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So I have a brownstone on a beautiful block in Park Slope, and I bought it because I like clean, but am not a clean freak or child hater or anything. I understand that I bought into a child friendly neighborhood… but it’s a clean block.

One of my next door neighbors lets their children draw all over the sidewalk with chalk. They draw up and down the sidewalk and never clean it when they are finished. Whenever I walk over it I is transferred to my shoes and gets tracked through my newly renovated apartment. It has even turned up on my clothing. Also, it just really isn’t very attractive.

I am on good speaking terms with this neighbor, she’s otherwise nice and her whole family is nice. And so on the two occasions this has happened, I just went over and asked if they could restrict their drawing to their own yard and spray it with a hose when they were finished.

Her response is that in all her years in the neighborhood, nobody has ever complained about chalk, and so therefore I just haven’t been in the neighborhood long enough to understand that this is how things are done.

But it’s not how things are done. It’s an otherwise clean block, and everyone else mentions the cleanliness of the block as an asset.

Whatever. My question is this. I feel as though I have two choices:

1. Keep talking to her and keep getting agro and “you haven’t lived here long enough and it’s not your neighborhood” type responses and inflate the conflict.

2. Start calling 311 and never ever admit that I am the one doing it and preserve any remaining harmony between the two stoops.

One feels dishonest, the other feels like nothin’ but feudin’. Any opinions? Any other ideas?