My neighborhood’s weird gentrification issues and our lazy police precinct

There are a lot of things I like about where I live, Crown Heights, recently profiled in the New York Times real estate section. But one thing I hate about the hood, and one thing I can assure you almost anyone who was attracted to it from reading that article would hate, is the noise. It isn’t constant–most of the time, I can get a decent night’s sleep or enjoy a quiet early evening’s dinner. But when it’s loud, it is loud. For instance, tonight, J.S. Studio, a hair salon on Franklin Ave. is having a banging party. I know. I went over there. They have a turntable in the back, on the patio. I kindly asked them to turn it down. I was really nice. I told them I had to work tomorrow. A guy who works there was really nice too. He even invited me to the party. I came in to have a water, but it’s Sunday night, and it actually didn’t look that banging. (Not many people were there). Plus, come on, I just want to chill out before I go back to work. He also promised me he’d turn it down, though not after telling me I was the only one to complain.

Anyway, I came back to my apartment and the noise has since gotten louder than before. I called the usual suspects: 311 (took about 25 minutes of holding), Police Precinct 77 (I told the officer who picked up that he could ask one of the officers who is stationed on Franklin Ave. to just walk a couple blocks and ask these guys to turn it down. He gave the typical lazy, CYA answer they give over there, which is call 311. If calling 311 did anything, Officer, I would have just kept it at that. But it doesn’t. NYPD basically tells you every chance they get that noise is not their priority, even though that is the top complaint that 311 gets and noise from businesses is a violation of the city’s code. Sometimes I wonder what we pay these people for?).

So here I sit, at 11:35 on a Sunday night, with a fan and an anti-noise machine on, a window closed, and ear plugs in, and I can still hear the drum beat of whatever awful music my neighbors are playing.

I’m not alone in my neighborhood, but one disturbing thing is the way people try to make noise complaints into issues about gentrification. When I was talking to the guy at JS Studio tonight, he mentioned that he had lived here all his life and this was typical. On that Brooklynian chat board, one commenter said this:

Outdoor parties using a pa system are normal for crown heights. didn’t u know that before moving there? why are you imposing your values and background on people who have lived there for a long time.

And the fat female friend of the guy (sorry to be mean, but she was not friendly), retorted to me that it was early. Which I really hate — when noisy people start trying to turn the tables on you about what time it is, when it isn’t their business about what time you need things quiet. (What if I worked at 4 a.m., and had to go to sleep by 9 p.m. or something. Ugh).

It’s funny, because every store owner I have talked to about the neighborhood — save maybe the owner of JS Studio if I had asked them — says it has changed a lot for the better, and I’m guessing it has something to do with more quiet, more businesses and less drug dealing. And yes, I’m sure prices have gone up, too, but that is a fact of New York that I don’t really blame on people who move in and try to make a neighborhood better. I blame it on the city government, which initiated rent deregulation in the ’90s, at the urging of landlords, most of them big landlords. I don’t see why the choice has to be affordable/noisy or unaffordable/quiet. That’s absurd. And making it into a race issue, or class issue or gentrification issue is absurd. It’s a city. You have to respect your neighbor, or love your neighbor, as the bible says.