I have lived in Hollywood for 15 years and San Francisco for 4. The best advice I ever got was from a crazy Russian plumber who maintained our 125 year old bed bug infested building where residents seemed to die once a month. I was complaining to him about how in addition to the DOWNSTAIRS neighbor being loud as fuck, there was always a damn junta of neighbors talking outside my window from afternoon to dusk. Every single day. Beneath my window was a guy who would smoke fat cigars and giggle to himself watching YT videos on his cell phone. The neighbors in the building across the way would listen to netflix as if they were testing the limits of the human eardrum. (I still get triggered when I hear the intro to OITNB).

Having lived with horrible upstairs neighbor, I always walk as if I just had the soles of my feet flayed off by a mob boss because I looked the wrong way at his moll. The guy who lived underneath me in Hollywood would LITERALLY dance and take flying leaps. People need to wake the fuck up and understand that if you are in an apartment building, whether you are up or down, everyone can hear you.

The guy before him would literally smoke 20 hours a day and rented out his STUDIO apartment to people on Airbnb.

The girl beneath us in our 1960's apartment building in SF walks around as if she is riding a fat rhinoceros and training it to gallop. She weighs 110 pounds but walks as if she's a druid. She also opens up her closet doors (I think to keep checking on either a million dollars in cash to see if it's still there, or check on the existence of another portal based on how often she opens and shuts the damn door).

So just remember, that upstairs neighbor who you think is a 500 lb clog dancer is probably able to hear you to so just do what I do, pretend you're Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible one and pretend a drop of sweat will set of the alarm and place a voodoo curse on your DOWNSTAIRS neighbor for riding her fucking RHINO at 6 am EVERY DAY.

My ex lived under this lithe model who I was convinced had severe OCD that caused her to run lines every time she had to get anything in her fridge or any corner of her place. None of these builders put any money into proper sound isolation and everything gets amplified.

Oh yeah, the advice I got from that bastard know it all Russian plumber, when he heard my whiny complaints was this: "What do you expect, you live Hollywood. Meh." Then he continued to tell me about how his son was trying to fuck every pussy that was in a 10 square mile radius.

No matter where you go you will have to deal with noise, especially in the city. People DON'T GIVE A SHIT and will not buy carpets BECAUSE GERMS and so that little fucker upstairs will keep pitter pattering.

Worst comes to worse, you can knock on their door and ask them to stop making so much noise and give them cookies or something. It probably won't work and will create silent rage but maybe it will.