Suburban Entertainment and the Power of the Stash

I've often been fortunate to have entertaining neighbors and live in entertaining neighborhoods. In Santa Cruz, there were my next door neighbors who grew pot in their closet and showed their setup proudly to my roommate and me (I think they were trying to impress us, but they were too high to notice us rolling our eyes). When I moved in with Todd to his place in Berkeley that was behind a Taco Bell, we got to look out the window at the goings-on there. And there were plenty of goings-on because what happens behind the Taco Bell rarely stays behind the Taco Bell. Once, we had the idea of singing the Cops theme out the window when some woman was screaming at the Berkeley PD. We didn't of course, but we thought we were clever. The manager of that apartment building was also a trip. First of all, he had no last name that we know of. And he was a bit floopy. Maybe he had been smoking what my Santa Cruz neighbors were growing.

Then, in our last apartment in Oakland, our downstairs neighbor had to be threatened with eviction by the property manager because he played his music so loudly. Once this threat happened, he calmed down and proceeded to be hilariously crazy -- smoking pot night and day for "medicinal purposes" and occasionally selling it out his window. (Hmm. Are we noticing a theme here?) He would also invent dramatic break-ins to his apartment when his "friends" would steal his stash or something. Additionally, his personal volume control appeared to be broken, so you could hear him talking/yelling all the time. And he liked to tonelessly sing along with his music. Opera, George Michael, and the occasional Barbra Streisand seemed to be his faves. Or at least these are the highlights that I remember. So there was never a dull moment in O-town.

Given all this, one of my big fears about living in the 'burbs was that I would miss out on all this hilarious strangeness. Luckily, however, it looks like one of our neighbors is going to deliver. He is a kid who looks to be about 17 years old. He often sits around outside, smoking and basically doing nothing. He does like to talk loudly and angrily on his cell phone. I never see him go anywhere, so I have wondered if he is in school or has a job or anything. Last week, from what I overheard, he was served with papers from the Juvenile court. And then, last night, we heard a ruckus outside. So we turned off the TV to have a good listen. And yeah, we went to the windows to observe. (What else are we gonna do -- it's the 'burbs). There we saw our neighbor shirtless and yelling at a "friend" about how this guy is always takin' his stuff and he's going to have to kick his ass down the driveway. Todd and I wondered if this friend had also stolen our neighbor's shirt in addition to whatever other stuff he allegedly took. And we figured that the neighbor boy was really angry because his stash had been stolen (and he looks like someone who would have a stash). I don't think people get that mad over, say, office supplies. It seemed like the fight got resolved fairly quickly, however, since the yelling was over soon and nobody's ass got kicked.

This incident has a couple of implications: First, we will not have to worry about our neighbors being boring. Second, our original thought that we would invite our neighbors to our housewarming party (if we ever have one) is probably not such a good idea after all.