Bad neighbors – Party goes Wild

A little over a year ago, we moved from our “edge of civilization” house in Tucson to Chandler, a much more standard suburban setting. For the most part it has been a pretty good experience.

But there has been a soft underbelly. We live next door to a house with a just graduated high school baseball player (presumably he is playing ball in college as well) who seems to love having loud parties. Throughout spring and early summer, the night for these parties was Tuesday, and they were not too bad, but still annoying. However as time went on, they became bigger and rowdier. A couple months ago, we started alerting the police (after midnight, we are not ogres), and that seemed to quench the growth.

But they learned to have a lookout for the cops, and would quickly quiet up and turn off the lights. The cops would look around, see nothing and move on. 20 minutes later it was in full roar, again. Sigh.

Last night they had a rager. When my wife took the dogs out to potty at 11PM, the yard was full, the house was full, and even the balcony on the neighbors patio was filled with people. We left it alone, but at 1:00AM it got (hard to believe it) even louder. So, a call to the police. This time, they came out in force, at least 6 cars, one k9 unit, and they processed the people on the neighbor’s lawn. The police even hunted for those inevitable “hiders” who try to become invisible.  That took well over an hour. Perhaps it was all the clear underage drinking.

One of the annoying things about these parties besides the noise, is the fact that those who attend and smoke seem to think nothing about flicking their butts into our yard (and presumably the other yards adjacent to them). Really annoying to have to clean up after someone else’s party.

Where are the parents you might say?  Well, I don’t know for certain, but their cars were in the driveway, so I have to assume that they either knew about the party, or helped with its execution. In any case, they can’t possibly deny that they knew what was going on.

(Update: As I write this, two women walked out of their house, looking pretty trashed, and drove away.)

This morning, as I was picking up the debris from the party that found its way to our yard, I peeked over the fence. Their yard looks like WWIII. I hope the son has to clean it up with a raging hangover.

In Tucson, there was an ordinance that if a party was loud enough to require the police to come break it up, they got a lovely red sticker on their window or door, easily visible, that signifies that this house had been a subject of a noise complaint, and that sticker must remain up for 180 days. Sadly, Chandler could use a similar ordinance.