon, but it was certainly turned up enough to make me aware of it. Sadly for them, I slept through most of it because I was so tired from the work week. The music was either turned off or down by the time the rest of the crowd showed up, and they all talked loudly until late into the night. I went to bed at 11 p.m., so I don't know how long the party went on. The noise level didn't keep me from sleeping yesterday. I guess that will show me, huh?

I'd should add that they're also very fond of the balcony on this end of the hallway. There's a sort of V-shape to the ends of the buildings here, and the balconies are in the middle of those Vs. Sometimes, the kids like to take a drink out to the balcony and have a smoke and talk loudly a lot. There's only a couple of problems with this. Given how loudly they talk, they've disturbed the neighbors a couple of times. I've heard them grumbling as they walk back into the apartment about having the security patrol tell them to be quiet. The other problem is with the cigarettes themselves. Apparently, they've been leaving the butts and ashes out on the balcony, prompting a rather sternly worded memo sent to the residents of our floor about the proper disposal of said waste products. I'm sure that also went over well next door, especially since everyone on our floor now knows about it.

Look, I'm sure on some level they are nice kids. They don't seem to be running a meth lab (although I could be wrong about that). They're just noisy and boisterous, the way kids that age tend to be. Unfortunately, I am getting to an age where I really don't like noisy, boisterous people. I find them annoying. I may start looking for another place to live if this keeps up since the folks who run this apartment complex seem to want to saddle me with the kinds of neighbors who just don't seem to recall that they're living in an apartment, not a dorm room.