New York is definitely not the place to live if you dislike what the experts euphemistically call “audible vibratory disturbance.” Back in the 1980s, when I was living in bucolic Geneva, I read that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had concluded that 100 million Americans were being exposed to levels of noise far in excess of what the EPA considered safe. The EPA established an Office of Noise Abatement and Control, but its effectiveness remains in doubt. As far as I can tell, New York has not become quieter in the last two decades. If anything, new sources of noise have been added (cell phones, car alarms, the early-morning clatter of tin cans and glass being picked up for recycling). And old sources have gotten worse. The construction industry is busier than ever, with decibel levels to match its rising profits. The New York City Noise Code–yes, there is such a thing–is broken more often than the hearts of Manhattan’s singles.
Nearly 100 million Americans suffer from hearing impairments, and many can trace their deafness to being assaulted by noise. But that isn’t the only problem. New York’s decibel levels contribute directly to the level of stress people here seem to be feel: doctors confirm that excessive noise raises blood pressure, constricts blood vessels, lowers one’s willingness to be cooperative with other people and accentuates aggressive behavior patterns. (One study found that people who lived in the flight path of the city’s two airports had a higher than average murder rate.) Noise has even been blamed for learning disabilities in children: kids who have to put up with high decibels at home actually have lower reading scores than those who grow up in a tranquil environment.
New York has long been known as “the city that never sleeps.” It’s not as if most New Yorkers had the choice. We live cheek by jowl, in tiny apartments with thin walls, in buildings crammed side by side on narrow streets. There is no refuge from the omnipresence of noise. If the daytime clanging is bad enough, the evenings bring their own clamor. Bars and discos generate not just loud music, but young patrons who spill onto the streets, kick garbage cans, throw bottles through windows and vent by yelling at the tops of their voices. Most complaints, though, are not about strangers but neighbors: flamenco dancers practicing their clackety steps in the apartment above; people with screeching birds; insomniacs watching thundering war movies at 4 a.m., overexpressive sexual gymnasts. One single friend of mine is sandwiched between two families with musically gifted children: “when the violin practice stops in the apartment on the left,” she complains, “the piano practice starts on the right.”
Why not just move? Because finding an apartment in Manhattan is like discovering the Holy Grail. And most New Yorkers can’t afford to move, especially if they’re benefiting from rent control. So how does one cope? I’ve heard about a man who buys eggs for the sole purpose of throwing them onto the windshields of cars, parked below his window, whose alarms go off. One friend whose upstairs neighbor refused to install carpeting, and who clattered in on high heels after late-night trysts, rigged a speaker to his ceiling and blasted her with retaliatory rock from his stereo.
As usual in America, there are commercial products available to quiet the din. The “noise-abatement industry” offers wall-stuffers, acoustical tiles and sound-deadening boards, among other soundproofing solutions. Drapery manufacturers advertise curtains that block out noise as well as light. Higher up the price scale is a portable environmental sound machine, which emits neutral white noise and plays simulated rainfall or waterfall sounds. One friend of mine has a gadget that sounds like waves crashing on a beach. It has the added advantage of allowing her to pretend she’s somewhere other than Manhattan.
But ubiquitous noise is part of what makes New York New York. A friend recently moved to the calm of the country, but moved back to the crazy city within months. “It was too quiet,” he explained sheepishly. “No sirens, alarms or loud garbage trucks.” Without them, he said, his life didn’t quite seem “natural.” And he couldn’t sleep.
