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Old 03-11-2012, 08:38 AM
 
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Minding one's own business is an urban trait in my opinion as people typically have a lot more on their minds than "what was that noise?' or "who was that knocking at the neighbor's door?" whereas in suburbia people are less involved typically and more time and effort is spent observing. So I think the short answer is large cities is where one should look for people minding their own business.
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Old 03-11-2012, 11:19 AM
 
Location: Southwest Desert
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Are there any "happy medium" type of areas? I don't want to live around "busy-bodies" and "gossips." But it doesn't feel good to be completely ignored all the time either! (Where a person could die and no one would know for a long time!)...I enjoy being around people who have a minimal amount of curiosity and some interest in others. Don't want to live in total "shut-down." How do you feel about it?
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Old 03-11-2012, 12:09 PM
 
Location: Elsewhere
88,053 posts, read 83,895,248 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CArizona View Post
Are there any "happy medium" type of areas? I don't want to live around "busy-bodies" and "gossips." But it doesn't feel good to be completely ignored all the time either! (Where a person could die and no one would know for a long time!)...I enjoy being around people who have a minimal amount of curiosity and some interest in others. Don't want to live in total "shut-down." How do you feel about it?
This happened not long ago in suburban NJ. Old man was in his house, dead for a YEAR. Neighbors complained to the town about his overgrown yard, but then one of them, knowing the guy in the house was elderly, went over and cut the lawn, but never knocked on the door to actually check on the guy. (He was known to be cranky.) The mail was piling up FOR A YEAR--but the mail carrier never said a word, just threw the new mail on the pile. Finally one of the neighbors realized that they hadn't seen the old man out walking for a long time, which he used to do, and called the police.

The man had one known relative, a nephew, with whom he wasn't in much contact.

It made me wonder if anyone would know if I was dead before my starving cats ate my body. I mean, my daughter is at college, and she probably wouldn't be alarmed at first if she couldn't reach me for a few days. Work would likely notice if I didn't show up, though. They'd probably send threatening messages to my Blackberry demanding an answer to my whereabouts.

I live in a condo complex and have a somewhat nosy neighbor. I like him, but I was taken aback a couple of months after I had a new furnace installed when he told me he noticed that since I got the new furnace, my gas usage had gone down. He was apparently monitoring my gas meter, which is next to his on the outside of our building. On the other hand, I was out back in my fenced-in patio area telling someone on the phone that I couldn't figure out how to get the camera in my laptop to work again (I had disabled it some time earlier) and after I hung up, this same neighbor yelled over the fence to me that he could probably fix my computer. He came over, and he did. He makes sushi for a living, but in his home country of Malaysia, he was a computer hardware technician.
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Old 03-11-2012, 12:27 PM
 
Location: Los Angeles, CA
4,992 posts, read 5,916,521 times
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Originally Posted by scottyr View Post
anywhere less urban than NYC or Chicago where people tend to be less noisy than the norm?
It's probably pretty well related with both population density and culture. If someone lives in a quiet residential area where strangers are rare, then you see more of that. If someone lives in an urban or otherwise more active and noisy area, you'll see less.
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Old 03-11-2012, 04:05 PM
 
Location: Old Town Alexandria
14,496 posts, read 26,517,064 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CArizona View Post
Are there any "happy medium" type of areas? I don't want to live around "busy-bodies" and "gossips." But it doesn't feel good to be completely ignored all the time either! (Where a person could die and no one would know for a long time!)...I enjoy being around people who have a minimal amount of curiosity and some interest in others. Don't want to live in total "shut-down." How do you feel about it?
Still trying to find it A writer's shack on the ocean perhaps.

a happy medium is VERY hard to find, and you won't really know until you already bought the house, at times. In South Florida everyone sort of minds their own business, I had 8 sets of new neighbors in 8 years.

In Tenn., my neighbor is nice, but nosy. She is home 24/7 and spends too much time on FB.

Another poster mentioned urban areas, yes this is true, people are too busy to wonder what package you got in the mail that day or why your ex husband came to visit.

I lived in a brownstone in the city of Boston and people would say hello as you got your mail in the foyer, but they didnt grill you on your life. In suburbia, unfortunately it is hit or miss. It depends on who is next-door to you.
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Old 03-11-2012, 05:07 PM
 
Location: Southwest Desert
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My husband and I ended-up moving out of our suburb home in Oceanside CA due to a neighbor..At first the neighbor (across the street) seemed nice and sweet. I liked her a lot. Then I realized that she "ruled" the neighborhood and a lot of people were secretly afraid of her "wrath."...She always seemed "sugary sweet" but she could be very demanding and pushy. She would drop-by unannounced at any time. And she expected everyone to "drop everything" and be "on call" when she wanted you to come over and see something new that she bought or when she wanted to boast or brag about her kids or grandkids...She "spied" on us (and others) through her kitchen window. She knew what was "going on" in the neighborhood at all times...An older lady and her grandson moved into the house next to us. We liked the new neighbor a lot but the "boss of the neighborhood" across the street from us didn't like her at all! And the "boss" gossipped about the new neighbor left and right and tried to "punish" anyone who liked her. It got to be ridiculous! My husband and I decided to move even though we loved our house!...We just got tired of all the silly games! And tired of having to put-up with a self-appointed "dictator!"
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Old 03-11-2012, 05:21 PM
 
Location: Southwest Desert
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Mightyqueen..Sad about the elderly man who was dead in his house for a year before anyone knew...I think it would take a few days or so before anyone knew that I died. I don't plan to die but I've thought about how long it would take for anyone to find out. (Like you have!)...So if I'm "missing" from CD for a week or so it might mean that I "kicked the bucket." But as I said I'm not planning to "go!"
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Old 03-11-2012, 05:33 PM
 
Location: Southwest Desert
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dreamofmonterey...I agree with you..A neighborhood might be nice and quiet and perfect when we move in but there's no telling what might happen down the road. We had a lot of "boomers" and "party people" move into our neighborhood through the years. The retirees who used to live in the neighborhood either died or moved away and things changed as more and more new people moved in. Sad!
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Old 03-11-2012, 05:40 PM
 
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The bad parts of LA
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Old 03-11-2012, 06:05 PM
 
Location: Minneapolis
2,330 posts, read 3,788,601 times
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I think older middle class white people tend to be nosey in general. It goes hand in hand with the fact that they see the world as a series of potential threats. This paranoid worldview is stongest in small towns and suburbia, at least that is my experience from living in those places.
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