MY SUGGESTION; ACT INNOCENT AND CALL THE POLICE AND TELL THEM YOU ARE WORRIED THAT SOMETHING HAPPENED IN THE UPSTAIRS APARTMENT - YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS BUT YOU HEARD A DEFINITE THUD AND ARE WORRIED ABOUT THE GUY UPSTAIRS. THAT'S IT; IF THIS PERSON DOESN'T GET THE HINT, TOO BAD. IF THEY TRY TO BREAK THE LEASE WITH YOU - AWESOME! GOOD LUCK - I MANAGE APARTMENTS AND SOME OF THE NOISY PEOPLE HERE DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYONE. ONCE A WEEK GOES BY, THE HONEYMOON IS OVER! GOOD LUCK!!!!!

sorry for the duplicate.

Dear LW,

I've been on both sides of this noise war and can tell you there is rarely a solution that works. Before you spend countless frustrating hours worrying over this, draw up a clear list of all your options and begin acting on your list. Without even looking at the rest of the letters here, I am sure there is some useful advice in the middle of the usual mean spirited projection.

Exactly why I don't read the letters here anymore.

Anyway, always start in a straightforward manner and by talking to the person or people who are disturbing you. Until you do that you can't know quickly or aggressively to proceed. Remember that the people above usually have no idea how loud it is for the people below (in many situations eh?), but it isn't personal. Since you've had such sucky experiences, get a noise machine, a fan, earplugs, melatonin, and a flashlight, keys and slippers to put next to your door for when you will have to march upstairs. Because you will need these things handy if you stay.

Landlords, managers, and especially owners are responsible to deal with these things promptly. You know that they won't bother though, right? It's not just an unwillingness, it's an incapability thing.

Good luck. I feel your pain! There endless stories from years of renting to write here for you, and looking back some of them are hilarious... but this is your story not mine. In 2007 Harry Bean made a movie about this sort of thing with a perfect title: Noise.

Dear LW,

I've been on both sides of this noise war and can tell you there is rarely a solution that works. Before you spend countless frustrating hours worrying over this, draw up a clear list of all your options and begin acting on your list. Without even looking at the rest of the letters here, I am sure there is some useful advice in the middle of the usual mean spirited projection.

Exactly why I don't read the letters here anymore.

Anyway, always start in a straightforward manner and by talking to the person or people who are disturbing you. Until you do that you can't know quickly or aggressively to proceed. Remember that the people above usually have no idea how loud it is for the people below (in many situations eh?), but it isn't personal. Since you've had such sucky experiences, get a noise machine, a fan, earplugs, melatonin, and a flashlight, keys and slippers to put next to your door for when you will have to march upstairs. Because you will need these things handy if you stay.

Landlords, managers, and especially owners are responsible to deal with these things promptly. You know that they won't bother though, right? It's not just an unwillingness, it's an incapability thing.

Good luck. I feel your pain! There endless stories from years of renting to write here for you, and looking back some of them are hilarious... but this is your story not mine. In 2007 Harry Bean made a movie about this sort of thing with a perfect title: Noise.

" "Wishing anyone daily difficulties is pretty vile."

Pulleaze, I didn't wish it; I took pleasure in knowing that it was happening!"

Sorry Betzee but taking pleasure in the misfortune of others is just a vile as wishing it were so. None of your neighbors had anything to do with 9/11, so it is, if not racist, extremely bigoted of you to be pleased that innocent people are the targets of pinheaded racists.

(P.S.: it is rather hypocritical of you to suggest that other people limit the number of times they respond in this thread, while you ramble on unchecked. Just sayin'...)

Firstly; thank you, Xrandadu Hutman, for your compliment.

Secondly, I wanted to comment on a few issues mentioned by others.

#1: Top-floor apartments. Since there are only a limited number of those apartments - and in a place like Manhattan (with its miniscule vacancy rate), the odds are nearly nil - it's nearly impossible to find one.

#2: Buying instead of renting. We've owned our last three apartments, but it hasn't helped (re: resolving noise issues). At our first condo, the couple above us had a young child (the only child in a building of about 100 apartments) and it was a miserable situation. However, that wasn't even the biggest problem. Right after we moved in, their workmen (who they'd hired without approval from the condo Board *and* the workmen didn't have the requisite insurance) flooded one of their bathrooms and consequently *took down our bathroom ceiling*. We weren't at home, so you can imagine our shock upon discovering that huge disaster. Although the management company offered to quickly reimburse us for the repair costs (we were loathe to file a claim with *our* insurance company, plus we also had a big deductible) and then they would seek reimbursement from our neighbors' insurance company, the condo Board decided they didn't want to "set a precedent" (huh?!) and therefore prevented the management company from reimbursing us. We'd never met our upstairs neighbors and I called them. They were *nasty as hell*, and the husband warned me to never call them again. Obviously I was furious and very upset - but it would have cost us more money to sue them than the amount we were owed. It really sickened us to pay, but we had no recourse.

At our next condo (in a different city), we were fortunate to buy on the top floor. Although we mercifully didn't have anyone living above us, we had a problem with one of our next-door neighbors. We shared a long wall with them - and every single weekend, their three young grandchildren were dumped at their apartment from Friday night until Sunday night. Beginning around 6:00 a.m. on S/S, those kids would run up-and-down the hallway (which had no floor covering and a horrible reverberation), screaming and throwing things, for at least a few hours. Even with our bedroom door closed, we were always jolted awake and of course that was the end of weekend sleep (in addition to having at least a few hours of hell). We first put a polite note under their door and the problem mostly abated for two weeks, but then it returned. Next we wrote a letter of complaint to the management company and they sent a "warning" letter to our neighbors. Our neighbors then wrote a letter to the management company (with a copy to us), stating we were unreasonable and that they'd *resolved* the problem (obviously untrue). They also said we were unreasonable, since we couldn't possibly expect such young children to "not be exuberant" (!). Well; those young children didn't *live* there (in fact, *no* children lived in that [huge] building) - and the "unreasonable" ones were our *neighbors*. The situation never got resolved, but meanwhile we moved to a different city (NYC).

Here we own a co-op apartment. The woman above us doesn't have any floor coverings (apparently that's only a requirement for renters) and she gets home from work around midnight on M-F. She would put on really clunky shoes that caused a huge racket, and she would literally walk around her apartment *non-stop* for hours (it was like a manic episode every night, as she would often walk in the same space for long periods of time [in the *bedroom*, naturally]). I'd had two unpleasant encounters with her shortly after moving in, when the mail carrier mistakenly delivered two of our packages to her. She brought each package to me, but she was *furious* both times - so between that "introduction" and her manic nightly ritual, we weren't anxious to talk to her. We first tried a polite note under her door (no improvement whatsoever). Then I had a sympathetic person from the management office call her. It took *three* calls (a few weeks apart) to effect improvement. However; many weeks later, she slipped back into her old ways (pun intended) and we went up there (it was around 1:00 a.m.). She couldn't comprehend the problem, so we broke it down into simple language (like talking to a young child) and that finally worked, as it's been many months now (this is irrespective of the fact that she frequently drops dishes and heavy objects on the floor, at all hours).

One of our next-door neighbors has a 2 1/2-year-old. We ignore the fact that he often screams at the top of his lungs (deafening) and for protracted amounts of time. However; there was a time when the father would take him out into the hallway and the child would play *very* noisily (riding a toddler's bike or bouncing a basketball for long periods of time, etc.). One time I finally opened the door and glared at the father. I had to do that on several occasions before he finally caught on (he did say it's difficult to have a young child "cooped up" in an apartment, and I *wanted* to say [but didn't, since otherwise they're good neighbors] that our building has a HUGE [private] garden with benches/etc. - and if the weather is inclement, our building has a large *playroom*). Our neighbor was just too lazy to take advantage of those (very rare for NYC) options.

Lastly, I'll add an amusing postscript to my previous post (concerning the owner of my East Village apartment). A few years after I left NYC, I read in Newsweek about a NYC man who owned many apartment buildings and he was caught bribing someone (an FBI agent). Yes, he was the owner of my East Village apartment building - so *very occasionally*, there IS justice in this world!