Jackhammer Heart

Construction and its malignant soundtrack are simply part of city life. To pitch a fit every time some bozos with jackhammers, two-by-fours, and hard hats set up shop nearby is to renege on the holy urban contract. We deal with the squeal of the F train, the heedless wail of car alarms on Metropolitan Avenue, and, in this case, the shake, rattle ‘n’ roll of a new construction site so we can see the Wrens at the Knitting Factory, a movie at the Angelika, and a wine-tasting at Astor Wines & Spirits. You have to eat your vegetables first, folks.

This was a position I was willing to argue (and with folks who’ve called New York home far longer than myself) until yesterday morning. Jackhammers are useful metaphors for a reason – like so many of life’s irritants they are maddingly unpredictable and yet their roar is entirely unmistakable. Anyone worth their Soho rent could pick up on the sound of compressed air thrusting into concrete a mile away. But when the S.O.B. is right outside your door on a Wednesday morning, it’s more than just a metaphor – it’s a disaster. Granted it was 9:30am and I wasn’t actually woken up by the thing (my alarm had gone off just seconds earlier), but with the good folks at Triboro Plumbing slaving away next door, I had nowhere to hide and every reason to complain.

No, I didn’t call 311. I didn’t really do much more than look out my fourth-floor window, gawk at the colossal pile of Macadam on my street, and grumble ineffectually. But now I relate, if somewhat superficially, to all those tenants, community organizations, and government agencies that lobbied for years to get the city’s archaic noise code revised. “Neighborhood Noise and Its Consequences,” a report released last month based on online surveys conducted in 2004 by The Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), revealed that “construction or repair work” was the fifth most bothersome noise for New Yorkers. (Online respondents had 25 annoyances to choice from. “Neighbors activity or voices” came in first.) While the revised noise code, which goes into affect July 1, restricts nighttime construction work, it unfortunately doesn’t do much more to specifically construction clatter.

Our prayers, God save us, may instead rest in the hands (and ears) of the NYPD. Currently the department can only afford to provide officers with one hand-held decibel meter per precinct. The new noise code promises, with the help of the Department of Environmental Protection, to provide each officer with his own meter. At $2,000 a pop, that may be a tall order. But should they pull it off, come July, every officer in the city will have the ability to fine over-zealous construction companies if their jackhammers start belching out at ten decibels or more above ambient sound.

Until then (or until I shell out $2,000 of my own), I have no way of knowing whether my friends in Triboro Plumbing are actually breaking the city’s sound barrier. Maybe they’re entirely within code; maybe their jackhammers are, technically speaking, only modestly disruptive; maybe this is just something I’ll have to learn to deal with. Even in the wilds of Williamsburg, the city’s aural unpleasantness makes itself felt. It would be foolish for me to think otherwise - which brings me back to my first argument, one I’m not entirely willing to give up. How often am I willing to listen to drunkards stumbling home at 4:30am just so I can stay out ’till 5? Maybe more than I’m willing to admit. And really, jackhammers or not, I shouldn’t be sleeping past 10am anyway.