Featured on @StorylineReddit: November 16, 2025
Around midnight, the patio fills. Voices stretch longer than they need to. Someone drags a chair across concrete. The garage door rolls up and music leaks out into the street, climbs the brick, reaches a second-floor window where someone is trying to sleep.
This isn’t really about Christmas music. It’s about what happens when a building changes its tempo and nobody agrees on who gets to keep time. A sushi restaurant that used to close by ten becomes a bar that stays open past one. The sidewalk stays brighter. The nights get longer. A tenant goes downstairs during the day, asks for some consideration, and is told flatly that he can move if it bothers him.
So he doesn’t move.
Instead, something small and deliberate begins. A speaker in a window. A song on repeat. A patio that empties a little sooner than it used to. From the street it probably looks ridiculous. From the bedroom above, it sounds different.
No one files a complaint. Not then.
The conflict turns on a shift in neighborhood equilibrium rather than a single outburst. A long-established, early-closing restaurant gives way to a late-night bar that explicitly positions itself as the final stop when everything else shuts down. The tenant directly above the patio absorbs most of that change and attempts a direct conversation with the owner. The exchange fails quickly and changes the tone of the dispute.
Rather than escalate through official channels, the resident adopts an informal countermeasure projecting music back into the shared airspace when late-night noise peaks. He ties it to specific behavior: open garage door, raised voices, music spilling outward. The tactic alters the bar’s operations. The patio quiets. The door stays closed more often.
The dynamic widens when a chaotic holiday party draws police attention and licensing scrutiny. External authority interrupts what had been a contained standoff. Management shifts. Hours shorten. The business reopens with a more conventional restaurant posture.
The practical problem recedes. The question underneath it lingers.
Text Version
AITA for trying to drive people away from the bar below my apartment?
CONCLUDED
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/_Jesus_Swept
AITA for trying to drive people away from the bar below my apartment?
Originally posted to r/AITAH
Thanks to u/soayherder for suggesting this BoRU
Original Post June 8, 2025
I live on the second floor of a building in a large west coast city. I have lived in this apartment for 8 years, and most of my neighbors have been there 10+ years.
The street level of my building houses shops, two restaurants, a bakery and a tattoo parlor. It’s a pretty quiet street, and all the street level businesses close up between 9-10pm. Up until about 8-9ish months ago, the restaurant directly below me was a sushi place since way before I moved in. They have a patio with 7-8 tables that juts out onto the sidewalk. I was a regular there, and was super bummed when it closed. It was the owners finally retiring and moving to be closer to their grandkids, so whatyagonnado.
The building was empty for about 3 months, until I noticed some construction going on. Found out it was a local entrepreneur who owns several bars and restaurants in my city. No big deal, kinda stoked because his other places have the best burgers. The issue was, that he wanted this to be more of a bar than a restaurant. That meant they would stay open until 2am on the weekends, 1am on the weekdays.
I heard through the grapevine that the reason he picked that location is that everything closes early, and he would have the spot everyone in the area would go to when the other places closed up. My neighbors and I were not thrilled, but oh well.
After operating a month or two, it became clear this was a bar targeting the 21-26 year old demographic. That’s fine, do what you do. I’m 40, so I’m not an old man, and I still stay out late on occasion. But most nights I do go to bed fairly early.
The issue is, the bar patrons get reallllly loud and kinda rowdy around midnight, and they talk super loudly on the patio which is below my window. The bar has a garage type door they open when the weather is nice to access the patio, so when it’s open, I can also hear the loud music being played from inside, and I can hear it (faintly) through my floor.
Being the diplomat I am, I went to the bar during the day one day I knew the owner would be there to chat with him about my concerns. He basically told me I could move if I didn’t like it and was really dismissive. Ok then.
About 2 weeks later around 11pm, I was at my limit with the drunk screaming conversations happening outside. I figured that if the owner had no issue with noise, I would participate. If you can’t beat em, join em sort of thing. I got out my fairly powerful bluetooth speaker, and set it up in my window on a small table I have there. I connected it to an old phone I had, and started playing “Jingle Bells” (the Frank Sinatra version, of course. I do have some class) on repeat. Then I left my place and went to play cards and a local casino until after the bar was closed. I got back at 2:30am and turned off the music and went to sleep.
I repeated this 4-5 times a week for 3ish more weeks, and started noticing that the garage door to the bar was closed more often than not. The only people hanging on the patio were smokers, and they didn’t stay long. As long as it stayed quiet, I didn’t play Jingle Bells, but when it got loud and rowdy, the music came on and stayed on until they closed. I only did my stunt on days they had the patio door open and it would get loud, never just because.
My petty revenge is obviously costing him business, because they are starting to close earlier, and the patio is usually empty because they keep the garage door closed. I started to feel a little bad, but he was so dismissive of me when I wanted to chat and find a solution, I didn’t really have a choice besides move or suck it up. My building is rent controlled, so moving was never an option for me. I am surprised the owner or manager haven’t tried to come talk to me, but maybe they don’t negotiate with musical terrorists.
My dad thinks I’m being petty, and some of my friends agree. Some think its hilarious, and some think I’m TA because I am costing him and the workers there money. We are currently on a 10 day ‘no holiday spirit’ streak, and it’s been nice like it was when the old couple had the place downstairs.
So, AITA?
RELEVANT COMMENTS
Dishothefish
NTA I think this is fair, you tried to be diplomatic, the guy was a dick so fight fire with fire. Its your home and he wasn’t being respectful of the disruption he was causing to you and the other people who rent. In the UK we have laws about excessive noise and places have signs about trying to be quieter for neighbours where there are late closing businesses, is there nothing you were able to do legally to stop the noise issues? Also what do the other neighbours think?
OOP
My neighbors are all on board with it. I talked to the ones on either side and above me before I started. They said it won’t be worse than what we were dealing with and were glad I wanted to try something.
&
Even the building supe told me to go for it. He was not happy about the noise either.
Update Oct 13, 2025
Got a couple update requests, so here it is.
The Update
Welp, I have some things to report in the Holiday Spirit Wars of 2025
They had a massive 4th of July party and it got way out of hand. My Sinatra Defense SystemTM was powerless against the loud music and yelling that was going on. People were all over the sidewalk smoking and yelling and it was a whole thing. There was a fight, cops were called, bar shut down for the night.
To those that guessed they were not approved for that sort of establishment, you were correct. Turns out there is a license here called a ‘nightclub’ license or something similar you gotta have to stay open late night hours. The LCB was notified by the police I’m guessing, and they came in soon after that and pulled their license to serve all booze pending a hearing or something. It ended up not mattering, because they just closed the doors.
It was reopened like the last week of August ish. Same name but just as a restaurant. They posted new hours and they now closed at 10pm daily. Some new signs went up that seemed to be focusing on the food more than booze, so things were gonna change.
Few days later I decided to be a bit nosey and went in for lunch. I sat at the bar and chatted with the bartender. I asked him what was up with the rebrand, and he told me that the owners business partner was taking over running their properties. Apparently, the owner that was sort of a dick to me in the first post is kinda having a tough go of it. I guess he’s getting divorced, and is just partying and drinking super hard to cope or whatever.
Kinda made me feel bad, so I confessed to the bartender that I was the Jingle Bells Bandit. He started laughing and goes ‘Oh your that guy?!’. He said the previous bartender was a buddy of his and told him about it. He also told me the reason he never escalated things in our little war was because he didn’t want me to complain to the city. Still have no idea why nobody else called, but my place is the one directly above the bar so I took the worst of it.
The 4th of July party was the first time I had seen the garage doors open since my first post, so I thought we had a truce. Guy says that the new managing partner told the old guy not to have the party but he did anyway. So thats why he’s managing their properties now. Idk if he’s doing them all now or what the deal is, but I won’t see the other guy for a bit.
So thats it. They do make a good burger though. I’ve been in a few times since. The new staff is super nice, and the patio below my window is open most of the time and its fine. Its just people having lunch and dinner talking at a normal volume and doing it sober, which is nice.
Source
At first, it reads like an ordinary nuisance story. A resident loses sleep. A business pursues customers. But the daytime conversation downstairs “you could move if you don’t like it” tightens something. After that, the dispute feels less like inconvenience and more like a boundary being tested.
The response is oddly methodical. A Bluetooth speaker. An old phone dedicated to one purpose. Frank Sinatra’s “Jingle Bells” looping into the night. He places the speaker on a small table by the window and leaves for the casino. He returns after closing time and turns it off. Four or five nights a week. When the patio gets loud, the song begins. When it stays quiet, it doesn’t.
The garage door starts staying down. Smokers step outside briefly, then disappear back inside. Midnight conversations shorten. No speeches are made. No formal complaints filed.
Then July 4 happens and the scale shifts abruptly. A fight. Police. Licensing pulled. The informal contest gives way to public consequences. It’s not a clean escalation so much as a rupture.
Later, over lunch, the tone changes again. The resident sits at the bar and tells the bartender he was the one playing the music. The bartender laughs “Oh, you’re that guy?” and explains why no one escalated: they didn’t want the city involved. The owner, it turns out, is going through a divorce, drinking hard, losing grip on a few things.
That detail doesn’t erase the earlier dismissal. It just reframes it slightly.
Now the patio is open most afternoons. People eat burgers. They talk at a normal volume. The garage door lifts and lowers without incident.
Some tensions don’t disappear. They settle into the background and wait.
