2001-08-21 - 11:59 p.m.

Thumpa Thumpa Thumpa

That sound.

It's almost unavoidable during most of the daylight hours.

Thumpa, thumpa, thumpa.

The pounding of bass.

It's usually my neighbors, cranking their stereos. Sometimes it's the losers in the half-burned out house, but more often it's the kids in the house next to that. They play a lot of rap. I don't like rap, but that doesn't really matter. All I hear is the thudding bass. It really wouldn't matter what they were playing, all I'd hear would be thumping.

It's not music, it's noise pollution.

My apartment was designed to limit street noise, but still it gets through the walls. If it's that loud for me, in the house across the street it must be deafening.

In that house there seem to be three people: a singer mother and two teenage kids, a boy and a girl. Most of the loud music happens while I would guess the mother is at work. All sorts of people are hanging around the house at all hours, and it's pretty loud.

I sort of imagine what the mother must be like - she worked hard to buy her own house and get out of the bad neighborhood she was in. Unfortunately she's brought a piece of her old neighborhood with her in the form of her thuggish kids.

Gee, what an old fart I sound like! However, living here has definitely taught me the value of peace and quiet.

I can't be the only person annoyed by this. In fact, my two tenants don't seem to like it either.

My friend the Manager has suggested that I just ignore the loud music. When the kids across the street go back to school, the days will get quieter.

Well, maybe.

Last night something ver irritating happen along those lines.

It was 2AM and Lily and I were both sleeping, when we were both awakened by some blaring noise. Lily said that it didn't even sound like music - it sounded more like a video game soundtrack.

I got out of bed and went into the living room. I looked out the window and sure enough, a car and a truck was pulled in front of the house across the street. There were about a dozen teenage boys and girls in the street and the blaring was coming from one of the parked cars. Incredibly loud car stereos are also a feature of that house too.

I was not pleased to be awakened at 2AM on a Tuesday Morning by this shit. The fact that Lily had to get up early to go to work made me even madder. I considered calling the police, but I wasn't sure what to do. It obviously was not a 911 emergency, and I felt I was too groggy to accurately report on what was happening.

So I went back into the bedroom and after a half hour or so the noise stopped and Lily and I went back to sleep. Lily is a very sound sleeper - this is the first time any outside noise had actually woken her up. It was that loud.

Sincerely, what do I do about stuff like that? Going out myself to yell at them would be worse than useless - they'd probably double the noise just to further piss me off. Maybe I should call the police and ask their advice. There have to be some sort of noise ordinances in this city. At least I hope so.