November 30, 2004

• NYC. Tell me, what is this "quiet" of which you speak?
• Well, it's close to six o'clock here in the suburbs of D.C. and one of my moron neighbors is blowing his leaves in the dark. That's par for the course 'round these parts. [insert joke where appropriate]
• I'm fortunate enough to live in a quiet, old neighborhood in a town that hosts an enormous university. The neighborhood is bounded on all sides by busy roads, so the traffic gets a little too heavy at times due to people taking "short-cuts" through the neighborhood, but the level of noise is remarkably low. We also have a "Quiet Nights" law that is enforced pretty well. The exception is the house behind mine which, for the past 7 years, has housed a bizarre panoply of people in various shades of noisy freakery. The current group has been cited for skateboarding off the roof at 2AM on a Monday and having a drunken LOUD gathering around gigantic bonfire (open fires illegal in town)when it hadn't rained in over two months. When the fire trucks pulled up, much beer was spilled trying to put out the fire (didn't work). 99% quiet, 1% noisy but amusing idiocy.
• biblio, I think I may have been your neighbor in a past life.
• I don't really have much trouble with noisy neighbors. But perhaps they do.
• I'm on a main drag in downtown Jersey City, and my bedroom has three windows facing onto the street. I miss my quiet cubby in Houston, even if I was two blocks from all the excitement of Heights Boulevard and half a block from the thrills of Eleventh Street. A white noise generator from Sharper Image or one of its cheaper mall knock-offs is a great help when you're trying to catch Zs amid the traffic noise and car alarms. It also works if the loudest noise in the room is a snoring spouse/cat/ferrett.
• Good point, immlass... we actually carry a Hepafilter for hotels when we're pounding many miles a day and can't mess around with losing sleep.
• My neighborhood is fairly quiet. Except when the train goes by. Then it is VERY loud. This makes the relative quiet that much more enjoyable. I live in the city, with freeways a mile a way, so there in constant traffic noise in the background. I do not have loud cars on the street, much. Few cars with rowdy mufflers or loud music seem to find the area attractive, which I am grateful for. That sort of thing makes me feel old. It is all relative. I have found that in other neighborhoods I have lived in, which were louder, I could get used to it. Except for the semi-automatic weapons fire, which sometimes popped off within a few miles on Saturday nights.
• NYC, quiet as a lamb. Seriously. We live in a big old WW2 era building in Brooklyn, in a garden apartment with no street facing windows. Our place is backed up onto a "Rear Window"-esque enclosed center block of gardens which no-one (except us) really uses and it is super quiet. Except for the birds in the morning during the summer, but that is not the kind o fnoise that bothers me... (I also was Biblios neighbor, so to speak, and in penance I refuse to complain about any neighbor's noise unless it reaches truly apocalyptic levels and is sustained for days.)
• For several months my downstairs neighbor got a ride to work from someone who pulled up to our apartment building and HONKED. AT 6:30 IN THE MORNING. Generally, though, my neighbors are good. I'm in the suburbs. Aside from the occasional thumpin' bass from a car pulling up after a night at the clubs, it's quiet. But I can't wait to get a house. Living above people, I constantly worry about being noisy and am always tip-toeing or keeping the TV down.
• In the outer boros of New York (Brooklyn, Queens, etc) one could certainly find pockets of peace but in NYC proper (Manhattan) it's a bit more difficult.
• My neighborhood is quiet except for my next door neighbors. They have violent rows at 2 to 4 AM on a regular basis. Earplugs don't work.
• It's quiet...a little too quiet...
• West End, Vancouver. Parties, sirens, post bar yellfests in lane, divers and their carts, muttering tweakers, occasional clip-clopping mounted patrols, things blowing off balconies and hitting the pavement during gusty evenings, progress-of-the-hockey-game whoops and growls (well, not this season), seagulls and crows lustily singing, and sometimes the ERT. So, noisy, but I like it. I grew up in the silence of the sticks and loathed every last single second of it. Urban 'til I die.
• I live in north/west oakland. Its loud in the day (cars, stereos, kids, trucks etc.,) but surprisingly quiet at night. the only thing that usually interrupts my sleep is the hub snoring.
• um, oakland california usa, that is. duh
• BOOM!!box blues, here!!!(Denver)
• My neighborhood is quiet 80% of the time, and I love it. Unfortunately the other 20% of the time makes me want to move back to the country. The house nextdoor has teenagers, and is the hangout house. After school, and the occasional Saturday the kids are playing basketball and have one song on repeat. Its been the same song since May. Then sometimes the neighbors across the street have a mariachi band playing. At 28 I feel a bit young to tell them to quiet down, but I do when I can hear it in my house with all of my windows closed, or when they are playing basketball at midnight.
• In Brunswick (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in case I haven't mentioned it enough), we're used to an inner-urban panopoly of noise (can one have a panoply of noise? languagehat, please hope me!) My old flat, which I moved out of about two months ago, faced the street on a major road, and was on a corner block. accidents, parties, shouting, criminal assault. I called the police with noise complaints on two occasions - both parties at the neighbouring townhouses on work nights. In my new place, a big old house on a side street, there's not much noise. Friday + Saturday nights you might hear the Coburg boys (pronounced 'Kohbourg boysh - wot kinna wog are yoush?') cruising in their big Commodores, but not much else. Best Brunny noise experience: Big blue Ford utility crusing down Sydney Road, huge bass thundering out of the speakers, BOOM--BOOM. When it got close to me, it was actually pumping out some crazy Bollywood number BOOMpa-tataBOOMpa-tata... Noice.

• but in NYC proper (Manhattan)

  Them's fighting words! *smashes bottle of Brooklyn Beer against desk* What do you mean drinking and smashing bottles is not allowed on the job?! What's a Corrective Action Report? [/derail] In my section of Brooklyn, besides the occasional speeding car, or the teens that hang out outside my window (and they aren't even loud, but they are just outside my window), it's pretty quite most of the time. The only time the peace gets shattered is when people drive up to pick up their ho girlfriend up at 11 pm, and they honk. Multiple times. Every 5 minutes. For as long as it takes to get the skirt in the car. I mean, if you drive a brand spank'n new Nissan Z, you couldn't afford a cellphone with 2 way pager? Oh those crazy Russians.
• Well the screetching crackheads across the alley stopped sleeping in the neighbors backyard ( A few m-80s at 3:00 a.m seemed to help them decide to move). So it's much quieter now. Unless Miguel two doors down gets really drunk and shoots his shotgun into the air. (about twice a month).
• I sleep better when there's city noise around. A few years ago we visited a friend who lived at the corner of Allen and Delancey in NYC. Lots of loud traffic, car alarms and people noise 24/7. Slept like a baby every night we were there. Last year we moved from an apartment on a busy-ish intersection to a house in a quieter part of the city. It took awhile getting used to the change. When we visit our 'rents (his: 'burbs; mine: college town), the quiet is deafening.
• Live at the end of a dead-end-street with a bunch of apartment complexs nearby. Generally very quiet here - though we get the occassional ass who decides the whole neighbourhood must listen to their cars stereo or try to do some hot-rodding to the end of the block. I miss the sounds moneyjane speaks about - used to live in the west end of vancouver as well.
• At my parent's house, the nearest neighbor is far enough away that you have to shout at them when both you and they are standing in the front yard. The loudest noise is the occasional barking dog or yipping coyote.
• but in NYC proper (Manhattan) "Them's fighting words!" Don't you mean "woids"? :)
• My current place isn't too bad. Every once in a while, I'll hear a group of college students coming back from the bars, but that's about it. My old place was a fairly quiet area, but my immediate neighbors were sometimes loud, like the last one with a shit-zoo that barked sometimes for 15 hours through the night. Also the birds were really loud in the morning.
• Really nice. It's a tiny neighborhood in Pittsburgh that keeps a death grip on its own sense of "community identity," complete with a rabid local police force and neighborhood-watch / neighborhood-organizations kinds of things. One of the first things I learned when moving here was that you can get fined if your dog barks and someone reports it to the cops. Really. Also, don't stop your car for any reason or you'll get a parking ticket within ten seconds, because their parking cops are ninjas. Just jump and roll. It's very quiet. There's one dumbass who thinks revving his motorcycle engine for 90 seconds at a clip makes him cool, and trains going by a block away, but I hardly notice the trains. Oh, and that STUPID ICE CREAM TRUCK. But that's only in the summer. And my rent is pocket change. Despite the cheesy We're All Neighbors Here vibe circa 1956, I quite like it. Uh, yeah.
• Former Vancouver Westender too, 20+ years ago. I lived near the old firehall on Nelson St. so we had the sirens at all hours. Over here in Nanaimo, my place is fairly quiet except for the bloody Beavers (the float planes). In the summer they start at 6:30am and take off just outside my window. But my biggest noise peeve is the car alarms that some idiots have configured to honk the horn whenever the remote is pressed to lock or un-lock the car doors.
• I live in a very quiet building on a side street. Actually, the building itself isn't quiet (the walls are like paper) but the people who live here are. I'm pretty adaptable though, I stayed at my mom's for a few months when her neighbors were building their house 20 feet from my bedroom window and I didn't even notice after a week or so.
• I'm on the 5th floor of an 11 story apartment building about a mile from the University of Oregon in Eugene. It's fairly quiet, except when people knock on certain walls where the sound seems to travel up and down the building extremely well. And then there's my upstairs neighbor who played the same song over and over, for periods of an hour or more, several times a day, for weeks.
• I live in a duplex in suburbia. The interstate a quarter mile away adds to the background noise but otherwise it's extremely quiet here. Except when the idiotic neighbors are having fistfights and slamming up against the common wall, of course. I find the rush of interstate traffic oddly soothing because it reminds me of my childhood living on the water on the East Coast.
• My recent homes: 1. Pine and Divisadero in San Francisco (wanna-be Pacific Heights/aka non-specific heights): three-lane one-way superstreet, with IIRC three ambulance companies within a block. Houses built up to the sidewalk. A heyday of car alarms. Other than that, neighbors were respectful of noise limits, except for the fuckers with an untrained dog next door. 2. Vallejo, Solano County, Calif. Next-door neighbors had no indoor stereo system, so would blast mariachi and conjunto from their car *outside* from seven until eleven. Never controlled their dogs. 3. Washington Heights, Manhattan. On the eighth floor; an old building; and I never heard the next-door dog's yapping until I was in the hallway. 4. Fountain Avenue, West Hollywood. Traffic noise. The odd bellowing crazyman.
• (far) East SF Bay Area town - Only thing I can hear right now are the coyotes yipp-yipping on Mt Diablo behind my house. A small slice of heaven. Noisy neighborhoods suck.
• Tolland County, CT: Silent. I just moved here (from the New Haven suburbs) in August and it's so silent I have to put on classical music to get to sleep. The one thing that occasionally disturbs me now that the leafcover is gone is the light from the ambulances coming into the old-folks home 'next-door'. And the helicopter that came a few weeks ago. But this is more creepy than noisy.
• There used to be a house across the street that had a bunch of partying fratboys. They would party at all hours of the day and night, loud music, obnoxious behavior, etc. I called the police constantly on them. Finally they got tired of the fines and kept on partying, but more quietly. Finally the owner of the property came back from a vacation where he had expected they would re-model the place for him for reduced rent. They *did* remodel. Tore out a lot of interior walls, basically crapped all over everything else. They were gone the next day. Shortly after that, the rest of the house was gutted, torn down and the property sold. Then, a couple of years later, same thing next door... Partying skateboard punks move in on the premise of 'remodeling the house for reduced rent', with the same result. I remember one night I went over there when the party was going in full swing and everyone was pretty enubriated. I brought my digital camera and with a laugh and a smile said I was there to take 'party pics'. So I snapped away, printed out the photos, called the police, gave them the info which they took and promptly busted a number of underage drinkers. After that things got really quiet over there, and the one or two times things got objectionable, the sight of me and my camera was enough to shut them down quickly. Now the house is abandoned for three years now...
• I live here. Across the water from me, there is a field of cows. The cows go moo all summer. It drives me mad. There is a field of sheep about 100 yards up the road. They bleat all summer long. They drive me mad, too. There is a fast-flowing river full of trout a hundred yards beyond the sheep field. It gurgles and gushes all summer long. This drives me mad, also. In the winter, when the cows and sheep are in their barns, and the river flows ever the less powerfully under the ice, everything is too quiet. That drives me mad. I'm a Londoner. I miss the sounds of nature (drunken brawls, honking traffic, domestic fights, dogs shut up in the flat all day, car alarms, etc.,etc.).
• I live in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Very quiet, the building was made in the 1800s, so hardly any noise gets in from outside or transfers between the apartment. The only problem I've ever had was with some rowdy kids playing WCW wrestling late one Sunday night on the sidewalk outside my house. I don't own a car, but I figure the neighbors wouldn't appreciate someone body slamming his friend into their hood. A quick talking to, (with bayonet in hand) cleared up that situation right quick though. Though the birds fucking kill me sometimes. I hate those vile little creatures... chirping and cooing at ungodly hours. Though I'll just get up and stick my cat in the window... that usually scares 'em off.
• Small town USA is where I live. My town happens to be the county seat, so I hear a lot of sirens, from the sheriff's dept, the fire dept, and the regional state troopers who operate out of our little town. There is a main four lane highway that runs parallel to our town, and it happens to be about a qauter of a mile from me, so I hear a lot of traffic noise. This also generates the siren noise, what with motor vehicle accidents and all. There also seems to be a large number of fire calls here. As for my neighbors, I don't notice them. Quiet bunch of people. They don't bother me, I don't bother them. I don't even know their names. Except for the used car salesman, who has his lot adjacent to my property. He is annoying and so are his employees, noisy bunch and not to bright. One snuck over my privacy fence a couple of years ago to take a dip in my pool. Wrong move, hehehe.
• We live way out in the middle of nowhere, CA, in a 'town' of 200, with just one public building, the post office, which is twelve miles away from us. And we're about 1/2 hour drive from the nearest gas station. Occasionally, we get a little traffic noise from the rural route, but it's a couple thousand feet from the house. The closest human neighbor is about 2.5 miles away. HOWEVER... if you've ever heard a mama cow (neighbor's land next to us) yelling for her calf, then you know what noise is - LOL. An incessant and bellowing MOOOO that goes on and on and on and goes right through you until the calf finally gets to her. Oh, and I never knew that a bull on the prowl could sound like an amazingly loud pack of screaming girls - kind of chilling, actually. ;-)
• I live in a teensy little house that I think used to be a 2-car garage (they added on a bit when they converted). It's in the backyard of a much larger house, on an alley. I live in a college town, and there are 4-5 "party houses" on my street where they constantly have loud parties. I'm shielded, though, by the house in front of me, so it's usually pretty quiet. I get a few drunken arguments, usually over a girl or someone trying to take a drunkie's car keys away (No, maan... Ah cn drive fine!). -- If you can't afford a white noise machine to block out the loud, try a big box fan. They're cheap and drown out nearly everything! I learned this living on S. Main st in Houston (where there were multiple shootings, shouting... you know, real town noises)