Highrise Living
The city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada is quite a nice place, but it's certainly spawned some odd neighbours for me.

I moved here nine years ago, into my first proper flat on my own. It was in a huge highrise building, with eight units on each floor. First day there, I met the mad old woman from down the hall. She offered to be my mother; I politely declined her offer. She was as mad as a hat and probably should have been in some sort of care facility. I felt quite bad for her, as no one ever seemed to visit, and she wore the same clothes every day, it seemed (although they were always clean). Every time she'd manage to corner me for a bit of conversation, she'd complain about how the upstairs neighbours were trying to kill her by boring through the ceiling into her apartment. Yes...

About six months after I moved in, the apartment on the other side was taken over by a young couple with a new baby. No problem, as the units were pretty soundproof. No problem, that is, until they started taking their drug habits and personal problems out into the hall, and would often have shouting competitions with each other just outside my door. One day, I came home to find all of the guy's personal belongings piled outside the door in the hallway. They both disappeared shortly thereafter. Ah, chavs.

Then there was the taxi driver a little further up the hall. He always, without fail, reeked of whiskey and looked like he'd spent the night sleeping in the bathtub: crazy gray hair, wild, bloodshot eyes, consumptive quality cough. Your typical taxi driver, in other words. About two years after I moved in, he moved out to take care of his mother somewhere up north, and left a bunch of his stuff behind. It turned out that he was an artist, and there were about 80 awful oil paintings - a la Bob Ross, only worse (see www.bobross.com for the awful details) - of trees, rocks, mountains, and other poorly executed scenery. There were also over a hundred pairs of ladies' high heeled shoes. They were all in size 12. There was an enormous plastic bin on wheels of them that had to be taken away by building maintenance staff. Some were clearly...soiled.

A little further up the hall was the male stripper. He was extremely fit, but also extremely rude, and wouldn't lower himself to speak with us lowly plebs.

Apart from that, it was mostly Asian students, who were all very quiet and polite. All in all, it was an okay place to live - and surprisingly quiet, despite the loons.
(BlackArmadillo Avoided writing that article on, Fri 2 Oct 2009, 2:45, Reply)