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.
NOP….that’s a horrific story. When I was in high school a 727 landed in our neighbors house. We were standing outside in front of our house and watched as this plane flew above us almost touching our own roof. I’ve never seen anything like it once I got there. It was up in Albany, NY..Allegheny Airlines back then around 76 or 77.
Even then no one in our neighborhood attempted something as utterly ridiculous as to have the flight paths moved.
I’ve lived in PS for 8 years and am never bothered by aircraft (now helicopters that’s another story.) What’s with these people and their horrible website? And where are their hilarious photographs?
i’m surprised at all the snark against the idea.
i can definitely hear the airplanes above. and why not spread it out? i think we have the technology to share the burden.
if dinkins can remove the tennis stadium from the flight path, then we can remove my barbeque from the flightpath.
Yeah NOP, there are some pretty amazing photos of the crash site.
I’m sorry, but whine, whine, whine.
Brownstoner:
This post recalls the horrific mid-air collision that made a plane crash right in the middle of Park Slope during the early 1960’s, when I was a boy in nearby Crown Heights.
The collision, between a jet and a “prop” over New York Bay, forced one of the pilots to try to land in Prospect Park. He missed by a couple of blocks, landing near Seventh Avenue, his plane ripping through brownstone fronts and setting fire to two buildings at the street corner (only recently rebuilt with new condos).
Everyone aboard and several people on the street were killed, except for a young boy on his way to Boston for the winter holidays. The entire country turned to the radio broadcasts recounting his injuries and condition — until he died.
It was a sad moment for Brooklyn kids, who identified with him, and for whom schools in the vicinity, including mine, were closed early that day. (This was in the midst of the Cold War, and the spectre of planes — or worse — dropping from the skies was terrifying; except this time it was real!)
I sat by the radio, too. The boy’s parents, not traveling with him, thanked New Yorkers for their prayers. When he died, a collective sigh crossed Brooklyn.
I had family living in the block where the plane fell. For my cousins, it became a point of pride to point out the damage, as if they’d lived through a war. But what a horrible moment. Neighbors on the street were killed, too.
Even now when I walk by that corner on Seventh Avenue I imagine what it must have been like: hanging out on the stoop (which kids always did) and seeing the nose of that plane come roaring down the street.
Nostalgic on Park Avenue
“Attention passengers, we are currently in a holding pattern and cannot land until Ms. Glenda Smith-Hutchin’s in vitro fertilized 18 month old twins Ethan and Gabriella wake from their afternoon nap. At that point, we’ll have a direct descent to runway 42 at LaGuardia. Thank you for your patience.”
I say we move the three major airports servicing NYC out to Iowa…that’ll make it quite.
What’s next? The curbs are too high? Some people really want to have problems.