I’m feeling really old, because I just now, for the first time ever, called the cops on the neighbors for playing loud music; at 1:15 am, I could hear it clear as day half a block away with all my windows shut. Outside, it can probably be heard 2 blocks away.
I would still have been bothered by it at 2 pm, but wouldn’t have called the cops. I was bothered by it at 10 pm, but figured hey, it’s Saturday night of a holiday weekend and it’s not that late, they’re having fun dancing in the backyard, let them be.
By 1:15, I just wanted to go to sleep, which was impossible under the circumstances, so I finally gave up and called the police nonemergency number. The cops must have come, because 10 - 15 minutes later, the sound was turned down substantially (but not off).
I think that at 10 PM, they need to turn down the volume, even if it IS a holiday or weekend. Some people don’t work 9-5 MF, holidays off. And some people have little kids who DO need to get to bed at a reasonable time, every night. They don’t need to turn it off at that hour…but they need to realize that other people live in the area. At about 11, the noise shouldn’t be heard more than one or two houses away, and it shouldn’t really interfere with the whole neighborhood.
It’s one thing to have a fun party, but it’s another thing to have the music so loud that it can be heard half a block away, no matter what time of day or night it is.
It’s about 2 AM local time as I write this, and I can hear a few fireworks (illegally) going off, and I hear a little music, but I’m not going to call the cops unless it gets a lot louder, or unless the fireworks are a constant thing.
the unofficial rule is 10 pm. After midnight I start to feel stabby.
Years ago I had a neighbor who deliberately turned her stereo up loud and then left the house in order to piss off her downstairs neighbor. I called the police at 7 pm and gave some thought to cutting power to the house (actually discussed it with the landlord). The police arrived just as the tenant did so the problem was resolved.
A few years back I asked one of the cops (that works in my city) what time the noise ordinance goes in to effect, his response “Some people think it’s 10pm, but it’s 24 hours. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2am or 3pm if you can hear someone else’s music, it’s too loud…give us a call and we’ll go talk to them”
That’s when I stopped waiting until night to call on my neighbors and started calling on them during the day as well…their music is REALLY loud.
My experience is the same as Joey P’s in any city I have ever lived in; local ordinance usually states no time, but merely says that noise that can be heard in other domiciles is illegal.
Practically speaking, we can’t always complain about such things or else nobody could ever mow a lawn or hold a backyard party.
But 1 in the MORNING? Are you kidding me? I’d have called the police long before then.
When we lived in Maryland, the town we lived in had “Quiet Hours” from 10PM to 6AM. If there were any loud noises between those hours, the police would come right away.
In the apartment building I currently live in, I’ve set “Quiet Hours” between 9PM and 6AM. This is at the request of many tenants who have small children. My apartment is fairly sound-proof, but the rest of the building, well, not so much. So if a tenant is being noisy after 9PM and someone calls me to complain, I will go and knock on their door and tell them they need to quiet down. Don’t know what the town ordinances are around here.
When I first moved into this house and the music (well, the bass) started getting loud I told myself (and my wife) “Meh, they’re having a party, we can be inconvenienced for one day.” Then it happened again a few days later, then again and again, then we started noticing that the music would start at like 1pm and go until midnight, then we noticed that there wasn’t actually a party, but rather just someone with their car pulled into the backyard with the doors open and the music booming. This was really starting to get frustrating, but when the neighbors (not the loud ones) made the comment that it’s like “Cindo de Mayo every night” that’s when we noticed how often it was. That’s when I started calling the cops on them on a regular basis. The problem is, since I did it anonymously, unless the cops actually heard it for themselves* there wasn’t much they could do except tell the offending people that they’re getting complained about.
They also had an ungodly loud bird that would play with outside. This thing was loud enough that if I had friends over and it squawked, they would duck and say “What the hell was that?” I usually just replied that it was a pterodactyl. Honestly, this thing was so loud it sounded like it could fly over the fence and steal one of our dogs. Anyone know of an ungodly loud bird that (IIRC) was bright green and had very long tail feathers? The actual body of the bird was probably about 6 or 8 inches tall.
*I don’t know why, but they always play their music (and rev their loud engines) intermittently. On for 5 minutes off for 20 and for 10 off for an hour etc…
By midnight it should be turned way down, but if it was going on every weekend, I’d say by 10pm.
Last night was our lake’s fireworks show, 5k of pyrotechnics blown up after dark. Then its back to shore where everyone else opens up their illegal fireworks and continues with the non stop explosions for a couple hours. Throw in the noise from the thrash band down the block and the party went on till 2am.
I’m so over the thrill of firrworks, but it’s only once a year so I shut the windows turn on the AC, my room fan and put a pillow over my head. But the next morning begins with the blare of the announcer at the racetrack 1/2 mile away.
Quaker parrots are the first birds to come to mind when someone mentions a small noisy green bird. One of the noisiest small parrots, though also very good talkers to make up for it.
Amazons are somewhat larger green birds who can be noisier yet.
God have mercy on the soul of anyone who has to live next to someone with a Macaw or Cockatoo. I’ve been around many parrots, but none who were as ear-splittingly shrill as a large Cockatoo. The noise can actually damage people’s hearing.
Neither of those birds had a tail that was as long as I’m remembering. A friend of mine suggested it was a Macaw (are there green Macaws). He also suggested I should call the police for that since apparently Macaws are illegal in my city. He also suggested I call the police since they have the loud car parked on the grass…also illegal in my city.
But really, the volume of this bird was unholy. It was probably 75 feet from my house (when it’s outside) and I could hear it just find over my TV with my doors and windows shut.
I’ve been called aggressively laid back, so don’t take what I say too seriously.
I’d let them keep going until whenever. It’s a once-a-year thing on a holiday weekend that’s probably making a lot of people really happy. I can deal. It doesn’t kill me to put in some earplugs, run the fan, or pour myself a glass of whiskey. I’m not owed some kind of perfect existence free from having a bad night now and then. Anyway, in my experience my ability to “tolerate” stuff like this is exactly related to how much I’m willing to work myself up- if I stop stewing, I usually find it’s actually not that huge of a problem.
I like that someone out there is actually having a celebration, rather than the sterile marketed blandness that so much of our culture has dissolved into. I’m all about cultures and neighborhoods having shared rituals and rites of passage, even if that now and then some people are mildly annoyed for a few hours. I feel like our culture has really lost something in modern times, and in fact we’ve become so fussy that we may never get it back.
Before you all jump on me- hey, this is why I’m hoping not to live my entire life in America! Take me to Africa, where the call to prayer wakes me up at five and the drums keep me up past midnight!
I’m a crankypants. If I can hear what you’re doing from my place with all the windows shut, you’re doing it too loud.
I give a certain amount of slack to people who can magically make their setup so that I just feel vibrating bass.
However, people who constantly change the song are the worst. I’m forced to listen to their music, and just when I start to think ‘hey, this track is okay…’ they change it. Over and over again. No track is allowed to play straight through.
Oh come on now, I’m walking on eggshells here. Yeah, I do think it’s kind of lame to get worked up about a holiday weekend party. So I think something is slightly lame. How do you think my “Communities should be loud and boisterous and those who don’t like it can go move to a cabin in the woods” thread would go? I bet my opinion would get a lot more vitriol than “Eh, it’s a little lame.” We all have opinions and occasional value judgments. The beauty if IMHO!
Generally, I consider about 10pm to be around the time for turning down the volume during weeknights (Sun-Thurs nights). Fri and Sat I’m more lenient, and will often tolerate up to about 1am, but will start pounding on walls or floors/ceilings after that. I haven’t had to call the cops yet - usually pounding once or twice is enough to get the message across. For the odd event, such as Hallowe’en or Christmas parties, 3 or 4 in the morning is alright if it’s a weekend party.
This neighbourhood has a lot of young adults and not too many kids, so what we consider fair is often what we’d hope our neighbours would tolerate if we had people over or were hosting a party.
This was not an entire neighborhood ritual celebration kind of party - even earlier in the evening, it was a gathering of maybe a dozen people or so. By 1 a.m., nobody was even dancing anymore; there were just a couple of bored-looking people sitting on plastic chairs in the backyard. If the party has disintegrated to that extent, I don’t think it’s so uptight of me to want to be able to sleep at 1 a.m. - they could just as easily listen to music and pick at leftover food inside, where they wouldn’t be keeping the entire neighborhood awake. I couldn’t sleep half a block away, even with all the windows shut, the AC running, and having just taken Benadryl (which normally knocks me out like a light).
So you may think I’m slightly lame - whatever. I just think that the peace and quiet of the entire neighborhood is not an even exchange for having a couple of bored-looking people turn down the music or take it inside - the good of the many vs. the good of the few. (Probably a couple hundred people live within hearing distance of that backyard, many of them with small children, and by 1 a.m., it’s reasonable to expect that at least some of them would like to get some sleep.) I have a hard enough time sleeping (chronic insomnia), so I really treasure the ability to do so on the weekends. I only managed 5 hours last night, and so now I’ve spent my holiday feeling like a zombie.
