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Yesterday I was working away at my desk when suddenly I caught sight of a woman on the roof of the building across the street – who was waving at me! So I cheerfully waved back and then thought – duh! – maybe she wants something. I opened the balcony door and said hello and found out that she did indeed want something. Turns out she’d seen me coming home late after a tapas tour last week and confronting the asshat who acts as a bouncer at the sleazy bar in my building. I mean, it was about 1 am and there were at least forty drunk teenagers hanging around outside my front door. So I took a photo of them and told the bouncer I’d call the police and show it to them if he didn’t DO SOMETHING immediately. Of course he made a pathetic showing of dispersing the crowd, which only lasted until I went inside.
Anyhow, the woman (Aracel) wanted to talk to me about DOING SOMETHING about this bar and the other illegal bar just up the street, which are both owned by the same person. I told Aracel that I actually had a petition signed by all but one tenant in my house (can never catch him at home) and was going to take it down to city hall this week. So she said she would get the president of their building management committee to write up a petition as well to present at the same time. After that I wrote to the woman who rents holiday apartments in the house next door (Ryan’s parents stayed there last month and complained about the noise) to see if she wanted to do the same. If she does then three houses with 6-8 apartments in each will have registered a formal complaint in the same week about these two bars. And just maybe that will make a difference.
You may recall that the scuzzy bar in my building was the one that caught fire in the middle of the night a couple of years ago. There is no way he is operating within what his licence permits. The place doesn’t open until after 10 pm most nights and stays open until about 4 am. Then his other bar (pretty much in front of my bedroom balcony) opens at 6 am. And both of these bars attract a combination of underage drinkers and the absolute dregs of society who hang out in the street basically all night and well into the morning. We are hopeful that the closing of one “iconic” student bar a couple of weeks ago just around the corner from us means that city hall is trying to crack down on illegal opening times, as well as illegal drinking (and gawd knows what else) going on in the street. So wish us luck! It really feels good to suddenly have this unexpected support from my neighbours.
casa azahar 
It’s great to hear stories of neighbourhood community building. It sounds like you might be at the beginning of the same sort of transformation that’s been happening here in an area that’s long had a reputation for prostitution and drug dealing. Over the course of a couple of years the residents have changed the Avenue into a cheerful and welcoming home of arts festivals and general good neighbourliness. And, it’s the subject of a nice documentary: http://www.theavenuemovie.com/
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How nice to feel supported and to be able to support others in return. Hopefully, your quest for quiet and safety will be rewarded.
I wondered if it is difficult for people to sign up to actions such as yours because they cannot be sure what will happen to their information. Where will their name, address etc be logged, how will they be classified, could the information ever be used for something else, and other anxiety making questions. After episodes of phone-tapping, police keeping evidence and other distressing incidents (albeit in the UK), it may be hard for people to feel trust with the authorities.
You seem to have got the trust of your neighbours (never any mean feat) and you must feel proud for striving for something good for your local community
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Far too often, neighbours are either afraid to stand up to scofflaws like this or, worse, the types who claim things like this don’t bother them. It is always nice when you are not the only person willing to do or say something.
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I used to live right across the street from the police station and you would think that people MIGHT tone their behaviour down but if anything, they were WORSE!. And it was a huge apartment building so if you called the police, they would invariably come directly to YOUR door and loudly ask if you had made a noise complaint which, if it was your next door neighbour, they knew exactly who it was. They would do this even though you asked the call centre to NOT have them come to your door because you had trouble with your neighbours. And, of course, the neighbour already had us in their sights because they blamed us for something that wasn’t us at all and the reason for the noise problems was that they were targeting us. Even though the music was plainly audible from the hallway, it never failed that the police would knock on our door before the neighbours’ door.
We also used to call the building superintendent. He lived on the other side of our apartment and knew these people. They would see him go out, crank their music up full blast for about 15 minutes and then turn it off and leave the building. By the time the superintendent got the call they would be out of the building and often, he would run into them about when the call came so would say it COULDN’T have been them. It was so stressful that I started getting hives and couldn’t sleep as a result.
We finally moved to New York and had a few months of relative quiet until a woman moved in upstairs in the little building and it started all over again… It took the landlady 2 and a half years to get her out of the building and in all that time she paid a total of $45 rent…
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Yike! I think I’ll stop griping about my crotchety old neighbors who just pester other people’s house guests about perfectly legal parking at the curb
I didn’t grasp that you had TWO of these places to deal with. Noisy partiers are my number one risk for someday being arraigned on an explosives charge. I live near a house where they have a big-ass drunken party about four times a year and every time I’m on the phone to cops and fizzling with vile epithets and death wishes until they stop. Though oddly the most effective thing — cross my fingers it lasts — has been to call int he local Commissioner of Revenue who taxes local businesses, because it was looking a lot as if people were paying to have or attend these parties at a residential address. That may be the department that gets results for you — a dunt for back taxes is even scarier than a fine, usually.
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I live right in the center of Madrid, about 20 meters from c/Huertas, which is full of bars. I have one right up the street that also serves kids, never gets rid of the crowd hanging out at the door, and blasts music till 3 a.m. People here just shrug and say, what can we do? Meanwhile, I’m thinking of buying a BB gun and playing sniper from my balcony. Good luck to you.
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