BAD NEIGHBORS

The other day, I was curious about loft prices these days in New York City and while checking out craigslist, I came across a building in Brooklyn's Bushwick, a place called the McKibbin lofts, a pair of old warehouse buildings facing each other.
But, this story isn't so much about loft living, as it is about 20-something hipster types trying to find their way in the big city, very much like the artists of the 60's and 70's did in Manhattan's East Village. So, I stumble upon the following open letter to the people who kept him up half the night. Enjoy!

This is a letter to the very loud couple from what I believe is the third floor of my building:

I heard your argument last night. Or should I say this morning, at 5am? It doesn’t really matter. Let me just start by saying “Bravo.” Really, I’m impressed. I didn’t think it was possible for two people to cram so much idiocy into the space of a thirty-minute yelling match, but boy did you prove me wrong.

I must admit, at first I was slightly interested in what was causing such horrendous noise. Then, once you became loud enough for me to start making out every word you were saying, I was amused at how comically juvenile you are.

This didn’t last long though. You see, elevated voices clearly weren’t enough for you. No, you needed to start screaming. This was ok, everyone needs to scream now and then. But I started to lose patience after the thirtieth or fortieth high-pitched loud-as-fuck repetition of, and I quote, “I FUCKING HATE YOU SO BAD.” Ignoring for a second the fact that this statement contains a grammatical mistake we learn to correct in the fourth grade, I—no, wait, I can’t ignore that. Honestly, how old are you, 12?

And then there’s the slightly important fact that it was 5 am. That’s five in the morning. On a Sunday night. You know about Mondays, right? You know about jobs? Quite clearly you don’t, so let me explain: you see, I’m sure it’s nice being a worthless scum-of-the-earth hipster shit-stain whose parents pay for everything, but some of us have responsibilities in the morning. You know, like work, and school.

Of course, if it was just me you had woken up, I could forgive you, despite the fact that it took me over an hour to fall back asleep. But you woke my roommates up too. And the guests we had sleeping in our common room. You woke up the kids who live across the hall from us. You live here; you should know that our walls are little more than mouse-eaten cardboard. And seeing as you eventually took your argument into what I can only assume was the stairwell, which echoes wonderfully and is, naturally, a conduit to the rest of the premises, I am going to go ahead and figure that you probably woke up the entire fucking building, you loud stupid whore.

I feel bad for your boyfriend, honestly. If you were as quiet as he was you wouldn’t even have woken me. Johnny, was his name? You screamed it numerous times, but between your choking sobs and clear mental retardation I had a hard time making it out for sure.
There are plenty of fish in the sea, Johnny, and you had to go and pick the only bird. Get out while you still can.

So, girl, let me sum up what I know about you from what I heard last night: you are a very loud, obnoxious idiot whose complete show of disregard and lack of respect for those around you underlies an utterly disgusting level of self-centeredness. You clearly can’t function in society (and shouldn’t be allowed to anyways), and so my suggestion is you go back home to Staten Island, or straight to Hell. They’re pretty much the same place anyways.




Quite funny, I thought. So, I did some further research and found out that this building is notorious for it's raucous, 20-something parties. Sounds like a fun place, if you don't want to sleep and smell like crap in the morning. But, here's what the New York Times had to say about this little gem of a loft building.

"Who cares if the walls are paper thin and people honk saxophones and bang drums at 3 a.m., when a band and audience can be assembled without leaving home? So what if bedbugs ravage all of one’s earthly belongings if it means couch surfing with the cute painter in Apartment 2F? And if people’s iPods and cellphones mysteriously vanish after nonresidents visit Potion, the McKibbin’s in-house coffee shop, what of it? That just means the McKibbin is keeping it real."


Even, Wikipedia takes up an entire page on a crummy looking loft building in a not so desirable neighborhood.

"255 McKibbin St. is a five-story residential loft building and in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Each of its five floors is subdivided into 16 apartment units, ranging in size from approximately 400 to 2500 square feet (five units between the first and second floors are duplexes). Approximately 200 tenants in 75 units inhabit 255 McKibbin Street. The building has a reputation for hosting raucous all-night "loft parties." Given this, and the preponderance of twentysomething recent college graduates living in 255 McKibbin Street, the building has been given the nickname "the McKibbin Street dorm."