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Kerry Nolan: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kerry Nolan in for Alison Stewart. Our beloved city of New York provides us luxuries and conveniences that no other city really does. Delivery of just about anything, delis on every corner, the ability to get around without a car and more arts and culture than this show is even able to cover. For these, there is also a bit of a convenience fee, some quality of life sacrifices that we make, whether it's the cost of living, living in a fourth-floor walkup, or being serenaded by sirens blaring at all hours. Yes, noise comes part and parcel with living in an urban environment, and much like the weather, it's something everybody has opinions on.

Last year after focusing on a topic that also gets people talking trash in New York City, our friends at Curbed decided to devote an issue to noise. It's called Noise Week, and it features a number of stories about New Yorkers who make it, are trying to stop it, and are losing their minds over it. From a writer with a rare audio condition who can barely stand any noise to a neighborly dispute with tragic consequences to the $2,000 windows the ultra-rich installed to block out noise in their high-rise apartments, the issue does a deep look into how noise affects us. To talk more about the issue is Curbed editor, Sukjong Hong, welcome to All Of It.

Sukjong Hong: Thanks so much, I'm excited to be here.

Kerry Nolan: Listeners, we definitely want to hear from you. What noises in the city do you love? What noises in the city drive you crazy? Have you ever had to move due to a noisy neighbor or realized you'd moved on top of a bar? What are sounds that feel uniquely New York to you? Give us a call at 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692, or again, you can reach us via our social media. The handle is @AllOfItWNYC. I was reading through some of the stories that are in this issue of Noise Week. One of them just, it was so tragic and so heartbreaking, and I just want to sum this up for the listeners.

One story had to do with a noisy neighbor, and a few months in this couple realized there was a problem. A constant base heavy noise came through the wall of their three-year-old daughter's bedroom which abutted the neighbor next door. The woman would get headaches, the daughter couldn't play in her own room, and would drag her toys into the living room. Her mother gave them a portable speaker to plug into their electronics just so they could hear their own TV. They hated competing with the neighbor's noise, drowning it out, drowning out noise with noise just meant she was even further from the peace that she wanted, that she thought she was going to get when she moved into this apartment.

She met her neighbor for the first time and the tenant told the neighbor about her daughter and how the sound affected her, and she wanted to get her neighbor to see her troubles and to discuss the issue as the article says, like adults, but the neighbor was combative. She called them bums and said she wasn't turning anything down. Afterward the scenario turned into a New York nightmare. Tell us what happened next.

Sukjong Hong: Oh, yes, sure. This story is definitely one of the most tragic ones we've run. The neighbor, the father of the young girl went to confront the neighbor one day to ask her to turn the noise down. Instead, the tenant, whose name is Sean Pyles came out and they had a confrontation. The mother went back in and then she came back out and saw that her partner was actually stabbed and then he subsequently died.

Kerry Nolan: It didn't have to end that way and maybe that's an extreme example of what happens when you can't work it out with a neighbor. As a city we call 311 about noise a lot, complaints have been steadily going up, and a study by the state controller found that over a six-year period, the police issued summonses in response to only 0.3% of noise complaints, and arrest 0.05% of the time. Some people say that it's unclear whether the police are even going to show up. Council member Robert Holden called 311 on a party at 3:00 in the morning and the party kept going and he said, "Why are we giving people who are disturbing the peace, the benefit of the doubt?" He's trying to change how complaints get enforced. Are you familiar with what he's trying to do?

Sukjong Hong: A little bit, I definitely know of that bill. Yes.

Kerry Nolan: Can you tell us anything about it?

Sukjong Hong: I'm less familiar specifically with that one. I know that there is a number of different bills that different councilmen have to reduce noise. I do know that 311 calls about noisy neighbors are, I think, among the top complaints in the city. I feel that for example, in our story when the main woman who living in that unit called about her neighbor, she never got a response. That's definitely something that I think Holden still is trying to address.

Kerry Nolan: Let's take a call. Tom in the East Village, welcome to All Of It.

Tom: Yes, thank you very much. I'm certainly not a fan of rooftop parties. There is a sense of comfort and familiarity that I find when I open the windows of our Manhattan apartment. My wife and I split our time between the Jersey Shore and the East Village, and the Jersey Shore in the summer isn't as quiet as you would like it to be, but when we come back to the city and the sounds of the city are outside of our window, I find that very comforting place to live.

Kerry Nolan: That's a very interesting way to look at it.

Sukjong Hong: Yes. I think in our stories, we definitely recognize that people often find a distant noise of the street below to be comforting. I think it's really the piercing sharp noises that might come from construction or a siren that is what really jazz people, for example, awake or makes their heart rates go up. I definitely think there's a lot of comfort in the hum of the city as it's just going about its daily activities.

Kerry Nolan: By the way, if you want to weigh in on the noises that you love about New York City and the noises that make you crazy in New York City, we want to hear from you. Our number is 212-433-9692, that's 212-433-WNYC. Nicole in Bay Ridge, welcome to All Of It.

Nicole: Hi, I have a similar feeling as the last caller. I've been living in New York for my entire life, and I have lived in apartments that have been maddeningly noisy, but I still have these memories from growing up in Brooklyn in the '80s in particular, hearing music coming out of boom boxes like the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, and they bring back these great almost physical memories for me. Even though noise is not great, it's also in my eyes a little fantastic.

Kerry Nolan: [laughs] Thank you so much, Nicole. Mitchell, who lives mostly on the Upper West Side. Hi, Mitchell, welcome to All Of It.

Mitchell: Hi, I live entirely Upper West Side, but we're in Saugerties right now just to get out of the city. My problem is that I live across the street from a building where they use leaf blowers to clean the refuse out of the courtyard. It's a courtyard, and so it's an echo chamber, and these leaf blowers are probably equivalent to a motorcycle revving its engine outside your bedroom window. The problem is that my wife and I are not on a nine-to-five schedule, so they start leaf-blowing at nine o'clock or even ten o'clock in the morning. It's like 5:00 in the morning for us because we're not nine to fivers.

I call 311, they say they send inspectors over, but if they don't see them in the act, they just turn around and leave. Nobody reports this problem. I called my city councilwoman and their office is very proactive and they're trying to deal with it right now, but it's been going on for a year now and it's absolutely maddening. It's incredibly loud. if they could just take a large push broom, they can do the same thing in silence. The decibel level has to be illegal. It's a leaf blower to just blow garbage down the street.

Kerry Nolan: Thank you so much for your call, Mitchell. We're glad that you are able to get away from the city for a little while and hopefully, there are no leaf blowers working at the moment in Saugerties. We are talking with Curbed editor Sukjong Hong. All about noise. Noises in New York. What makes you crazy? What do you love to hear? We heard from a listener who said that they just moved here from the San Francisco Bay Area and have always loved the sound of a roaring subway train. It's exhilarating and dance-worthy. Sukjong, did you find in editing this Noise Week these different articles that there were people who really loved the sounds of the city?

Sukjong Hong: That's a very interesting question. We specifically called it Noise Week because we wanted to distinguish it from the concept of sound, which is a little bit broader and I think encompasses music and, for example, the sound of someone's voice. We really wanted to focus on the kind of levels and sounds of New York City that drive people crazy. Maybe we should have talked to more musicians or people who love the sound of New York. I did find it interesting that in our piece about a writer with Hyperacusis, which is a rare condition that makes one very sensitive to noise, that she found it easier to live in New York City and did not think that moving to, for example, the suburbs would be any quieter or actually be a relief. That was really surprising to us.

Kerry Nolan: That's interesting. I wonder if the overall sort of sound of the city provides a white noise effect that you wouldn't necessarily find in the suburbs.

Sukjong Hong: I think what she also mentioned was that in the suburbs you do have to drive, and she just defined the car as a noise machine. Basically would be nonstop noise for her and probably a form of torture to drive a car herself or to be in a car. At least the city allows you to walk and take other modes of transportation to get around. I also hadn't really thought about that as much. There's just this assumption that the suburbs are quieter, but they have woodpeckers and crickets and leaf blowers as well. [laughs]

Kerry Nolan: We are talking with Sukjong Hong, who is a Curbed editor about Noise Week. A series of articles in Curbed, and we want to hear from you. Our number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. What do you love about the noises in New York? What do you hate about them? We'll get to your phone calls right after we take a quick break. This is All Of It on WNYC.

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It is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kerry Nolan in for Alison Stewart, and we are talking about noise in New York. Maybe we should kind of pivot a little from the word noise to sounds of New York. We've heard about trains, we've heard about leaf blowers, we've heard about sirens. Let's hear about the sounds that you love in New York. Is it a musician in the subway station? Is it the sound that the subway makes when it pulls out of the station? There was an article in the New York Times several years ago that said it was the first few notes of There's a Place For Us from West Side Story. What are the sounds of New York that you love? We're talking with Curbed editor, Sukjong Hong about Noise Week. A series of articles on Curbed. Did you find people loved certain sounds about New York City?

Sukjong Hong: Well, we did do a quick Twitter poll last week and there was a winner and that was the quiet after a snowstorm.

Kerry Nolan: Oh, that's so nice. That makes perfect sense. Ruth on the Upper West Side. She has some lovely thoughts on what she likes to hear in New York City. Hi, Ruth, welcome to the show.

Ruth: Hi, thank you. I live above an intersection on Columbus Avenue, and it's a busy intersection. My bedroom window is right there, and on summer evenings when people have the windows of their cars down, I hear snippets of songs as they're waiting at the traffic lights. It's lovely because it's just enough music for me to enjoy it, and then they kind of go off into the night until the next person. I often find myself lying there enjoying all the different types of music. Salsa and blues and this, and it all comes up to my bed.

Kerry Nolan: Oh, [laughs] that's so lovely and that you're able to keep your windows open in the city in the summer is a lovely thing. Thank you, Ruth. Let's go with Alison in Manhattan. Alison, welcome to All Of It.

Alison: Hi. Hi, Kerry. Thank you so much for taking my call. I am a long-time listener and thanks for subbing in for Alison. [laughs]

Kerry Nolan: Thank you.

Alison: [laughs] I'm a native New Yorker, and one of the worst sounds, one that I cannot stand is the groups of motorcycle, kids, young people. I don't want to say the wrong words that go up First Avenue and down Second Avenue. You know it's summer when you hear those, but I have to say it's been a lot less. We complained about it so much, so I think the cops are working on it. Then my favorite sound, somebody mentioned, but my favorite sound is no sound. I'm up on the 21st floor, luckily, and I sometimes get to hear birds actually on my roof, so that makes me smile. I can't stand all the construction noises. Upper East Side is just filled with construction these days, so even I am getting a little tired of that.

Kerry Nolan: [laughs] Hold on, Allison. You'll be fine, but we have so many good sounds. We got a text from someone who said they love the sound of Sunday Church Bells in the East Village. I know I've asked before, but do people just like to complain about the noise rather than finding the good, Sukjong?

Sukjong Hong: Yes. I think as we said, the noise about neighbors is just one of those things that is probably what people call 311 about the most. I think there is something about sound and noise where you can't always tell the source of it. It's not something that you can control. You really have to negotiate with someone or something about. I think unlike a lot of other things about the city, it feels particularly maddening to people and that's something that they do like to talk about and we all really have in common with each other.

Kerry Nolan: One of our producers has banked some great sounds from New York City and one of them is a subway musician. I thought maybe we'd play a little clip of that.

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The sound of a musician in this subway. Our phone number is 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. We're talking about the nice sounds of Manhattan. We spent a little bit of time complaining about the bad noises, but we're talking about the sounds of New York, the noise in New York with Curbed editor, Sukjong Hong. We've been getting these wonderful texts and phone calls. [laughs] Robert from the Upper West Side said he didn't want to go on the air, but that he's had a number of friends who moved out of the city, and when they call, they can hear the background city noise and when he holds up the phone and they say, "Oh, I missed that sound." I just thought that was really cute that you can in fact miss that sound, whatever it is.

Sukjong Hong: I think one thing that someone, our writer Clio Chang interviewed the Noise Queen of New York City, Arline Bronzaft and she was noticing that there's a lot less sound of children playing in the street than before and I think that's probably one of my favorite sounds. I think some of my neighbors very vehemently disagree with that, but that sound of just distant groups of people having a good time is definitely, I think one of the things that you just can't get when you leave the city as much.

Kerry Nolan: When we were talking to you just now about Arline Bronzaft, she calls noise a health issue.

Sukjong Hong: I think that she and a lot of others have done a lot of research about the ways it affects learning. It affects your health. Exactly. I think that New York City sound levels are often at a level that do affect different communities' health, especially those who live maybe near highways or hospitals.

Kerry Nolan: Let's take one last phone call, Michael in Manhattan. Hi Michael. Welcome to All Of It.

Michael: Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call.

Kerry Nolan: We've got about 30 seconds for you.

Michael: Yes. We'll wrap it up. I have two sounds that I've grown very fond of. I have an air shaft in my apartment outside and I love the sound of the pigeons that hang out on the ledge when they take flight and the sound of their wings just ricochets off those brick walls. Somehow it sounds very lovely. I also have a cellist who lives above me. When he's practicing I can hear his notes. I can hear him playing as it comes down through the air shaft. Those are both really lovely sounds that I enjoy.

Kerry Nolan: They are indeed.

Michael: Thank you.

Kerry Nolan: Thank you for calling Michael. This has been fun today that we've been speaking with Curbed editor Sukjong Hong. We've talked about the noises of New York versus the sounds of New York. I just want to thank you so much for taking time out to talk to us today.

Sukjong Hong: Thank you for inviting me.

Kerry Nolan: It was a real pleasure. I want to leave you with the sound of Red Wing Blackbirds. This was recorded in Central Park. As producer Kate Hein says, it's the sound of Spring in New York.

 

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