Passive aggressive note-leaving neighbour cops a serve

PASSIVE aggressive notes call for an appropriate response, and this cheeky neighbour put the fun police in their place.

“CALL someone who cares.”

That was the cheeky response of a Western Australian man who gave his passive aggressive note-leaving neighbour the ultimate smackdown.

An apartment building in the Perth entertainment hub of Northbridge has become a gentrification battleground, with a war of words breaking out between its NIMBY inhabitants and those who embrace the area’s lively character.

It all started with a notice placed in the common area, urging residents to dob in the nearby Jack Rabbit Slim’s nightclub for “excessive noise”, helpfully listing the local council’s after hours contact number.

While at least two other residents shared their concern, writing on the notice that they were sick of the late night bass beats, one neighbour wrote: “You probably shouldn’t have moved into the night-life capital of WA.”

Local DJ Ace Basik — who lives in the building — decided to get creative, crossing out the council details and leaving the contact number for Lifeline.

“My apartment literally overlooks Jack Rabbits and I cop the brunt of any noise made, but a) it isn’t that bad, and b) I accept the fact that I live in a night-life precinct,” he wrote on Facebook.

“Rent is cheaper and houses are bigger in the ’burbs. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t actively choose to be here.”

NIMBY wars.

Fellow Perth DJ Timbee vented in a Facebook post of his own, lashing out at the residents whose complaints he said were killing the city’s arts community.

“Northbridge has seen the closure of a number of venues as residential ratepayers out number the voting power of venues more than tenfold,” he wrote.

“They seek to actively target and destroy a community which was there long before these whingeing yuppies took up residence in a completely inappropriate location.”

He said families should not move to the area if they were worried about their children being kept awake at night.

“You relinquished your right to complain about noise when you sought out a lease next to a famous nightspot,” DJ Timbee said.

“Unless you are a special sort of moronic ninny, I have to assume that you were aware that your property backed onto a bar or nightclub and it didn’t just appear one day as you were watching Channel-7’s Sunrise while eating your almond-milk paleo gluten free porridge.”

Jack Rabbit Slim’s has been operating under various names in Northbridge for more than two decades.

The clash between residents and music venues is one that has played out in gentrifying inner-city suburbs around Australia, from Melbourne’s St Kilda to Sydney’s Kings Cross, where grungy nightclubs and brothels have made way for apartment developments, yoga studios and hipster cafes.

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