The fiercest critic and longest holdout of Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards project eventually accepted the $3M buyout to move so construction on Barclays Center could commence. Goldstein dropped $812K on a townhouse in the neighborhood of South Slope, freeing up more than $2M to add a deck, a hot tub, and a "horizontal extension" of the property. Disturbed by the noise, his neighbors filed six complaints with the Department of Buildings, and the construction has gotten so bad that the homes on either side of Goldstein's have been listed and sold. As Curbed NY wrote, one of the city's most neighborly "has maybe forgotten how to be a neighbor."

As if billionaire timeshare titan David Siegel didn't destroy his reputation enough in the megalomaniacal quest to build the country's biggest private home—its first days of construction and ultimate stalling out was chronicled in the 2012 documentary The Queen of Versailles—he actually threatened to fire his employees if Obama was reelected. "I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company," he wrote in a hotheaded email. "Rather than grow this company I will be forced to cut back."

Manuel "Matty" Moroun is the owner of Detroit's Ambassador Bridge, a privately owned international border crossing from Michigan to Canada with one end located in southwest Detroit. When the local government made moves to build a competing bridge, the billionaire dumped $33M into what amounted to a propaganda campaign against the public bridge. Meanwhile, he owns Detroit's most iconic ruin monument, the decaying train station known as Michigan Grand Central. That he would spend so much money on ads, and not the building Detroit would like most to see redeveloped, was an outrage.

In the community of Stapleton, a cranky homeowners association banned the summertime tradition of sidewalk chalking because "anything that offends, disturbs or interferes with the peaceful enjoyment isn’t allowed." Residents were appropriately confused: "It’s summertime and God forbid my daughter is drawing flowers, her name and hearts,” said one woman.

Another lame-sounding homeowners association pulled the plug on Riverside, Calif.'s famous "Party Rock" house, a festive display synchronized to the LMFAO single. The new rules, banning "extreme" holiday lights, paid no attention to the fact that the homeowner had spent "five years conceptualizing and perfecting his light display"—or the fact that some 2,000 people a night drove out to see it last year.

Before Andrew Bynum was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers from the Lakers, he and his neighbors didn't fare so well. He's now sued Ramond and Cindy Beckett, claiming they "object" to his "profession, his race, his friends, his cars, and his taste in music" and engaged in "throwing coins at his Ferrari (which chipped the paint), screaming at him about his music, and even banging the side of his house with 'a long stick.'" The Becketts, in turn, have filed a countersuit claiming the NBA center "brandished firearms to intimidate them," blasted "loud, profane rap music" and played video games at "window-shaking volumes," allowed his dogs to run loose in the neighborhood, let pot smoke drift next door, among other offenses.

Tired of tourists constantly hanging around their front door angling for a close-up of the house from Hitchcock's 1958 classic Vertigo, Hanna and Sandy Suleiman erected a stucco wall in front, redesigned the entryway (which was prominently shown in the film), and stuccoed over the brick chimney. Film buffs aren't happy, accusing them of ruining a piece of history, but the Suleimans argue that "pop culture history" isn't the same thing as, like, "history history." Another argument? Don't buy one of the country's many houses made famous by movies and assume you'll be left alone.

Here's what former Seattle Mariners first-baseman John Olerud has been up to lately: spewing biblical verses at his neighbor, Rev. Bruce Baker, about a 50-year-old Chinese pine tree on Baker's yard. Olerud, aggravated that the eyersore "only an arborist would love" has blocked his view of the Seattle Space Needle, he said, "If you're willing to cut down your own trees to maintain your view and yet you aren't willing to offer that to your neighbor, how is that being a good neighbor? The Bible says, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.'"