Famous Neighbors Stallone, Madonna Win High Marks From More-Regular Folks Sharing The Same Street

So what do you think it’s like to live on the same Miami street as Sylvester Stallone and Madonna? Think you can drop over to Rocky’s pad on weekends to pump a little iron?

Knock on the Material Girl’s door for a cup of vodka?

Silly you. Linger too long at Rambo’s rococo front gate, and an unseen loudspeaker voice politely asks you to please not block the entrance.

And even though Madonna has had digs there since 1992, most of her neighbors have never laid eyes on her.

Private folks, those two: No neighbor has ever knowingly seen Sly squeeze Jennifer Flavin or Madonna’s coming kid’s father-to-be, Carlos Leon. You know, taking out the garbage or anything.

Still, to a man, woman and child, the denizens of the posh, lushly treed 2800 to 3200 blocks of Brickell Avenue, a little jog off South Bayshore Drive just north of Vizcaya, speak well of their megastar neighbors.

“He’s a hell of a nice guy,” says neighborJack Weiner, adding about Madonna, “She’s no bother to anybody.”

“They’re good people,” agrees Dean Ziff, who lives a couple of doors north of Madonna. “They’re sexy. They bring a lot of attention to our street.”

Know whom the neighbors don’t like? The rest of us. We who pander and grovel and drool and gawk; who, seeking cheap peeks, besiege their once-bucolic neighborhood by air, land and sea.

We hover over their homes in helicopters, shooting pictures of Stallone’s estate. We pile out of blocklong tour buses, 30 at a time, to pry at the screening on Madonna’s gate, or climb over her wall.

We sail up in 40-foot shrimp boats at 3 a.m. to within 20 feet of her seawall.

‘They were yelling, ‘Madonna!”’ Ziff says of the shrimp boats. “They were screaming obscenities.”

Oh, the neighbors have called the authorities.

Florida Marine Patrol Sgt. Art Selig took Ziff’s obnoxious shrimper call. Hasn’t happened again, he says. But if it does, he says, he lacks the staffing to do much about it.

Selig says he enjoys an occasional quick spin past Madonna’s house himself, in his patrol boat.

“Not often,” he says. “They deserve their privacy.

“But maybe when there are visiting police from out of the country. I’ve seen Madonna in her yard and waved at her.

“I think it was Madonna.” Stallone, for one, has scored major points with the neighbors by his sheer, well, neighborliness.

At first, neighbor Emily Rococo Romfh feared his presence meant trouble. It wasn’t just the helicopters and buses.

Soon, tourists started parking their rental cars in her poorly drained swale, tearing up her grass. Then, Stallone’s security staff, trying to keep boaters from his seawall, put up buoys too near her house.

But Stallone got wind of Romfh’s discomfort.

“He called me up, and I went over to his house,” she recalls. “I told him about the helicopters.

“He said they can’t do that, and pretty soon they stopped. He’d heard I was unhappy with the buoys. He moved them over.”

Stallone paid for better drainage of her swale and added his clout to efforts by the Cliff Hammocks Homeowners Association to get traffic restricted. “He gave me his phone number in case there was anything else to my disliking,” says Romfh. “He’s just been absolutely charming.”

Stallone scored points with his neighbors soon after he moved in by inviting all of them to a housewarming party in May 1994.

“A nice gesture. He’s a very nice man,” says neighbor Norma Gordon.

The neighbors probably will have Sly around for a while. He has sold his Kauai, Hawaii, house and polo field for $2 million and has put his 11-acre Beverly Hills pad on the market for $5.5 million.

Madonna uses her Miami house less often and mostly wants to be left alone.

“I’ve never seen Madonna,” Romfh says. “People tell me she’s in disguise.”

Jenny Rothenberg, 13, another neighbor, says she has seen Madonna jogging on Brickell Avenue.

“She was in sweats and tennis shoes, in a big black wig and a lot of makeup,” says Jenny.

When Madonna first moved in, Jenny’s sister, Heather, 19, tried to welcome her.

“My sister went to give her cookies,” says Jenny. She handed them to a housekeeper.

“There was no response,” Jenny says. “We kind of gave up.”

Madonna fans were a bit of a bother at first.

“When she first moved in, there used to be a lot of teenagers in front of her house,” says Gordon. “They’d just hang around and look in.

“I think one of them jumped the fence once. That seems to have stopped.”

Madonna, too, tries to be a good neighbor, Jenny Rothenberg says.

“She gave one party, and they sent a letter to the neighbors that just said not to worry, so we wouldn’t think there were people sneaking around her house.”

Gordon was aware of the party, too.

“People were arriving in dark cars. I didn’t notice what kind,” Gordon said.

“But they were very quiet. She’s like any other neighbor, except she’s not here very much.”