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The City wants to beat up Mr. Softee-- do new noise regs go too far?On July 1st, new city noise ordinances will go into effect, which will allow the police to have broader authority to go after noisemakers-- such as jackhammers, barking dogs, barroom music, people carrying boom boxes down the street .etc. The new regs will even allow the police to go after those staples of city summers, Mr. Softee ice cream trucks. Mr. Softee Trucks will now only be allowed to play their music in residential areas when the truck is moving. If they stop the truck to sell a kid some ice cream, they better turn off the music. Or hell will be paid. This may not seem like a big deal and everyone hates unreasonably loud noise, but at the core of this is a bigger issue. Which is the rights of property owners being given priority over everything else. Pretty soon the day is going to come where the nightlife in this city is gone from a lot of areas, because luxury high rise condos are going up and when nightclubs aren't forced out by the condos themselves, they are going to be forced out by the noise regs. What is this city going to be like when we have cops chasing Mr. Softee trucks and barking dogs, and standing fifteen feet outside nightclubs constantly to judge music levels? It could come to the point where if you don't own property in a neighborhood, if you can't afford to live in one of those high rise condos, you can no longer BE in that neighborhood period. Because you can't play your music loud, or have your dog out, or enjoy a nightclub, without infuriating the rich property owners. If you live in the Big City, you should expect noise. What after all is a city without the sounds? What is happening is that the City is being turned into the suburbs. The breadth and diversity of the City, which includes a vibrant nightlife and yes Mr. Softee trucks, is under siege by those who want their streets to be these calm serene environments like those cookie cutter subdivisions out in suburban jersey and long island. There is a racial undertone to this as well, as those who want to chase out the nightclubs and Mr. Softee trucks from their neighborhoods and from around their million dollar brownstones, know exactly who works in those clubs and drives those trucks. Working class people. Often minorities. The great joy that Mr. Softee trucks and dogs bring to kids around the city is less important than the right of the people living in those expensive brownstones to have complete quiet. When noise regulations become too strict, it is yet another symptom of the suburbanizing/sanitizing of New York City. But what can you expect when there is a giant Whole Foods and luxury condo high rises going up on the Bowery next to the flophouses. This city is changing folks, and not for the better. As one who is personally familiar with excessive ordinances that are only enforced against certain people, this one worries me.
My objection, which I wrote in at the time, is that the ordinance makes no distinction between zones. You can't make more noise in Times Square or Coney Island than you can on a residential street. And residents who choose to move into commercial districts have the same right to demand enforcement as those who choose to live on residential streets.
If you want to protest, call 311 and tell the city that the Cyclone is clearly audible and needs to be shut down. But wait a week, so my kids can get their ride in. Don't worry, if Sitt gets to build his condos, some lawyer will move in and do it for us. ...but I want to see if you change your mind the week you have a Mr. Softee parked outside your building blaring it's jungle until 11pm every night. I've been there. Mr. Softee is evil. Great law, there are way too many low lifes in NYC making racket at all hours of the night while hardworking taxpayers are trying to get their precious sleep to prepare for a productive day at work the next day and relax from a tough day at the job when they get home. I've lived in NYC my entire life, before boom boxes, dogs barking at all hours of the night, car alarms, loud mouth low lives who have no jobs to report to in the morning, and I remember a time when the the city got quieter the closer you came to midnight and the only loud noises were emergency services vehicles on their way to a call. Btw, most city residents don't live in Times Square and unlike you, they don't have expensive sound proof windows to block out the noise.In nearly all of these the noise issues, the culprits are self centered rejects and low lifes who couldn't give a damn about the stress and miserable conditions they create. I agree with Todd. Mr. Softee has made my life a living hell. Now at least they can't sit parked blasting their jingle ad nauseum (and generating fumes) outside my window for hours. Anyone who thinks the right to advertise at high decibel levels on a public street is an inalienable right ought to live near a Mr. Softee route.
fuck mr softee and all ice cream trucks. Do your neighbors a favor, people, and just buy your ice cream treats at the store. These people are training their children like Pavlov's dog to respond to this noise.
This is almost two yrs after your post ... but to offer another perspective the Mr Softee in our neighborhood doesn't cone round till after 10 pm at night and has many adult customers who aren't leaving his truck with cones.
This is almost two yrs after your post ... but to offer another perspective the Mr Softee in our neighborhood doesn't cone round till after 10 pm at night and has many adult customers who aren't leaving his truck with cones.
This is almost two yrs after your post ... but to offer another perspective the Mr Softee in our neighborhood doesn't cone round till after 10 pm at night and has many adult customers who aren't leaving his truck with cones.
This is almost two yrs after your post ... but to offer another perspective the Mr Softee in our neighborhood doesn't cone round till after 10 pm at night and has many adult customers who aren't leaving his truck with cones.
This is almost two yrs after your post ... but to offer another perspective the Mr Softee in our neighborhood doesn't cone round till after 10 pm at night and has many adult customers who aren't leaving his truck with cones.
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This is really about an escalating loss of community in the City. Every time I read an article about these luxury high rise condos, and how they are developing their own insular communities, that have nothing to do with the City, I cringe. These new condos are being built with gyms and movie theaters and common areas in the buildings, so that people living there don't have to go outside and don't have to deal with outside people (i.e. people who are not them or in their socio/economic class) They are being designed to be little cities within the City. To go along with it now they want to turn the streets around their luxury high rises into serene, sterile environments. Chase off the hot dog vendors, the Mr. Softee trucks, the nightclubs, and basically anything else that brings people from *outside* the neighborhood into it. Because they will already have their communities inside their buildings, they do not need other people making a Community outside of it.
What we are going to end up with, if we are not there already, is a City where people by and large do not relate to each other, because we have ceased to have much in common. Which will make New York City much like your average subdivision anywhere, with your new houses and strip mall stores and people who don't talk to each other.
At times the only places I go in the city that seem like real neighborhoods anymore, are the more economically diverse areas where most people don't make enough money to build luxury residences and totally avoid each other. Where you still need communities and people coming together to survive. New York City was built on the old neighborhoods, it was built on noise in the streets and music in the nightclubs and the collective experience of people living and dying together on the same streets.
Are we getting to the time when the City will no longer be "The City" but will just be a bunch of sterile suburbs, where if you are not rich enough to buy in there you can't even play your music there or sell your hot dogs there? On Saturday I was in Coney Island for the Mermaid Parade, and yes even there things are changing. Real estate developers there, as in the rest of the city, are buying up property, and seeking to sanitize/sterilize the place and drain the character out of the neighborhood in order to make it acceptable for rich people to move in, people who do not even want to know that anyone else lives there. They are going to close Astroland and they may as well, because otherwise the new residents will have the police there ticketing kids who scream too loud on the rides...