Closing Bell: Keeping Quiet in Park Slope
Park Slope isn’t known as a particularly noisy neighborhood, aside from the normal mixture of traffic, sirens, screaming school kids. But some folks are seriously bothered by the rumble of low-flying planes. So bothered, in fact, that they’ve created the group Brooklyn Against Aircraft Noise, replete with a signable petition and a call to spread…
Park Slope isn’t known as a particularly noisy neighborhood, aside from the normal mixture of traffic, sirens, screaming school kids. But some folks are seriously bothered by the rumble of low-flying planes. So bothered, in fact, that they’ve created the group Brooklyn Against Aircraft Noise, replete with a signable petition and a call to spread the flying routes out evenly, so no one neighborhood will be targeted with blaring engines…not to mention that blue ice.
Photo by judester1213.
A fine whine.
Unless they rebuild the main north-south runway at LGA, there will always be planes nearby.
Just so fortunate, tunnel-viewers, that you don’t live in Elmhurst or Astoria.
Find something else to rail against.
The loss of a child’s hat.
A coffee house.
Stray electricity.
Coney Island.
This thread is testament to how Brooklyn became California in 10 short years.
Good grief, this “new Brooklyn” just sucks…
NOP–I do the same thing with the “which side of the aisle to sit on” thing, at least with LaGuardia. When it takes the straight through the middle of Brooklyn route (the one that brings you over Prospect Park, I can usually find at least 4 apartments I have lived in (the actual buildings). I never get bored of that.
Lechacal wrote: “Back-to-the-wall busy with work Wasder, and traveling a lot… that and I’ve sort of decided to walk away from my apartment search for the next year or so. I stop by every few days or so, but haven’t really had much to say.”
Sounds like you made a good call to postpone the search. Hope your work is good and your holidays nice and that you stop by here some more.
traditionalmod – well said. The email address for this group of yahoos manages to include both “artsy” and “yoga”. I wager next month’s rent that this person understands very little about the complexities of managing air traffic in one of the busiest areas of the world. (not that it stops him/her from trying to second guess the professionals from an armchair at the Tea Lounge)
This is competing with the group who wanted to produce biodiesel locally for Stupidest Idea of the Year.
Thanks a lot z! 😉
I just got stuck in that damn site for the last twenty minutes watching one black and white disaster after another.
(And we thought today’s broadcaster’s could occasionally have an evil gleam in their eyes while broadcasting some horrible news event or another. These guys sounded like excited circus barkers!)
P.S. also, I know people who work at JFK and if you ever fly yourself and had any idea how congested and dangerous the air traffic was for JFK and Laguardia you wouldn’t want some amateur, armchair-expert citizen’s group making the air controllers’ jobs any more complicated by requesting “fanning” flight paths.
Posters:
Yes, that photo must be eerily similar to the view of the plane as it swerved over Brooklyn before it crashed. It, more than anything, dredged up my boyhood memory.
I fly in and out of New York all the time now, and always try to guess the approach before choosing which side of the cabin to sit. There’s nothing like coming into the city over familiar streets (past and present), especially as I did recently for the holidays, when the night was crystal clear and the town’s lights were ablaze.
The post’s photo looks down into Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant. There are University Terrace and Willoughby Walk, the old Mitchell-Lama projects built to either side of Pratt, and Lafayette Gardens, the nearby public housing project, all visible in the shot. (Are they still called these names, or have they been “privatized” and re-branded?) I watched these being built and, even though some may find them architecturally dull, always get a pleasant feeling when I see them from the air — part of a Brooklyn childhood.
As some of the posters note, the sound of planes can be pleasant. As train whistles once did, they convey distance and travel. Right now helicopters are whirring overhead, guarding Manhattan’s air space. Whenever I hear them, I expect to hear a big boom. A very different kind of anticipation. (Back during the Cold War, we thought we’d immolated without warning — and in our sleep!)
NOP
… so before i moved to park slope, i lived in bushwick where the planes come in reaallll low over my apartment.
with the windows open it was ridiculous…
unless you’re laying in the park and listneing, a plane should never bother you. close your bloody windows