No sunbathing in Georgetown! Photo by Pianoman75

Last week, The Atlantic Cities did us all a favor and posted a handy guide to the 20 types of people you’re likely to find on your neighborhood listserv. It’s a solid list, and includes just about all of the characters that can make the listservs both repositories of useful advice and cesspools of thinly veiled neighborhood animosity.

But today, a particularly humorous posting on a Georgetown listserv (pointed out to us by an insightful DCist commenter) proved just how hard it can be to accurately classify certain people on a listserv. For example, one resident posted quite the rant on Georgetown students sunbathing:

The joy of these recent beautiful, sunny days have been somewhat mitigated for me by the sight of bare-chested, boxer-shorted GU students sunbathing on their front stoop right out on the sidewalk. To add insult to injury, these men are sprawled out on old beat up lawn chairs. I am not talking about a real porch here, but rather the top stair of the front entrance of their run down student house. The sight is very down-market, low rent, college dorm and affects the property values of our homes in this section of Georgetown, as well as the pleasure of walking our charming streets. These people have a back yard! Let them use it for their sunbathing activities.

It is bad enough that the neighbors have to put up with the students’ relentless drunken and disorderly conduct, but to host a slew of Dewey Beach antics on our Georgetown streets is too much! They were recently flipping burgers on a barbecue grill out there, too!!

I hope that the off campus life office at GU requires their students to follow the rules of conduct required for living in a community of permanent residents and remind them that they ARE NOT LIVING ON CAMPUS!!!

This particular poster somewhat approaches the “Dog-Poop Vigilante,” though it’s certainly not poop that raises their ire. Listservs for residential neighborhoods with universities in them — AU Park, Georgetown, Foggy Bottom — really need a sub-classification for these sorts of people. “Student Malfeasance Vigilante,” maybe?

Predictably, there’s this response:

You think that’s bad? Come over to Rose Park. I try to sit near my front window to work, with the window open, fresh breeze blowing in, and the noise is unbearable. I can’t concentrate on my thoughts, what with the toddlers screeching, the nannies chatting on cell phones on the sidewalk below, the dogs barking gleefully, the tennis players having the audacity to try to get some joyful exercise in the 60 degree sun, making grunts as they run for the ball. Ugh, I say.

I would love to send all those noisy beasts packing, to someplace like Herndon, where they’ll be out of sight and out of earshot.

Of course, when I’ve brought this up to my wife, she suggests I’m in danger of becoming a curmudgeon and a crank and I need to chill out just a wee bit. Maybe she’s right.

I suppose I may now expect a retaliatory toddler to throw up this morning’s cheerios on my front stoop. I’ve got 9-11 on speed dial. Because, god knows by some of my neighbor’s logic, any ill that befalls me in the next few days must be one of these little tikes striking back. But I’ll sign my name anyway.

According to The Atlantic’s list, this guy could well be the “Comic,” but he’s also likely a “Lurker” that was moved to action by the relative inanity of sunbathing-related complaints — a “Snarky Voice of Reason,” perhaps.