Living With Noise – Somewhat Unhappily at Times

By Bill Primavera
When I first arrived in New York City straight from college graduation, my older brother had kindly offered to drive me and my things there in my jalopy of a car that I figured I wouldn’t be needing anymore.

The plan was that he was buying that car from me that gave me the funds for a down payment and the first month’s rent on a spanking new apartment that I was to share with my two buddies from Virginia.

We arrived around midnight in Greenwich Village which, despite the hour, was bustling with foot traffic and sidewalk artists plying their trade.

“My goodness, how are you going to sleep with all this racket?” my brother asked. “Don’t people ever sleep around here?” (This was some time before Frank Sinatra sang about the “city that never sleeps.” I guess I’m really dating myself here.)

And indeed, it turned out to be a problem. When I lived as a college student in the historic district of the City of Williamsburg, all I ever heard at night was the sound of katydids. Even though our apartment in New York City was on the ninth floor, the street noise from below kept me awake for some nights until I adjusted to it. But then, as a youth who always stayed up past midnight, I could probably have fallen asleep while riding a roller coaster. I wish that were true today.

It wasn’t long before the living arrangements with two other guys turned sour, especially because the apartment was only a studio. One of my roommates was particularly troublesome because he was a real lothario. He would sometimes call the apartment from a phone booth (this is before cell phones) and ask if I and my other roommate could make ourselves scarce for a couple of hours while he invited a young lady over to “socialize.” I wanted to branch out on my own and find an apartment for myself.

By this time, a work associate had told me about a wonderful part of the city, across the East River, in Brooklyn Heights. From the moment I ascended from the subway station in Brooklyn, I knew I wanted to make that neighborhood my home.

In those days, New York City had an overabundance of apartments for rent because, as I recall, there was a building boom before regulations for buildings were to be upgraded, requiring developers to spend more money for construction. All over town, new buildings were offering rent “concessions” for three or six months of free rent. Imagine such a thing today? I found a brand-new apartment in Brooklyn Heights through such a deal and moved in.

Within the first 24 hours of living in that apartment, I came to understand why the city was upgrading building requirements because there was barely any sound insulation between apartment walls on either side of me, and especially the ceiling above me. A recently divorced mother with a rambunctious five- or six-year-old made it seem as though there were three people in the same household, with every one of their activities upstairs shared with me.

From then on, any apartment I got in New York was preceded by a “sound test” before I signed a lease.

When it came time for me to find a house in the country (well, the suburbs, really), my wife and I had one requirement – that our home be an historic one. And we found our dream home in Yorktown Heights from a newspaper ad. And wouldn’t you know it, it was diagonally across the street from Guiding Eyes for the Blind. As we were to learn after the fact, every day as many as 70 dogs would be let out in a communal yard to “socialize” with each other, as the school’s director informed me. Again, “socializing,” this time of the canine variety, was driving me nuts.

After a campaign among neighbors to have the school build soundproof kennels, we once again had some peace, but it was a case of neighbor against neighbor, some having great qualms about taking on an institution that did such good work.

For the past decade, my wife and I have been living in Trump Park, a solidly built development, excellently soundproofed between units from above and below. (Just to be on the safe side, however, we chose to live on the top floor.) The only noise we ever hear is the slight drone of traffic from the Taconic Parkway, but that kind of noise eventually fades into the background because it’s a steady flow.

So in my more mature years, the only noise I sometimes find myself accommodating is my wife’s occasional affection for the Home Shopping Network. But that’s a small price to pay to live with such a gem of a gal.

Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc. (www.PrimaveraPR.com). His real estate site is www.PrimaveraRealEstate.com, and his blog is www.TheHomeGuru.com. To engage the services of The Home Guru to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.

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