Comments on The Big Ban

Amen. Seattle would be smart to outlaw car alarms (or the traditional noisemaker when car is disturbed alarm). I'm in NYC this week and as much as I love it, it would be great if we vered away from the NY tolerance for noise in the city.

My other two wishlist items:

1) diminish I-5 noise by continuing the cover over I-5 in the downtown area, and

2) using target sirens for emergency vehicles

For #1 we would cover I-5 similar to how the convention center currently covers a good chunk of I-5. This connects Cap Hill with downtown while reducing the hum of freeway noise in the city. We gain parks, parking and even development real estate for housing.

For @2, there are now speakers that can target sound so that most of it gets heard where the speaker points and the rest of us don't have to hear every siren all night long.

Back to sleep now :-)

You know what should be banned from college dorms? Fire alarms that just anyone can pull at two-thirty in the morning when you've got an exam that day.

How about banning those fucking leaf blowers? Not only do they sound horrible but they stir all sorts of pollutants.

My pit bull sets off car alarms with a leaf blower. While smoking.

We've had cars fire bombed due to their alarms repeatedly going off for no reason.

Charles, it's just for decoration. Whoooot whooot!!!

I feel a strange camaraderie with all you other folks that were kept up by odd and disturbing happenings.

That's funny, I just watched a movie last night called "Noise" where Tim Robbins gets pissed at all the city noise and starts destroying cars in the middle of the night. I'll try not to give too much away, because you should see it, but eventually there's a court precedent set where loud noise can be considered assault and battery. Let's get it goin, I'll help.

A-ha! No let's make murder the only thing that's legal.

Car alarms are worthless.

@6 - Shouldn't you be making breakfast or somethin'?

I was sitting with my friends in the park in one of the worse neighborhoods in Winnipeg. A grizzled, incoherent old street dweller asked us for change. Then he walked across the street, peered in the window of a car, and smashed it. He removed a bag of some sort and started walking away. The car alarm was blaring, people were walking by. It was broad daylight.

I considered trying to tackle this man to recover some anonymous person's CD collection for all of about .025 seconds, then shrugged and watched him walk away. I called the police, who barely even pretended to be writing down what I said. The day continued with the car alarm blaring away and nobody even turning to look.

I'm not sure what car alarms are supposed to be doing, but it certainly isn't preventing crime. Banning them has a huge upside and no downside.

Bubb Rubb is making me cry with laughter. I love my bay area peoples!

"This Slog is protected by Viper."

Funny. I never hear them in my neighborhood...

Nothing a dozen broken eggs can't resolve.

Charles- You should rent Noise starring Tim Robbins.
It's all about car alarms.

There's a few on my street sensitive enough to be set of by passing motorcycles - it's annoying as shit. But alarms lower insurance premiums, so I'd expect to hear them for quite some time.

Here in SF, if a car alarm sounds for a certain period of time, the car can be towed. Of course the problem there is they're rarely malfunctioning in such a way.

There's alarms that will buzz your cell phone when activated - it'd be cool to see that combined with a quieter warning beep from the car to let thieves (like they give a shit) know they've triggered an alarm.

Oh, and fuck honking. People here LOOOOOVE riding the horn, or just pound on it to announce their arrival. What good does it do? Parts of NY will ticket for this, I'd be happy to see it here as well.

I think of lot of idiots have a misconception about living in the city - there's a density that provides sort of an "anything goes", anonymous, make as much noise as I want interpretation - yet in detached home suburbia, every dog bark has neighbors peeking out their blinds. It should be exactly the opposite. Close quarters means showing exceptional respect for your surroundings.