when there's an Airbnb in one's back yard ...

Below us, there's a large, and improbably ugly house that was built on what used to be this house's garden - when it was even larger (and more unmanageable) than it is today: ugly in the flamboyant, vaguely Mediterranean-on-steroids style beloved of Armenians in Glendale (and probably elsewhere), and ugly, too, because instead of a yard, there's a back patio - with pool and hot tub and elaborate outdoor grill, and rising above that, a very, very solid concrete wall that reaches higher than the house itself (and stops the hill from falling onto it, one supposes) - studded with boulders rather like a climbing wall in a gym.  All the back windows of the house look out onto this.  There's no yard (other, of course, than all of Griffith Park next door).  Such is its complete lack of appeal that we weren't at all surprised - even given the hot housing market - that the owner hasn't been able to sell it (we think he's crushed that his children don't want to come and live in it, and continue the dynasty in the house that he built: architecturally, we can't blame them).

So the inevitable has happened - it's now an Airbnb (4 bedrooms, and a games room with pool table, etc - a snip at $912 a night).  Don't even think of it.  You'd be miserable.  We, though, are miserable when loud music blasts out from down there - this lunchtime, it was hiphop, thudding into my attempts to think about Victorian paintings that interpret Theocritus (yes, I know that's a bit esoteric, but the task is nearly done). And actually, it's been completely quiet since: they must have locked up the children they brought with them. Judging by the Airbnb site, the owner is being reasonably responsible (no parties or "events" allowed; dire warnings about the security cameras and where they are situated and what they show - and knowing him, he will throw terrible hissy fits if any of his acres of marble are damaged).  But we hadn't quite seen this one coming ...