how to deal with a marginally noisy neighbor, NYC edition

Post date: 2019-05-25 04:26:04

After 5 year, the blissful idyl of my Bed-Stuy life has been shattered by pernicious bass frequencies emanating from a car stereo and invading my sleep-bubble at 7am. I feel shattered, gutted, I feel like universal forces of injustice have conspired to wrest control of my life away from me. Askme, can you help me calm down and strategize how to move forward?

I've lived in this apartment for 5 years and I can honestly say that nowhere in my life have I slept better - partly on account of sobriety (nearly 3 years!) and partly because it is SO PEACEFUL on my beloved little block. Note that there's a school directly across the street from me - so it can be rather trafficked in the early morning, but even with that, sleep has been delicious. To be clear, I sleep with a white-noise machine, black-out curtains, an eye-mask, and ear plugs - but with all those precautions in place, I'm able to achieve sweet unconsciousness.

Until about a month ago, that is. That's when I noticed bass frequencies of a car stereo starting at about 7am and continuing for sometimes as much as 90 minutes - most days! This is not a question of twice-a-week alternate side of the street parking. To be perfectly clear, I am not talking about window-rattling volumes - I suspect that most people would have little trouble either sleeping through this or else rolling over and going back to sleep.

The problem is that I'm a musician and tightly-wound, especially when it comes to sleep. Re: being a musician, I don't work crazy late hours, but I regularly get home around 11 or so, so going to sleep earlier in order to adapt to the external noise isn't really an option. Also, I'm super sensitive to the rhythms of the bass frequencies - it's not just that they wake me up, but that they instantly engage my brain, which I've struggled so mightily to shut off. It's a recipe for disastrous consciousness.

I find this all so profoundly frustrating because in the last few years I've FINALLY figured out how to manage my time in order to be productive in the ways that I want to be, I feel like I'm making real progress on things that eluded me for YEARS. I'm proud of myself! I attribute my progress to sobriety, regular work, and better sleeping habits. So the fact that my delicate balance has been upset is that much more frustrating.

I've spoken to my landlady about this. (I live on the top floor of a brownstone. My landlady has lived here for decades, as have many of our neighbors, including the guy who plays music at 7am.) She knows the guy I'm talking about and claims that he doesn't take kindly to requests like this - she says he's likely to take it as a confrontation and may well escalate. She did tell me yesterday that she'd speak with his mother, although I don't know if she has, and he was out there again this morning. Because of her description, I haven't yet spoken with him myself.

I haven't made a formal noise complaint although I have asked the police how they typically deal with them - I'm told that they try to respond within 8 hours, which is essentially a deal-breaker, of course. I'm not even confident that they'd notice the noise - it's just really not that loud to anyone other than me and my hypersensitive ears/brain.

I'm also trying to be sensitive to issues of gentrification. As I mentioned, he and his family have been in the neighborhood for years and years - he could easily see me as an interloper, which would not bode well for me asking him to be sensitive to my sleep needs, I think.

But it's just so frustrating to have my idyllic situation compromised. So I come to you, askmefites, in the hopes of finding wisdom, experience, or at least some compassion. Should I speak to him? Should I move? Do I need to man up and just make myself cope?Thanks!

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