New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced his intention to reduce noise in New York, singling out ice cream trucks as major contributors to the city's din. This strikes us as a foolish waste of perfectly good indignation. If the mayor wants to hush up New York (and maybe earn us a new nickname as "the city that is trying to get some fucking sleep"), here are some much better places to start:
1. ON THE SUBWAY. It is necessary for conductors to announce the names of subway stops, to identify their trains ("this is a Brooklyn-bound 4 express"), and to tell passengers what the next stop will be. It is arguably even helpful to warn riders to "stand clear of the closing doors." Totally unnecessary to the point of obnoxiousness are the recorded announcements that "apologize for the unavoidable delay" every time one of the newer trains has to slow down or stop between stations. We assume these announcements are automatic, and by the time they come on, the train is usually already moving again. New York straphangers know their ride will occasionally slow down; they don't need to be jolted out of their reading material every time it happens. Worse still is the periodic recorded announcement that says "thank you for riding MTA, new York City transit!" Peace and quiet is at a premium in this town, and the MTA regularly squanders it on this stupid fucking announcement that doesn't even pretend to tell riders anything they need to know -- it's just an irritating
advertisement, and one that you can't mute.
2. ON STREET CORNERS. Yeah, yeah, it's free speech and all, but it seems to us that the citizenry is more indulgent of loudmouth christian proselytizers than we would be of someone using the same bullhorn in the same public space to warn people not to step on cracks, or to beware of leprechauns, or to share any other stupid fairy tale. Free speech should be tempered by civility most of the time, so when we pass one of these ranting idjits, we give 'em one of these:
3. CURBSIDE. It's hard to take the mayor seriously on the subject of noise pollution when he bitches about ice cream trucks just days after New York had an opportunity to do away with audible car alarms, and decided not to. These contraptions do exactly nothing to deter theft, as anyone who's been rudely awakened at 3AM because a rat scurried under his neighbor's Camry can attest. Everyone loses sleep for blocks around, except the owner of the pointless noisemaker, who must be drunk, or dead, or in Pennsylvania for the week. The possibility that the car's actually being stolen doesn't even enter anyone's mind, except as a fond and vain dream. If a car alarm has ever inspired anyone to call the cops, it was to cite the car's owner for the racket, not to thwart some imaginary car thief that was actually a bum who passed too close to the car, or maybe a summer zephyr.