All my neighbors are married with kids. We're friendly to each other, but not what I would call social, for the most part.

It sucks; if I had my way, we'd go out raging at bars together, go hang out at the beach sometimes, invite each other over for dinner, etc...but that'll never happen. I would love to live a somewhat more restrained, responsible, and grown-up version of my college life, with a massively larger budget.

That said, living in a subdivision sucks. Even good neighbors invariably do irritating shit, and it seems that invariably, there's always one bad neighbor who does even worse. I hate having a little 1/3 acre yard, I hate not being able to piss off my back deck, I hate not being to run around naked in my house without closing the blinds, I hate not being able to crank my stereo up as loud as I want as late as I want, I hate it when people park on the street even though they aren't supposed to, I hate motherfucking cats shitting in my yard and not having enough privacy to shoot them, I hate not being able to shoot guns in my yard in general, I hate planning on building a workshop, and being constrained on the dimensions for lack of anywhere to put it, I hate that my daughter doesn't have acres and acres go play outside in, etc.

I grew up out in a rural farming area, and not only was it fucking cool because you could do anything you wanted, but it was somehow dramatically more social than living all stacked up on top of each other and having the downsides of putting up with other peoples' bullshit.

At least we haven't had an HOA in either neighborhood I've owned it.


I'm going to either buy a house on the water next, or a house on a good-sized chunk of land (or both, if I can somehow afford it, but those will probably be mutually exclusive on my budget...maybe a little beach place, and then a big plot of land with a barn and an apartment in it to get away to just outside of town).





so to answer the question, I have neighbors that I don't even know their names, right on my cul-de-sac. I have neighbors that I talk to outside, but I wouldn't say we're "social". Most of us have never stepped foot in each others' houses, let alone actually done anything together socially.

8/12/2014 1:54:58 AM

any reason you haven't bought a place out in the county and moved yet?

8/12/2014 1:56:40 AM

Well...I bought this place a little over 2 years ago, chiefly because I was going for half-custody of my daughter, and needed to live within her little elementary school district to (a) have bus transportation, and (b) do everything I could to maximize my odds of getting half custody.

The school district was maybe 3x3 miles, and a good chunk of it is kinda garbage. My place is nice; it's not my dream house or anything, but I had lived literally in an extended stay hotel for 7 months, and I was fucking desperate to be done with that. It took that long to find a place that I was willing to buy (I wanted a fairly small but nice house, and that was like a fucking unicorn. You could get a little shitty house, a big shitty house, or a big nice house (for a big price, that I didn't need).

As it turns out, I got the half-custody, and I've never once used the bus transportation; I drop her off either at school or at daycare where she's bused to school, and pick her up from daycare in the afternoons, and we're about to move her to another school that I'm not actually in the district for, so I could have had a little wider area to choose from (although I hate the whole town; there is not one single bar at all, or one single good place to eat, and only a couple tolerable places to eat. Tolerable meaning, like, Firehouse Subs or Shane's Rib Shack. Oh, and it's 45 minutes from my job, which means I drive 30,000 miles per year now, which means I sold my Corvette and bought a little hybrid.

All totally, 100% worthwhile for getting my daughter, though. I could venture outside of that little school district, but assuming I stayed close enough to make it convenient to pick her up and drop her off from school, I don't think it would really improve things enough to make it worthwhile. I've thought about moving and looked around a little, but I'm kinda inclined to say "fuck it, I hate this whole town, I have a nice house as it is, and I'll just stay here until life situations and finances permit me to really build what I want, where I want."

* The wild card is that I'm gonna be out of work in about 7 weeks. If I get the job I want, it'll all be cool. If not, I will likely either end up taking maybe a 50-60% pay cut and only working 2-3 days per week in the Reserves, selling my house and lots of my stuff out of necessity, and buying an inexpensive place somewhere and fucking off on the beach a lot...or taking a job making good money, but in Africa or Afghanistan or somewhere 50% of the time, which would probably not be super long-term, but if it did become long-term, I'd probably do the same thing, downsizing a good bit (why have a nice place and nice stuff when you're gone half the time and doing the dad thing the rest of the time)?

8/12/2014 2:37:23 AM

^ don't you have a degree in mechanical engineering? Seems like there'd be tons of jobs for that.

8/12/2014 2:43:41 AM

yep, and maybe I'll end up in that if I find some really cool hidden gem here, but I'm tied to the Pensacola area, and there just aren't a lot of jobs that pay much here. I'd probably have to start over and take an entry level job, which would be a big pay cut, and well, fuck big pay cuts, haha. I don't think I'd do it unless the work just really interested me, or there was opportunity for advancement into really big pay.

I'll work hard for six-figures, but I'd rather mostly fuck off and make $40-50k than work hard for 70k or whatever. If I'm gonna be broke, I'll go be broke on the beach and/or in bed until 10 am.

[Edited on August 12, 2014 at 2:56 AM. Reason : ]

8/12/2014 2:51:59 AM

^ This is the most existential diatribe against the American dream laced with broken Marine Corps dreams I have ever read

And as the final ooo-rah wimpered into silence and mediocre bourgeoisie came upon us, I felt the dreams breaking into smaller white picket fences than anyone ever could imagine.

8/12/2014 9:43:09 AM

My neighbors are retired army, old enough to be my parents... we say hello in passing, but that's about it.

8/12/2014 10:39:42 AM

^^ nah, I'm leaving voluntarily and I'm not done with the military, and worst case, I'm not going to live the rest of my life bumming it, Big Lebowski-style...even if it takes a couple of years, I'll land back in a good job. I just don't really plan on busting my ass for a mediocre one. If I have to bide some time, I'll either do it making a lot of money, or having a lot of free time, but I don't plan on having neither when at least the latter option is already pretty much secured.


...but at any rate, this thread is about hanging out with your neighbors (or...not). It's interesting to me that this is pretty universal, and not just my neighborhood.

8/12/2014 11:49:50 AM

We live in a townhouse. As the first set of breeders the other breeders (one baby born last week and the other due Aug 27) in our building have been coming to us for advice and to ogle the baby. The non breeders or retired breeders decided to start talking to us when we had the baby as well. He makes a good conversation starter, kind of like the weather. Before him it was just smiles and nods.

8/12/2014 12:09:20 PM

we live in a cul-de-sac with 3 other familes with kids (kids ranging from babies to middle and high school) and then one lady in her 90s. They are all super nice. We interact the most with our neighbors to the left. Nothing social really, but enough to let each other know when the other is out of town to keep an eye out or mow the front yard or something.

The neighbors behind us have been a nightmare but luckily have been silent for over a year now.

8/12/2014 12:14:23 PM

There is a chick that lives at a diagonal from my apartment who always let her man drive her late model beamer.

I always knew he was unemployed, and he used to try to be all cool with me like, "Hey what's up!" Like aggressively approaching me and everything. I was always thinking, "Bro, you are unemployed clearly and living off this girl, get away from me, you scam artist."

Then she dumped him and things have been more chill.

[/ the neighbor chronicles ]

8/12/2014 12:47:37 PM

I generally think its a bad idea to get too friendly with the neighbors because they feel like they can start asking/telling/giving suggestions/borrowing

8/12/2014 2:17:01 PM

^ It goes both ways. Sometimes our neighbors across the street want us to come over and we're all like, "I really don't want to have to go over there and play with their fucking kids."

But then we need someone to pick up our mail while we're gone and check on the house...and it was worth it to spend "Taco Night" with the Ruthvens!

8/12/2014 2:19:21 PM

Kerri Ruthven??

8/12/2014 4:44:23 PM

[Edited on August 12, 2014 at 4:54 PM. Reason : rescinded]

8/12/2014 4:48:24 PM

^^Nope.

8/12/2014 4:50:30 PM

1 neighbor we are friendly with, but my wife and kids more than myself. They are nice just different, more jesus and less beer/sports/food than I'm interested in.
2 of the neighbors across the street are ok but our interactions are more limited, they are nice enough but we don't go out of our way to be friendly.

I think I'd be more into hanging out with neighbors if they had more similar interests but I think I would be fine with not living in a neighborhood setup too.

8/12/2014 9:05:19 PM

Quote :

"The neighbors behind us have been a nightmare but luckily have been silent for over a year now."

are you freaking kidding me. I no sooner post that today and now we are going to bed and I glance at my phone to see I have missed a call from them on my phone. At 10:45 at night. After over a year of no contact.

8/12/2014 10:47:40 PM

I wave and say hello to the people who live on my block and know a few.
Im close with everyone who lives in the buildings as its three units.

8/12/2014 11:50:51 PM