Do You Know Your Neighbors?

[Palanan]

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, ever since returning to the neighborhood where I grew up. It’s changed and it hasn’t—nearly every house is the same as it was, but the feel of the neighborhood is different. It isn’t so much a community as a place where people happen to live next to each other.

Now, it was hardly a bucolic paradise when I was growing up here; but somehow it felt like I knew more of the families who lived here. Some of those families are still in the neighborhood, but there are many others who have moved in since, and more and more it feels like a random assembly of strangers, less friendly and less welcoming.

Have other folks had this same experience? Has your neighborhood become somehow less open over the years? Do you feel like you really know your neighbors, or are they all strangers living on the same street?

[Willie the Duck]

It's strange. I now live about 5 miles from where I grew up. When I grew up, it was a middle of the road, middle class neighborhood. It has since become the place to be in the southern metro area, complete with people tearing down 1800 sf houses and trying to infill 3500 sf micromansions onto 40' lots. Despite having leapfrogged my parents' in relative income, I'm deliberately choosing to live in an area where I could pay off my house in five years, and where everyone doesn't look exactly like me in terms of racial, class and educational backgrounds. I don't want to be that guy who can't relate to people not 100% like me, and I fear that any kind of upper- or upper-middle- class neighborhood could really foster that in me.

So yes, I do know my neighbors. And the people that I meet while walking my dog. And even some of the local kids and their parents who frequent the local park. But it is in no small part because I am making a significant effort.

[2D8HP]

The neighborhood that I moved into in 1973 (and my Mom still lives in)

Looking out my window in my childhood home on a Saturday afternoon in summer 1976:
A dozen men, run to their cars, turn on the radio, each starts polishing their car, a dozen radios all tuned to the same station,

♫ ♫ ♫
“...Ooh, do do do do do do, na na na ah, ooh
You might not ever get rich, ha
Let me tell you it’s better than digging a ditch
There ain’t no telling who you might meet
A movie star or maybe a common thief
Working at the car wash…”
♫ ♫ ♫

An impromptu party!

1985 at night:
BAM! BAM! BAM! Muzzle flash, a screech of tires, sirens.

Month, after month, after damn month.

Only foolhardy insomniac teenagers go out at night - the streets are pedestrian free and mine to walk alone.

1992: Almost no one left who lived on the block ten years before, much less twenty years before.

Where once the majority were Korean war veterans with jobs at the port and shipyards, and their wives, and then their widows who usually had pictures of the Kennedy's, Martin Luther King Jr., and prayers on their walls, whose grandkids were my friends, now all gone - replaced by white-collar couples who typically worked for the University.

Almost all my friends gone from town, most everyone my age who replaced them is in college or graduated from one (which I never did) including the women who is now my wife.

No one I know is left from "old days" except a couple of homeless beggers, one who recognized me (or guessed) "Class of '86?", the other I remember at Punk Rock shows in the1980's (and can tell is touched by madness).

Five miles away, 2013 to 2017: I have a house of my own, our neighbor in the house next door to our south is an old man in his '70's or '80's, who every year goes up on his roof and puts tar on it to keep the rain out, our next door neighbor to our north is a young couple with small children, the husband works at Goodreads.com, the wife is a published author who's blog my wife reads marveling that anyone would tell the world all she does.

2017 to now: The couple with young children move out replaced by another couple with a bit older children, she is a nurse, he an Oakland police officer, the neighbors the next house over from them on the north are a school principal, and her retired from working at the University husband, they have two daughters, one still at home, the other away at collegeg, the neighbors to the south of the old man who lives alone are composers with a son who's close in age to our older son - they're not friends.

I don't know about anyone else on the street.

[Razade]

I've never known my neighbors much. My parents weren't particularly eager to engage with the community we grew up with and I've lived in apartments after leaving their house (and dorms) which I don't feel are very open on their own. I don't really mind it, I'd rather not really get to know the people around me in case a falling out happens and then bad blood seeps into every day living.

[halfeye]

No.





some characters.

[Tvtyrant]

My hometown has more than tripled ib size in my lifetime, and everyone I knew from my childhood has left for other states. The only people I still know are old and retired.

[darkrose50]

We have a block party every year-or-so. Most people are good people.

I have a nightmare neighbor who thought he (well his grandmother) owned 5-6 feet of my property, lots of problems during the years that culminated in this moron cutting down my fence. I must have looked like I was going to murder the idiot, as one or two of the police officers were a little panicked that I might. It was luck that one of the police officers was the boyfriend of my wife's friend, and he deescalated things. I never think that I was ever closer to being forced to the ground by armed men, or worse. I have not had a problem with him since. I think that my unintentional "I will kill you look", must have worked . . . I was really pissed.

My neighbor across the street was my daughters teacher last year. It was interesting to be able to see your daughter's teacher having breakfast though the window. I think that my daughter got a kick out of it.

My grandmother and aunt each owned a house in an area that if the houses were in the family now . . . they would be worth a crazy high amount of cash. They are now in a gentrified neighborhood full of wealthy people, and my great-great-grandfather who owned one of the houses was a fruit peddler. Neighborhood's change.

My childhood home was bought by the school behind it, and knocked down. This sometimes makes me quite sad.

[Mariele]

Grew up in the country with only one neighbor. I knew him--our family took care of his wife with Alzheimer's. After she passed, we never came by or talked to him or anything, but we knew him and would wave at him as we went by.

Now I'm in a college town, in an apartment in a not-so-good area (police patrol every night, can hear gunshots a couple times a month). There are only 15 units and I think only a few of us are college students--I think I've seen one other on the top floor and that's it. I've only really "met" 5 of my neighbors (that is, talked long enough to know the name).

I think I must be fairly recognizable, though, as I am renting the front door, aka, the previous landlord's office--since moving in in August, I've gone around and swapped out lightbulbs, cut back and shaped the severely overgrown hedges, added mulch and stone edgers, fixed the runoff issues that made the sidewalks EXTREMELY dangerously slippery in the winter (it was almost literally a mudslide when I moved in--just inched of mud covering the entire sidewalk all the way down to the street), cleaned the mail unit, put out some pots of flowers, added some stake lights and some outdoor lighting to the front stoop, etc. Just improved the curb appeal a ton in general. And then regular upkeep, like cleaning the front windows, changing and shaking out the porch mat, sweeping the sidewalks, etc. So I've normally been seen being out and about and tidying up the place, and all 5 of the people I've met have asked "you're the one in front, right?", and other neighbors have stopped as I'm working just to say "hi" or comment on the improvements. A few have even mistaken me for the landlord. :P

I've also helped other tenants shovel out their vehicles and shoveled + salted some of the sidewalks. So, I don't know, I'm not out going door to door with some fresh casserole as I don't feel entirely safe doing that, but I've done enough to make myself recognizable and I'm about often enough that I'm available for short chats. I still consider all but maybe 3 to be strangers. And this is just in my building--I gave out candy on Halloween to the kids across the street, but I haven't interacted with my neighbors in other buildings aside from that.

[Murk]

I don't know my neighbours. I don't really need to, although I wouldn't object to a barbecue once a year either.

When I was younger (living with my parents) I did know all the neighbours. Not because I was more social then, but just by accident.
I think the three causes of "knowing your neighbours" are:

- Social people
There are some people who just really like knowing people.
- Children
Children play outside and need supervision, so that all the parents are sitting at the same playground at least once a week; similarly, school yards are accidental meeting places of neighbours too.
Neighborhoods seem to go through a sine wave of children (neighborhood gets build - young parents move in - children move out - parents grow old without children - parents die - young parents move in - etc.), so it makes sense to me that neighborhoods also go through a related sine wave of "knowing eachother".
- Gardens/yards
If you sit outside whenever it's sunny weather and you see the same fellow on the other side of the fence each time, you might get to know said fellow.

I'm not all that social, I don't have children, and I don't have a backyard, so there you go.

[Lemmy]

I knew some of my neighbors when I was in college and a little after that... Mostly because we shared the "we come from somewhere very far from here and speak another language" background. Other than that, I've never been one to mingle. So I usually simply don't care about meeting my neighbors. Right now... I can count on one hand the number of people in my building whose name I know (not counting the bulding's employees... The majority of which I know and often take some time to talk to).

[thorgrim29]

Not since I moved out of my parent's place really, I'm on a "vague platitude, friendly nods and more or less remembering names" level with about half of the people in my building. I guess I've never made much of an effort, seems pointless to get to know people in apartment buildings. Doesn't help that I'm pretty considerably younger than most of them, people in my age and income brackets tend to live in tiny condos downtown which just doesn't appeal to me.

[BWR]

Really know them? No.
I stop and talk to the three others in our building if we pass each other and have a few minutes to spare, but that's about it. There is a tradition of having a grill party once a year for the neighborhood, but we've never participated. Often work has gotten in the way, more often, being rather introverted, we don't relish the idea of spending hours pretending to be jovial among people we don't have much in common with.

One of the real benefits of modern communication and transportation is being able to choose your social interactions with even more detail and care.


Still, around here you can count on your neighbors to show up if something happens, as one slightly unpleasant experience a few years ago proved. One quiet evening we heard someone screaming "help, he's beating me!". Before a minute had passed half the neighborhood was on site to keep things calm until the police arrived.

[Rynjin]

Nope, and I'm glad for it. After living in apartments for the last few years it's nice to once again be in a place where I can see my neighbor's house but have no idea what any of their business is.

I see/hear their kids play when they get home from school and borrowed a ladder from them once to fish my cat out of a tree, but I've been here a year and a half and I couldn't even tell you their names. It's great.

[Togath]

I don't know many of my current neighbors(though still know several in the town I grew up in), but did finally meet some during some weird weather back in February, when the neighborhood got hit with something in the range of 45-50 times the normal amount of snow(ending up about 3-4ft deep at the thicker points).
They seem like nice people, and provided my vegetable garden goes well this year I'm planning to see if anyone wants to try some of the stuff I'm growing(which includes a lot of zucchinis and melons!).

[Kyrell1978]

My wife and I are pretty intensely private people and we are super busy with the kids activities most of the time (Scouts and band take up a lot of time as do the wrestling and before this year tumbling). So to answer the question...no....we don't know our neighbors at all really (unless you count the fact that my wife's sister and her husband who I've known for around 20 years live like two blocks away). We have bbqs and what not at the house but we mostly invite people who we already know rather than based on geographic location

[Algeh]

I know my neighbors somewhat. I've only lived here for about a year, so I haven't been around long enough to know everyone well. I know the family on one side of me because I teach their kid (it is...somewhat awkward that his treehouse has a clear line-of-sight to my swimming pool in the summer), and the people across the street run the local pizza restaurant that I like, but I don't know most of the people further away than that.

This summer, assuming I have my act together, I'll have a pool/barbecue party and invite people over to see who comes. I figure I'll get to know more people as I live here longer.

Since I walk to work (and home again for lunch) every day, I've also gotten to at least say hi to the people along that route, so I at least recognize a good chunk of my neighbors in that direction. (I also know exactly who the one dog that runs around loose belongs to. Poor little dog.)

Growing up, I knew almost all of the neighbors. Of course, my mom was a stay at home mom when I was very little, and then sold Avon door-to-door after that, so there were a lot of opportunities to meet up with people. I think I at least knew the name of somebody in each house for several blocks, although in a lot of cases I mostly had a general impression of whether or not they minded random kids in their yard/driveway and whether or not they had any kids who were likely to want to come out and play rather than a detailed life story.

[GentlemanVoodoo]

Neighbors are strangers to me and I prefer it that way. Long ago I had a neighbor that I was somewhat open with. One night went out to hit a few bars but almost ended badly. Further he was a former Marine who liked to tell people how there houses should be painted, grass cut, ect. Another neighbor was one of those that constantly monitored people and if something wasn't done per city code he reported you.

I was glad when both moved away. So I have come to believe in the says "good fences make good neighbors" and also "good neighbors keep to themselves".

[Florian]

Pretty well, actually. I think I spent more of my free time lounging in other peoples gardens/homes for, say, around 5 blocks, than at home?

[Albion]

Yeah somehow, but I do share the feeling that something has changed. And not necessarily for the better.

[Telonius]

When I grew up, the neighborhood was kind of split up. In the tiny minority, families with kids. I knew most of them.

The rest of the block was populated by these folks:



I did not know them.

I'm in Northern Virginia now, and the neighborhoods are more transitory bedroom community type. I know more of my neighbors, since more of them have kids who go to school with my daughter. For the others, instead of the scowling, "get-off-my-lawn" types, they're more often people who aren't really around enough to be busybodies.

[Aedilred]

I'm on either nodding or polite-conversation terms with pretty much everyone else in my apartment building, but there aren't many of us. Other neighbours, no.

I do know the neighbours in my parents' village, where I grew up, a bit better.

As an introvert with a degree of social anxiety, I am more than happy not knowing my neighbours. When walking to the end of the street to get milk becomes an obstacle course of potential small talk it's surprisingly stressful.

However I must also acknowledge that there's a context and I live in the middle of a city in rented accommodation, and am a single guy doing my own stuff. The neighbours are for the most part just people who've temporarily found themselves in the same place while they do their thing. To the same degree that I feel that my life is none of their business, I also feel like their life is none of mine.

In a suburban or village community where there are more families and people will stay there for decades, I think there's a lot more to be said for getting to know the neighbours, but even then I think I'd want to keep the majority of them at arms' length.

[ForzaFiori]

Ok, so first a preface: I don't actually have neighbors really, since my mom and dad's house is out of town a ways, out in the middle of the woods. but of the two towns I call home (my house kinda sits between them, and went to elementary school in one and middle/high school in another, but regular was in each one for jobs and seeing friends and such). I lived there until about a year ago, when I moved to a fairly large city in an apartment.

In my hometowns, One (Central) has been massively changed in the ~15 years or so that I can remember (since I was about 10ish). The town is right outside Clemson, a college town, that has been rapidly growing since the early 80s. When I was young, there was still a little stretch of land between my town and Clemson. By the time I was in high school, the towns had met, but Central was still a stereotypical small southern town, it's just that one boarder was with a college town. Nowadays? It's like half apartments, and except for the small historic downtown area, it's all just a suburb of Clemson it feels like. There's as many students as locals, and while that's great for the town's economy, it means that the town I remember as a kid (I watched the first stop light get put in) is gone.

The other town (Pendleton) has changed alot less. I think it's because there was more room around it - Instead of building all over the old town, squeezing in all the new fast food places, apartments, etc, they went to the highway just outside of town and basically built a new "downtown" - now there is the historic downtown and all the old houses and stuff, and then 5 minutes away is a stretch of highway with the new highschool, fast food places, big gas stations, etc. But the heart of the town is still there and thriving (though now it too is being encroached on by the ever spreading Clemson).

People wise, I can't really comment. Like I said, I live in the middle of nowhere. Even the one family that lives on the same street as us we don't really know, because we never see them. Our driveway is 1/4 mile long, so it' s not like our yards are next to one another.


Now that I've moved to the city, I can't really say I know my neighbors any more though, even though I have doors within 25 feet of my front door probably. I see them in the parking lot. I know I've introduced myself, but I don't remember their names, and I doubt they remember mine.

[Velaryon]

I met the guy that lives in the apartment across from me, talked to him about video games for ~30 minutes once, and he's on my PS4 friends list but we never play together.
I got locked out of the apartment building once with the woman who used to live there. She seemed to be an unhappy person as I would occasionally hear her arguing with her boyfriend and the paramedics got called there once because of someone OD'ing, but I don't think I ever learned her name.
My downstairs neighbors have kids and like to stay up late and play music on the weekends (though they've been better lately), but I don't know their names.
Everyone else in the building is a stranger to me, and our only interactions have been the occasional polite not or holding the door for a moment.

In my parents' neighborhood (where I grew up and lived for a long time after college as well) I know about 4 of the families still living on that block, because they had kids within a couple years of my age and we all used to hang out. One still lives with his parents (he has a good job but no desire to move out), while the others have all gone on their separate ways but their parents still live there. Once upon a time many years ago there were block parties but I haven't seen anything like that since my childhood. Nowadays the rest of the block are all strangers and the neighborhood is quiet because kids there don't play outside like we used to.

[Florian]

That reads so freakishly alien to me :(

I mean, when works done, I take my train home, arrive at my home stations and have some chats with the cleaning personal, train security, the gals that work the local diner an such, have a beer with the regulars.

Start to walk home because I don't like to take the bus and you'll notice that beer will come up quite often, so using my car is not feasible. So I´ll visit one of the local mafia joints, have a snack and talk shop, head over to the local supermarket, grab some more beer, meet the local rednecks and neonazis, some cheers and exchanging local small talk, head home, hit the local handymen and construction worker dive en route, another round of cheers, gossip and staying in contact, before arriving home, putting my stuff in the fridge and ice box, maybe cook something up, meet up with the other locals for a smoke, small talk, bad-mouthing the state and tax system and all that, maybe get roped-in some menial work or, like yesterday, head out for some political party work in manning some information point, or like the day before, hanging up some posters. End the day with Christian one of my fav. neighbors, by lending him an ear for his marriage troubles and talk about the fine points of government work, all the while having a nice BBQ and an amount of alcohol that would kill and elephant. Then go home, finally, go to bed, rinse and repeat.

Note that quite a lot of people don't like me, but they have accepted my presence. The aforementioned neonazi scum is not my cup of tea, but they respect my because I'm friends with their leaders, which in turn respect me because we are quite open about our antagonistic stance. Figure out the rest.

[darkrose50]

I threw some salt on the roof to melt an ice-dam (never do this). I think it curled up my roof tiles. The neighbor two doors down had a relative living with them temporarily. His company did roofing, and he said that my insurance company would pay for a new roof. The insurance company did pay for a new roof.

The roofing company did not plug in the attic fans. We had an electrician out, and he plugged in the fans and checked everything. When I told the neighbors relative, he threw a fit saying that he was an electrician and that he would never leave the fans unplugged. It was a whole thing.

When we first moved in the neighbor across the street must not have liked me parking in front of her house, so she boxed me in (there is plenty of parking on my block). I figured something like this could make me late for work someday, and I better nip it in the bud. I called the police. When her husband came home he was not happy with his wife boxing me in.

The "interesting" 90+ year old neighbor lady next door once called me a liar after I told her that I saw a spider the size of a quarter (we have them, but they are uncommon/rare).

The "interesting" 90+ year old neighbor lady once called my wife that she saw me getting into a van with some strange lady . . . implying that I was cheating on my wife . . . it was my sister.

The "interesting" 90+ year old neighbor lady's "interesting" grandson (he is in his 40's) once swore up a storm, in front of my kids, that I did not rake the leaves in my back-yard . . . as he raked the leaves in my fenced-in back-yard. I had to call the police to get him out of my back-yard. I think that he has substance abuse issues and PTSD.

The "interesting" 90+ year old neighbor lady's "interesting" grandson would only show up at my front door (sometimes my back door) when I was not home. I decidedly took this as a threat, and eventually told him that I would take care of this issue in an extreme manor, an implied that I never want to see him around.

The "interesting" 90+ year old neighbor lady's "interesting" grandson once took a long drag of his cigarette and walked slowly around to the other neighbors yard to help me stop a dog that was BREAKING the wood fence to try and KILL my toddler who was barking at the dog. I asked him to remove my daughter from harms way. I was trying to keep the fence together and the dog back, and I would have soon killed the dog with a broken piece of the fence. This man is nuts.

After he cut down my fence he made himself scarce. I was absolutely livid at him after he cut down my fence, and at the point I would have fought to kill (not subdue) this threat to my family. Either his father was able to get him under control, or I made myself clear, or the police made themselves clear. He will not even come out of the garage if I am outside. I am betting his dad told him to say out of my line of sight. His dad seems to be level-headed, amiable, and logical. I cannot wait until they move, and I am hoping that they will move soon.

[FinnLassie]

Back in the countryside? Sure! Only had three neighbours!

Moving to the city, living in a block of flats? Oh hell no. And I didn't even want to know them. The lady across our apartment was... very unpleasant, and so were a couple of the downstairs neighbours.

The only neighbour I've really known, living in a block of flats, is one of my very closest friends. We didn't even know we're neighbours for six months. She lived upstairs, I lived on ground level. Unless you have pets, it's so uncommon to know your neighbours in Finland... at least when you don't have any kids and live in a densely populated area.

I'd like to know my neighbours in the future. When I move out of here. And it's sort of necessary, too, I think.

[Honest Tiefling]

...Do dogs count? I sometimes go to the fence to pet them and receive many licks. And yes, I have owner permission for this. Owned by a very lovely, generous couple. They give us food on the holidays, and we give them dog toys (we don't cook much, and have many food issues, so dog toys it is).

I still feel bad that the dogs buried a rawhide chew toy in their nice yard. That's now how you use that, doggos.

[Asmotherion]

i grew up in a suburban neighbourhood.

i Know most of them by name and well enough to have a casual conversation when i see them in the street. The few i don't i still say hi casually since i recognise them by face.

Some i am more aquinted with and one of them is my best pal since i was 4 years old. He's also my Daughter's Godfather.

A girl across the street used to be a fwb of mine; now she's married and pregnant but things never got weird between us.

An other girl i had a crush on when i was 18 ended up a good friend of my wife.

There's also the old couple next door who are always eager to say "hi" when they spot me starting the car; good people.

Even if some of them can be rather eccentic (ex: the guy in the house behind mine who has a party with live music every single saturday night in august) it's a rather warm neibourhood.

[Honest Tiefling]

Even if some of them can be rather eccentic (ex: the guy in the house behind mine who has a party with live music every single saturday night in august) it's a rather warm neibourhood.

Sounds lovely. Where do you live again? Because a lot of other posters are describing very awful places. And how are the schools in that district?

[Asmotherion]

Sounds lovely. Where do you live again? Because a lot of other posters are describing very awful places. And how are the schools in that district?

Haha thank you! it's in Greece on Crete island.