I'm a lite sleeper.

I really am a lite sleeper. If a spider farts on the other side of the apartment, I'm gonna wake up. And so, as much as I love this new apartment I'm in, as much as I can appreciate the southern and western exposure that makes it sunny all day long, as much as I appreciate the balcony overlooking the Hollywood Hills and the Griffith Park Observatory, as much as I appreciate the central location - it is noisy.

I am an early riser. Maybe it's a habit from working production jobs for so many years, where 4 am and 5 am calls are common, but I just can't sleep late. The problem is that I love to stay up late too, so no matter what time I go to bed, I get up early. But getting up early on your own, or being awakened by something outside are two different things.

So here are some of my noisy tales of woe. What about you? Do you live in a noisy neighborhood? Feel free to share your tales here and I'll post some of your comments.

My building:
Thankfully my building is really quiet. There is a musician living right downstairs, but music is not a problem. I actually like hearing music in the building. Other than that, I barely hear or see my neighbors. Even the kids are quiet.
There is a common washer/dryer area in the hallway, just on the other side of our living room. While I can hear it, so far no one has been doing laundry at 3 AM, so it's not so bad. The advantage however is I just open the door and do my laundry. It's almost like it's in the apartment.

Car alarms:
As usual, in any urban neighborhood, people have car alarms, and this one is no different. The thing about car alarms, is that when one goes off, the only person who DOESN'T hear it is the owner of the car. I also think some people like to hear their car alarms, like it's music to their ears. "Hell, I paid for it, I'm gonna enjoy it". Beep - Bop - Beep!!! Yeah, we all like it as much as you, especially after the 20th time.

Ice Cream Trucks:
At 4:30 pm every afternoon an ice cream truck playing Pop Goes The Weasel comes by and sits on my street for about 15 minutes. The mechanical strains of a digital rendition of this royalty free tune being pumped out of a crackly old speaker soon get me all nostalgic for an Orange Dreamsicle and a sledgehammer with which to destroy the offending speaker. Luckily I don't have one.

The thing about incessant noise is how quiet and lovely it seems when it finally ends. Unfortunately, the silence doesn't last long, because at about 5 pm, just 15 minutes later, another ice cream truck stops on the street in front of my building and it stays there for about 15 minutes also. I don't know the name of the song it plays, but I call it The Really Annoying Song on Ice Cream Truck Number Two.

Garbage Trucks:
Thursday is garbage truck day on our block. Have you ever noticed that garbage trucks always seen to pick up at about 7am? How do they do that? Do they only work from 6 to 7 am and then knock off? How come I have never lived in a neighborhood where they pick up at say, three in the afternoon? It's really odd. My Dad used to joke that garbage collectors had a great job - thirty bucks and hour and all they can eat. And they only work an hour a day!

Lawn Work:
There are no alleys in my neighborhood. The backs of the buildings face each other. Not right up against each other, as there is usually parking behind each building. On Wednesdays, the building just behind ours, which faces our balcony, gets their yard work done. There is no grass, there are only patches of dirt, but at 7am (again at 7 am!!!) a man with a gas engine blower on his back comes to clean the side walks and walk ways of the apartment building. He starts on the second floor. The front doors of the apartments are on an exterior walkway. And he blows all the dirt from the common areas of the building from one side to the other, and then over the porch to the ground below. Then he does the same thing on the first floor, and then he does the side walk beneath the porch that leads to the back of the building where the garbage cans are.
He doesn't sweep, he doesn't pick up anything up, he just blows it around. What a system? And he does it right outside the door of all these apartments. If I am still in bed at seven, which happens once in a while, it sounds like he is in my closet blowing my clothes around, that's how loud the machine is. Maybe once in a while they can come at three in the afternoon and have tea with the garbage men?

Neighbors & Music:
Again, our building is really quiet, but the building in front of ours, and the buildings behind ours, (we're in the back apartment, so those affect us the most) are rather boisterous.
Late night parties where people gather to YELL REALLY LOUDLY are a common occurrence. The music, of course really loud so they can YELL OVER IT, would not be my first choice.
Weekends, there is someone in the adjacent building who feels it is his duty to share his mariachi music with the neighborhood, a sort of community sharing event. But hey, who doesn't like a good mariachi tune to get the day started?
I wish I spoke Spanish, and of course I know I should, but I wish I did so I could understand the lyrics to these songs. I imagine it is, like most pop music I can understand, really deep and touching on the emotions of the human condition.

Dogs:
Dog lovers - skip this section, you won't like it. I myself am not a "dog lover". I don't dislike dogs or domesticated animals, I just don't feel the need or the desire to keep one. I never had a dog growing up, which may be one reason, and the cats that lived in my house - I can't say they were mine - they weren't - never made me a cat person. I appreciate animals, I love the souls that they are, but I don't want to "own" one.

I don't go crazy when I see a puppy or a dog and feel the need to pet the beast. I don't think that "small fit in a purse" dogs are cute. And I wish that all the people who mistreat dogs and other animals -well I wish them a karmic payback some day.

So here is the thing, there is a dog in one of the adjacent building behind mine, that must be let out for only 15 minutes a day, and always at - you guessed it, around 6:30 to 7am. And since the dog doesn't get out much, it feels the need to sing, or bark, loudly and constantly the entire time. There is nothing quite like waking up to a dog barking at 6:30 in the morning, unless of course its a dog barking at a garbage truck, a leaf blower, and a car alarm.

Helicopters:
We live near the 101 Freeway, the 5, and the CA2. Car chases are a fact of life in southern California, and the media helicopters are always nearby to catch it live and can break into the regularly scheduled programming.
It's usually worse during rush hours, but evening helicopters are quite frequent. Yesterday I was watching the news and saw a story about a boy who was burned in a fire in the valley and was being rushed to a medical center in LA by helicopter. Then I left my apartment and drove a few miles to the Goodwill store on Hollywood Blvd, and saw that same helicopter landing on the roof heliport of the children's hospital. That was weird.

Birds:
And last but not least, the birds. The people in the second floor apartment whose balcony is just across from ours have four birds which they keep in two, I'm sorry to say, small cages. The blue and orange birds, (I'm not sure what species they are, but they are bigger than parakeets) are put out on the porch from morning to night, unless it is raining. Birds sing, they talk, they communicate, and sometimes they sing mariachi songs too. Oh, well, what can you say about birds? I wouldn't choose to keep birds in a cage, but of all the noises and sounds around my apartment, it is the most pleasant.

Children:
There are a lot of children in the building around me. That's cool. I like kids. I like hearing them playing and screaming and laughing and fighting. No complaints there.

Well, that's my posting today about my noisy neighborhood. I'm glad it was quiet for an hour so I could write this in peace.

Shhhh.

Peace.

© 2006 Noel Olken