Noisy Neighbors
Okay, so in this case, we’re the “noisy neighbors.” We recently moved from Manhattan into a brownstone in Park Slope. Our new place has outdoor space (that we pay a premium for) and we’re definitely planning to utilize the space during the summer months. My husband and I both work until 7pm so the only…
Okay, so in this case, we’re the “noisy neighbors.”
We recently moved from Manhattan into a brownstone in Park Slope. Our new place has outdoor space (that we pay a premium for) and we’re definitely planning to utilize the space during the summer months. My husband and I both work until 7pm so the only time to take advantage of the backyard is in the evenings as we tend to travel on the weekends. Over the past week we have been out back gardening (trying to beautify our new outdoor space) until about 10pm and one weeknight we had friends over until just before 10pm. I would say that 99% of the time it will just be me and my husband out back and when we’re out there we often play music, but at what I would consider a reasonable level (for example, I can’t hear it when I enter the apartment and close the door). Coming from Manhattan, we’re used to playing music and in most cases being some of the quieter people in our old building. We understand that we live near a lot of families with young children now and we’re trying to find a balance between enjoying our outdoor space and being respectful of our neighbors.
We received a complaint from one of our neighbors that we are being too noisy and that music is meant to be kept indoors in our new neighborhood. As I said, we want to be respectful of our neighbors and certainly don’t want to start off on the wrong foot, but we also want to enjoy our space. When we signed the lease on our apartment nodoby mentioned a “music indoors” rule.
So, here’s my question, is playing music at reasonable levels until 9 or 10pm disrespectful? If so, what would be a reasonable time to play music until?
We would like to come to some sort of arrangement with our neighbors where we stop playing music at some designated hour, but that we still have a right to play music until that point in time without complaints or dirty looks on the street. We think that requesting that music stay indoors at all times is somewhat unreasonable. Would love to hear your thoughts…
Hah ha ha Brooklyn quieter than Manhattan?! Ha ha heh heh. I guess you don’t live in a Caribbean neighborhood, 5:36!
Sometimes I wish my neighbors (with small kids I might add) would turn it down a notch. Their music goes way past 11 (both the time and on the volume dial). But 9pm is totally OK by me and is common in my neighborhood. I turn on the AC if I need peace.
Besides, those ubiquitous f-ing ice cream trucks are way more annoying than anyone’s back yard music.
My guideline, what if everyone did what you did as often as you did it? Me, a few tunes on low if I grill in the evening I say is cool. Past 8-9 on a weekday, I know some kids are sleeping with the windows open and don’t need to hear me rocking out to Kenny G and Yanni.
That being said, if you live next door to my neighbor who think’s it’s appropriate to get her kid’s school bus driver to blast her #$%ing horn at 7:15 every morning, then play whatever you want, as loud as you want whenever you want 😉
Okay, so this is what I’m getting from everyone. For those of you who think that playing music at all is okay as long as we’re respectful, that means playing music at moderate levels until about 9pm. The rest of the group thinks that playing music at all is rude.
So, I guess we’ll try to fall somewhere in the middle. We won’t play music unnecessarily, but we will enjoy it quietly on occasion. In any event, we’ll do our best to shut off the music by 9…unless it’s the weekend and we’re having a party and then we’ll give our immediate neighbors a heads up.
Hopefully this will be sufficient for our neighbors who wrote the letter and all those nearby.
Thanks for all of your help….I will do my best not to disturb the peacefulness of the Slope 🙂
Okay, so this is what I’m getting from everyone. For those of you who think that playing music at all is okay as long as we’re respectful, that means playing music at moderate levels until about 9pm. The rest of the group thinks that playing music at all is rude.
So, I guess we’ll try to fall somewhere in the middle. We won’t play music unnecessarily, but we will enjoy it quietly on occasion. In any event, we’ll do our best to shut off the music by 9…unless it’s the weekend and we’re having a party and then we’ll give our immediate neighbors a heads up.
Thanks for all of your help….I will do my best not to disturb the peacefulness of the Slope 🙂
5:23, I actually find the smell of burning flesh really disgusting! But that’s a whole other post.
Music outside is rude, but from March 1 to Oct 1 some of us get to be subjected to the constant background hum of ac units cranking. Can I get everyone to shut off their acs after nine pm?
I go to bed before 10 every night and do not sleep with A/C so I sleep with my windows open. I do not want to hear anyone else’s music. Nora Jones or Death Metal. Keep it indoors. One of the reasons people move to Brooklyn is because it’s quieter.. So you can actually hear the birds in your backyard… not someone else’s music.
What about BBQing? If I throw 5 juicey steaks on the grill, surely everyone nearby is going to smell my dry-aged porterhouse steaks cooking.
The music reverberates through the entire block of houses to which you are connected. It may not seem loud to you but it rises up and out to EVERY house who’s backyard aabuts your block. We never play music outdoors for this reason. I definitely do not think you should play music outdoors. It’s still shared space.