Ok, so not quite a roomie, but: my upstairs neighbor plays Dance Dance Revolution or some similar jumping game at all hours. I've tried to ask him to keep it down several times - approaching him not even a large proportion of the times he's done this, and only ever when he's up to it on weeknights past midnight - only to be met with what I'm frankly interpreting as hostility. He will not agree to stop; the first time I tried to talk he wouldn't even acknowledge me as I was knocking on and pleading through his window over the span of 1-3am. Any time I do try to ask it seems that things just get worse for a while. I've even talked to my landlord, who seems shocked at his behavior and has spoken to him about it, but he's still at it... more often than ever in my mind, although in all honesty at this point it may just be that I've been dealing with this since at least August and am starting to lose perspective/patience.
I've found the Somerville Noise Ordinances
here, and am wondering to what extent they apply to my situation. I am particularly intrigued by 9-116(17), which prohibits
"the operation of any device that creates vibration which is above the vibration perception threshold of an individual at or beyond the property boundary"
among other things. Do you know, would jumping around violently on someone else's ceiling for long stretches, shaking the building enough that it bothers my roomies even at the other end of the apartment, qualify as such vibration? I'm worried this "device" reference actually only means not using jackhammers or something like that.
Perhaps more of y'all would be familiar with the more general: what happens if you call the police about a noise disturbance? I'm not planning to do this without further conversations with my roomies, the tenant in question (if he'll talk), and the landlord, but ultimately if he refuses to stop waking me this is something I'm considering. I don't have a decibel meter, though, and while the activity in question is clearly a nuisance (it wakes me up Every. Single. Time. and at this point I'm anxious enough about it that even once he's stopped it takes hours for me to get back to sleep), I am not sure just how much weight that carries once you've made a For-Serious Complaint. Do I risk getting in trouble if they determine he's within his noise-making rights? How is such a determination made? Have you had any experience with either end of a noise complaint, and if so, how did it go?
For what it's worth, I used to quite enjoy DDR.