Dear Prudence,
My husband I recently purchased our first house and moved in with our 1-year-old child. We love our house and the neighbors we’ve gotten to know thus far, with one exception: the neighbor three doors down who blasts music on his front porch one or two afternoons each week. I don’t object to playing music on one’s own porch, or even the music he plays (almost exclusively ’90s R&B), but he plays it so loudly that we can hear it—and feel the thumping bass—inside our own home. As far as we can tell, he’s the only person on the block who plays music on his porch. It doesn’t seem to be some kind of neighborhood tradition to which we are newcomers. I’ve asked him to turn it down a few times, mostly when his music seems to be preventing our kid from taking a nap. I feel awkward and uncomfortable when I do so, partly because I never seem to encounter this neighbor in other settings and so the building blocks of our neighbor-to-neighbor relationship consist solely of brief conversations in which either me or my husband ask him to turn down his music. Sometimes there’s a noticeable reduction in volume in response to our request ... and sometimes not. We plan on living here for the foreseeable future and would really like to be on good terms with all our neighbors. How can we politely communicate that the volume of his front porch jam sessions needs to be set at something more reasonable?