Noise Pollution

Why are their enforced laws about throwing garbage out of your window on the highway, putting graffiti on a subway car or dumping PCB's into the Hudson but the city is too afraid to upset their constituents to do anything about noise pollution.

Why is it that whenever the Puerto Rican Day parade comes around it becomes a license for a bunch of guys to act like assholes as they drive around disturbing the peace by blasting music at 10,000 decibels through my neighborhood until well after midnight?

I like salsa music, I like Latin culture, I don’t mind loud music and I don’t mind festivals but I do mind people who act like a bunch of a-holes just because they can. This is like the guy who will slouch onto two seats in the subway sitting with his foot up on the seat, headphones on and a look like somebody peed on his sneakers and then gives you an attitude if you ask him to move. Even when the guy moves he will make sure you are well aware that you are inconveniencing him and he will make sure to keep pushing his body into your personal space until at some point you probably get up and walk away. This defiant nature is done to not just annoy but to intimidate others; the same reason that people roll through neighborhoods on a Sunday afternoon blasting music or revving their Harley’s only to prove they can.

Aren't parades and cultural days supposed to be about having the rest of the community embrace your culture? If this is the case why would you drive around making people despise you? We know you live in this city, I’m thrilled that you have a parade but you don’t see me coming into your neighborhood blasting Guns N’ Roses at 2 in the morning.

Take yesterday which played out like so many other years as an example. I spend a June Sunday afternoon in the park in Brooklyn watching a bunch of kids climb the jungle-jim.   It's a beautiful day, the birds are chirping, kids laughing and the farmer's market buzzing with organic commerce. All of a sudden another buzz comes across the playground, it starts as a faint noise but the faint sounds of music get louder and louder until a caravan on cars driven by a bunch of decked out 20 something come through the street with stereo systems which could rival Madison Square Garden's. I'm all for you showing pride in your culture but I’m not for blasting it my ear-drums till my brain bleeds.

Now mind you I was not along the parade route, I was in a different borough easily 15 miles away from the action. Also be fully aware that this caravan did not at all have any festive feel to it at all and what pisses me off is that this isn't music anymore; it is played so loudly with such kickers and bass-speakers that it shakes the foundations my building. If I want to have this kind of noise I may as well set up a blanket and sit on the runway at JFK. The noise is so loud that everybody in the neighborhood takes notice but everybody
hopes that it’s over quickly because nobody is in the mood for a confrontation on a Sunday afternoon.

It is exactly the same thing you get when the Harley guys cruise through our neighborhood with their exhaust cranked. It is all part of the same anti-social activity probably done because they feel under-represented. So instead of becoming a productive member of society they pollute the air with this bullshit.