Since the Pacific Sun’s first bad neighbor article ran two months ago, I’ve become a voyeur, deriving an odd combo of pleasure and dread whenever the email chime signals incoming messages.
Apparently, annoying people live on nearly every street in Marin, and those they vex need to vent.
Ding, ding, ding.
In fact, I’m not the only one overcome by reverberating sounds. Our feature story this week was shared by Veronica, who has developed a clinical disorder triggered by her next-door neighbors’ chimes and bells.
The other drama in this second edition of bad neighbors puts the focus on an anonymous person who has left an eco-conscious family bewildered by nasty notes on their door.
Before we begin, let’s review the ground rules. All the names in the following narratives were changed and have absolutely no significance, except that they were chosen from my favorite ’80s songs. (Yep, Huey Lewis got so much play on my Sony Walkman that the cassette broke.)
To further protect the innocent, as well as the guilty, I don’t identify towns or cities. These incidents all happened in opulent Marin.
Don’t Save the Planet
Eileen’s father, an environmentalist, repurposes and recycles whenever possible to keep stuff out of the landfill. Occasionally, he places small items in front of their house with a “free” sign. If no one accepts the gift within a day or two, he donates the used treasure or disposes of it properly.
Oddly, a neighbor resents reuse. Eileen’s family knows this because “various passive-aggressive, angry notes” appear on their property when something is set outside. While not completely certain, the family has an idea where the culprit behind the crabby communiqués resides—right up the street.
“My dad left out a cat scratching-post our cat didn’t use,” Eileen said. “Less than 24 hours later, they left a note on it saying, ‘We KNOW who put this here—take it AWAY!’”
Mostly, the family finds these anonymous notes amusing because the father doesn’t hide or pretend that he’s someone else. After all, the freebies are right at their house. But there is something unsettling about the messages.
“Pretty strange to threaten your neighbor over leaving a cat scratching post in front of their house,” Eileen said. “They time their [note-leaving] while everyone in our house is away.”
The family has not approached the bad neighbor to discuss the issue. They are cold and rude, according to Eileen.
“It honestly makes me kind of sad that this neighbor has nothing better to do with their time,” she said. “They must be very unhappy.”
Or they could simply be a climate-change denier who has no problem with single-use items. I’d like to take a peek inside their recycling and compost bins, which I bet remain perpetually empty.
Ring My Bell
Veronica and her next-door neighbors, Jennie and Jacob, socialized frequently. On summer days, the couple’s young kids swam in Veronica’s pool and played with her pups. For years, the neighbors joined each other for New Year’s Eve and Easter festivities. They were friends.
“Jacob would come over to my shed, smoke pot and borrow my tools,” Veronica said. “Then, he stopped.”
Although she’s not sure exactly what prompted Jacob to become distant, she has her suspicions. His four-year-old daughter developed a short-lived crush on Veronica, who is gay. Whatever the reason, soon the entire family stopped visiting.
Then the chimes went up. Not tiny tinkling ones either. These were large, loud clangers.
“They were, I’d say, 18 inches to two feet long,” Veronica said. “I could hear them all the way on the other side of my house while I was in my hot tub with the jets running. And I could hear them in my bathroom on the other side of the house with the windows closed.”
Their neighborhood, like many others in Marin, gets windy on a regular basis, resulting in a chime cacophony. When she approached her neighbor about taking the noisemakers down, Jennie told her that Jacob refused.
At her wits’ end, Veronica called the Marin County Sheriff’s Office. The first deputies dispatched disagreed with her assertion that the noise violated the municipal code.
For the record, county code 6.70.020 states that “It is unlawful for any person to make, continue, or cause to be made or continued, any loud, unnecessary or unusual noise which either annoys, disturbs, injures or endangers the comfort, repose, health or peace of others.”
She didn’t give up. Other deputies called to the scene of the chime crime found that the neighbors were in breach.
Down came the ding-dongs. That was 15 years ago.
One might think that ends the story; yet the saga continues. The neighbors got a dog, one that barks incessantly when Veronica ventures into her yard. The pooch even bit her leg. I’ve seen photos of the puncture wounds, and they don’t look pretty.
Veronica could have created a big fuss over the bite—cops, Marin Humane, lawsuit. Instead, she decided that not doing so could be an olive branch, of sorts, a gesture to repair the poor relationship between the neighbors. No go.
A few years ago, the couple placed multiple bells of various sizes right next to Veronica’s property. She sent me a five-minute audio recording capturing the tintinnabulation of bells.
“All day, every day,” she said of the ringing.
And for Veronica, the sounds aren’t just irritating. Ever heard of misophonia? Harvard describes it as a condition where common sounds create “a fight-or-flight response that triggers anger and a desire to escape.” Veronica says she suffers from it.
In December, Jacob asked Veronica if he could encroach upon her property to replace a fence. The existing fence had lattice at the top, allowing sunlight to enter her home and providing a view of the sky. Maybe agreeing would end the animosity—and the bells.
Photos provided by Veronica show Jacob’s new fence with no lattice work, a monolithic barrier blocking her kitchen windows. Ditto for any light and view from her den. She didn’t complain. Olive branch.
Yet peace has not prevailed. Pleas to relocate the bells have gone unheeded, even after Veronica and Jennie met over drinks to hammer out a compromise that entailed moving the clappers to the front of the couple’s house.
“We don’t even hear them anymore,” Jennie said when her beleaguered neighbor followed up.
Sadly, Veronica, for whom the bells toll, does.
Send your Marin bad neighbor stories to ni***************@***oo.com. Rest assured, she’ll protect the identities of all parties.
