Difficult night in the neighborhood and I’m groggy. The place can get very noisy, sometimes rowdy, depending on what the excuse is. This time, it was Memorial Day weekend. Despite the fact that the Memorial Day party started on Friday night, it was still raging last night, Monday night, until close to 3am.

In my neighborhood, what that means is lots of loud music playing from souped up cars parked along my street in rows, and many people sitting on their stoops or on lawn chairs, chatting and yelling and clinking an clapping. Adults and kids, the elderly. Thuggish looking dudes vocalizing and calling out loudly, and 5 year olds on Razor scooters zipping along the sidewalk. At 10pm, this was ok. Not preferable since the sound was actually drowning out my ipod, but bearable since it was a holiday and I’m not so reactive to such things usually.

But at 1 am it was too much. At 1:30 it was unbearable and at 2:30a it peaked. The police came by to get people to quiet down repeatedly, in that careful way of influencing group behavior without “cracking down” and risking a riot. Eventually they were successful.

When nights like last night occur, it makes you wonder whether no on my street works, or if everyone decided to take Tuesday off and turn it into a four day weekend. I think the latter is more likely (though it can be hard to tell). However even in that case, they would certainly know that not *everyone* would be partying on a Monday night as they were, so their assumption that it was just OK to do so, to be so incredibly loud so late into the night, is insulting and frustrating.

Is it a cultural difference? That could be part of it. But what about just reasonable courtesy?

Here’s a recording I made with some commentary:

Truth is, I don’t want to claim my freedom to not have my place polluted by their noise. I’d rather find a way to buffer it, to protect against it. Normally in the summer the AC handles a big part of that. Part of what made last night so bad was that I had both ACs taken out for rebuilding.

So the noise pretty much just came right in the big hole in my wall, protected only by a thin piece of plastic. Hopefully that will be fixed very soon– am supposed to get a re-installation date today.

Something tells me this summer isn’t going to be perfect.