Neighbor Relations
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…
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?
i think they should be able to write in front of their house and any neighbor that consents. If you dont want it in front of your house, then I think you can opt out.
If this is a companion for noise complaints, I dont think the comparison works well.
OP here. I was joking. It doesn’t surprise me at all to hear that some people are bothered by chalk. I am not. I don’t even mind graffiti if artfully done (I know, it’s subjective). I don’t mind much of what others do. I love this place!
OK, I posted the “helpful” post above but now that I’ve scrolled down and seen the Bed Stuy noise one, I know I’ve been had. Thing is, one day my kids had a lemonade stand and they wrote “lemonade” on the corner and drew a single yellow line to our house mid block. One of the neighbors, an oldtimer, came by, incensed, and asked that we not let our children put graffiti on her sidewalk. It was a single line of yellow chalk drawn by a six-year old! The post isn’t all that outrageous.
Just in case the post was serious, OP, sidewalk chalk is normal and you are out of line. So out of line, in fact, that most people assume you are joking.
go for it
Not that dogs piss all over the sidewalk or anything. I think the OP can do better than this in the comedy dept.
OK, I’m not saying that this post is or isn’t genuine, but I just want to mention that there used to be this old guy who would hang out all day in Underwood Park in Clinton Hill and bust kids and their parents for drawing on the ground with chalk (he was taking the law against graffiti very seriously). He did other things too – locked the park at night, etc. – but he was just determined that kids were not going to draw with chalk in his park. So there are people out there who think that chalk on sidewalk is graffiti. Can’t imagine it really causing a problem with shoes, though. I mean, walk down any sidewalk in NYC, and chalk will be the cleanest and most pleasant thing you’ll be likely to step in.
Get a life loser!!!!
Am i the only person that thought this was pretty funny 🙂 People need to lighten up!!!