I have neighbors that have chickens at our getaway house–we get a dozen eggs every time we go up there.
Man those are some good fucking eggs.
Of course, I give them fresh trout throughout the spring, summer, and fall, when I go fishing.
All the other neighbors also end up trading things from time to time–my other negihbor had a shit load of vegetables at the end of the summer and gave us a big basket full–they got some fish too.
So, I’m the fish guy, we have a vegetable couple, and the chicken couple, etc., etc.
There are about a fifteen houses in sight of mine, and I know the residents of seven of them at least well enough to stop and chat with them. Have gone to parties at both houses across the street, and have babysat the little girl next door and moved heavy items with her father. (A freezer at his house, and a bathtub at my place.)
Have replaced several broken window panes for my other next-door neighbor. (Autistic teenage daughter, who often breaks windows when she gets mad, so the replacements are Plexiglas.)
Yet another neighbor is an ED nurse at the same hospital where I work.
Used to know more neighbors, but there’s been a little turnover lately - a divorce, two moves into elder housing, and a death.
All large lots so we are not close physically. Mostly professionals so we never see each other. It’s perfect I tell ya!
I think there is an interesting psychological phenomenon in effect here. When you have physical space between you and your neighbors, you are freed to create closer bonds with them. Conversely, in high density housing, the physical closeness brings about a need for social distance.
I feel like I see the opposite effect. Living in town, it seems that most of my neighbors are the sort of people who like to live closer to others. On the other side of things, it seems like my coworkers who live out in the sticks are always having problems with neighbors.
I’ve speculated that it’s self-defeating to try to get away from living with neighbors. You’ll be surrounded by other people who are trying to do the same, and they make for crappy neighbors.
A possible alternate explanation is just that the Augusta area sucks.
I live in a neighborhood of 41 houses surrounded by farmland . I know the names of almost all the residence of the neighborhood. Most of them I would stop and talk to if I saw the outside the neighborhood.
I knew all my neighbors when I was growing up. Lived in that home for 20 years until I graduated college and moved out. Though actually, there were two new neighbors who moved in when I was older (high school), and I barely knew them. Even though my parents moved recently, I still go back and talk to some of those neighbors if I’m in town, though quite a few have passed away. It was an older folks neighborhood when we first moved in, much more young families now though. Maybe that has something to do with it. They had a bit more time to be involved with their neighbors instead of working and dealing with family all the time.
I lived in my last apartment for almost 4 years and wouldn’t recognize one of my neighbors if I saw her on the street. I might have seen her once. But there were the older lobby dwellers that I’d see all the time and talk with. So I never really knew my direct “neighbors”, but I knew plenty of people in the building.
Thread inspired from questioning lack of community these days. I actually feel like I know my neighbors pretty well within at least 2 houses in all directions and then several others scattered around the neighborhood. Does that seem like a lot to you? Not many?
I make an effort to know my neighbors. I speak regularly to one and occasionally to the others, but all three of the houses adjacent to me are spanish speaking households. So the remaining one doesn’t even make an effort to speak english.
But if you want my opinion. We have become less reliant on neighbors and our community in general because we have come to believe that the gov’t will help us out with welfare if we are in need. People would rarely consider asking a neighbor for help. At least that is my opinon. So there really isn’t much of incentive to “KNOW” your neighbors.
We live in an old school traditional neighborhood where we know 90% of the people on our block at least in passing and a group of about 10-12 families we’re fairly close with. There are 4 couples we consider very close friends. Actually, our little suburb is very old school in that regard. Between my wife and I there are a couple hundred people we know by name within a mile or so of our house.
For us, alot of it has to do with the kids. They were young when we moved in and there were other families with kids our ages and those are the ones we are closest with. If we moved in now, we’d still know almost everyone but we probably would not have many close relationships.
I’d have to know what “high density house” actually is. But I know my neighbors very well, we get together a lot for the Super Bowl and other events. My neighbor’s house is 50’ from mine, feels somewhat of a close distance, and I know both to my sides rather well. One guy helps me out with home repair projects a lot, and I provide him with free labor. All great people.
I’d say it really depends more on the factors at play than just density. But maybe with McMansions that are 15’ apart it happens?
I don’t know my neighbors very well at all. I only know one of them, and they are actually quite a ways down the road, well enough to leave my kids with them. Actually I do know a couple neighbors well enough to know I WOULDN’T leave my kids with them
Worse yet I’d say probably 50% of the people I know don’t know their neighbors at all or only the occasional “Wave and smile”.
I’m in kind of an odd position because I’m in a “Semi rural” location. The closest house to me is probably 100feet away so it’s not a typical neighborhood. We even have an annual block party…I thinks thats the only time I actually see many of my neighbors.
I know all the neighbors to the right of my property for a mile - both of them. To the left I know my next door neighbor well and the next two in passing.
I know quite a few within about 5 or 6 miles in a nod and wave kind of way as I always run by their house.
I got to know one about a half mile down the road because she yelled at me for making her dog chase me when I was on my bike, somehow yelling NO! STOP! was inducing her dog to chase me. She must have missed the part about it chasing me before I said anything.
But my two next door neighbors I know well. The one has 4-H livestock I’ll watch when they are gone and the other side has a brother with a tree service so we share firewood cutting. I also have a large vegetable garden that I share with them.
According to the latest census results I have about 230,000 neighbors within 2 miles of me. We aren’t really that close. However…
A bunch of them know my wife and I as the idiots that run in the all kinds of weather no matter what and most of them actually wave and say high. Once in a while one of them will see one of us and say high in a store or on the street.
My son went to school with the kid next door and they are still best friends. So they know each other’s parents, and we see them and talk to them a lot, but they have never been my house and I have never been in theirs. The house on the other side is a rental and although we never have problems, it changes often enough that we have never gotten to know them. There are 2 houses across the street. One had a daughter that used to trick-or-treat at our house every year. I think she is now grown and gone, or at least is old enough that we don’t see her. The other house has a retired husband and wife in it, the original residents on the block. Their kids are in law enforcement - one for the FBI, one for NYPD, and the other for Suffolk County. I see all of them often and have made it a point to be friends with them as much as possible. Never hurts to know guys like that.
We know our neighbors on the surrounding streets very well. We all have kids in school within a couple of years of each others so there is common ground.
There are are four suites in my house (including mine) - I know my land lady and one of the tennants quite well. The other tennant is rarely around and not inclined to talk when she is. I tell my land lady when I’m away so she can take in the mail and keep an eye/ear out for anything going on in my suite.
To the East is an empty house (very strange in Vancouver, the land alone is probably worth at least 1/2 Million). To the West is a young family that I talk to occaissionally, I can never remember the wife’s name so sometimes I just wave as I’m embarassed.
The owner of the next house West actually waved and acknowledged me this weekend, I’ve lived on the street for three years so this is a big deal. In another three years I might actually get to know their names.
There are a lot of folks who speak English as a second language so that’s a bit of a barrier, plus there are a reasonable number of renters who probably feel transient and not inclined to get to know their neighbours.
I actually tried to warn someone on my block that their car was in danger - a big branch on one of the trees lining our street had snapped after a wind storm and was hanging, held by a tiny strip of bark, over his car. I knocked on his door and he opened the peep hole and almost wouldn’t come out of his house except that I insisted. Once he figured out I wasn’t trying to sell something, rob him or get mad at him he thanked me. Haven’t talked to him since though.
I’m thinking of asking the elementary school across the street to put me on their mailing list if they have bottle drives or need donations of items - it’s so close it would be easy to drop things off. As I don’t have kids, however, I don’t know if this would be considered weird.
We know our immediate neighbors enough to be neighborly and watch out for each others homes, but I’ve never set foot in their houses. On one side is a spunky elderly lady who is our vet’s mom. She got stuck on her roof a few years ago (pruning a tree) and I had a contractor who was working at my place go help her down. She loves our giant dog and doesn’t seem to mind that our cats hunt around her bird feeders. On the other side we have an odd couple. They’re very quite but nice. If he made news for some psycho crime someday I wouldn’t be surprised. Our dog hates him. We sometimes shovel eachother’s walks and rake eachother’s leaves, it’s a nice friendly but not friends situation. We are also friendly wiht several other people in the neighborhood and town. The town population is ab out 3500 total, so we run into people we know anytime we go out and about.
I live in an old bungalow-style neighborhood and know pretty much everyone on my block. Three neighbors have keys to my house. The people two down from me I have known for about 20 years and through numerous cities. We have an annual block party where we shut down the street for the afternoon/evening and get bouncy castles and big spreads of food. Almost any given Friday afternoon in the spring/summer/fall there are people gathered outside on front yards and porches drinking wine or beer. People hang out on their front porches, not their back patios.
Immediately to our left is “the black family” because well, they are black. Good people but they have an autistic kid who kinda throws them off socially and makes for some awkward getting to know you situations. Immediately to our right is the “wife beater”, even though they are boyfriend and girlfriend renting the house, he still beats her. Seriously he does, cops are there at least once a month. Accross the street were our idols, happy young couple with a newborn who was cute as hell. We wanted them to live perfect lives with their perfect little house…until…we saw “TA” there one night. “TA” refers to the first letter of the license plate on the RAV4 that now comes by a couple of times a week…at night. Apparently “he” is a businessman who spent a little too much time in Germany where he met a new girl and fell in love. “She” must have had someone else to fill his position as “daddy” pretty quick because now “TA” is there all the time and even spends the night! We don’t know any of the others, but we do have nicknames for all of them.
My favorites though were the gay couple down the street. When we first moved in, we were walking the dog past there house while they were having a dinner party. We were stopped dead in our tracks when we heard one of the guys yell “Of course I whipped my dick out on the first date, I wanted him to see what he was getting himself into!” Man they had a nice lawn…
To one side is a couple SWMBO has known for years when she taught the wife to do accounts for her dads business.
On the other side is another couple who we know by name and they pop round every so often when we have kittens in that we foster for the local animal sanctuary.
Other than that around us we know the rest by sight and by what cars they drive but no names.
Then when i’m away at work I rent a room in an apartment thats divided into just bedrooms so no communal space other than kitchen and bathroom and tbh other than 1 of the 6 tenants I don’t even know there names. 1 i’m not sure i’ve ever seen let alone spoke too!
We’ve been in our neighborhood for 2 years and we don’t know our neighbors well at all. Tom and Cathy live to our left. I’ve had one conversation with our neighbors to our right and would be unlikely to pick them out of a line up if I had to. I know Bret from 2 houses down and that the neighbors across from us have an Itallian last name.
My brother ,OTOH, knows all of his neighbors. The biggest differences are we live on 1/3 acre lots and all have 2 car garages (so you don’t see people coming and going). They live on 1/5 acre lots with no garages. We also aren’t positioned very well to see our neighbors very often. We can only realy see 6 houses from where we are, and only 2 of them are relatively close with a direct line of site.
I know my neighbors on either side of me. One house has a 80+ year old couple who is always working in their yard. The other side is their son and his family. The son built my house as a project house. He wasn’t a very good carpenter. He would help me out if I asked but we don’t “hang out” together. I met some others during the snow storm when we were all trapped like rats.
Man that’s a lot of people. Do you live in New Delhi or something?