For those of you who detest noise, God created the suburbs.
There’s nothing wrong with suburbs, mind you, but there is definitely something unique about a city. And the din of urban life churning is part of the experience.
Noise, sadly, can also be useful in persuading Denver’s paternalistic City Council to pass dumb and unenforceable laws.
That’s exactly what went down when the council pushed through an new noise ordinance that will allow police to issue $500 tickets to bikers. A handful of Denver residents’ intensive complaints brought this about.
Conversations were being interrupted by bikers, for God’s sake! You should hear the horror stories.
So, now, in addition to fighting drug dealers and chasing down car thieves, police will be on the lookout for riders who fail to plaster a Environmental Protection Agency-issued sticker on their bikes.
In other words, instead of police pulling over a biker who is actually creating a big racket, the ordinance allows them to ticket pre-emptively because they might.
The overall issue of noise in the city piqued my curiosity. What is “too loud” in Denver, anyway? Is that lunatic who stalks us with the “Save Your Sole” sign on the 16th Street Mall too loud? How about the freight train that passes at night?
The law states that 82 decibels from 25 feet away is unacceptably noisy. To put decibels into better perspective, I decided to undergo a fairly nonscientific experiment and obtained a rudimentary decibel-level meter and set out to measure noise.
The average telephone ring, for context, hits your ears at around 75-80 dB. An average conversation comes in around 65-70 dB.
My first test with life-
threatening noise is a firetruck’s blaring siren in west Denver. Fumbling with my new sound contraption, I miss my chance to obtain a precise reading. But I estimate it at at least 180 dB – which is the level at which your hearing tissue beings to melt.
A power mower in Highland is a more stationary target. This mower, not a particularly large model, registers in at around 90 dBs from the sidewalk.
Can we ticket mowers?
If not, it’s clearly time for citizens to band together and demand that the City Council makes sure all mowers feature a special EPA sticker, or, at the very least, regulate their use from 4 a.m. to 6 p.m. on alternate Fridays.
Next up: An RTD bus brings my contraption close to a 90 dB reading as it takes off from around 15 feet out.
Not as grating as motorcycle pipes, perhaps, but just as loud. A construction site in a residential area brings my machine to 85-90 dB.
But my experiment hits the jackpot downtown, when a young man in a remarkably shiny white SUV pulls next to me at a red light playing a funky hip-hop tune.
Loud.
Loud as in “shaking the Earth’s very core” loud. His impressive woofers bring my device in at over 80 dB – this with one window open slightly.
Will this music lover be targeted by the Denver cops for breaking the city ordinance? Profiled for enjoying loud music? Should he be?
Police claim they have no intention of targeting bikers, and the ordinance does have some silly additions to try and convince us of this unlikely fact.
One section dictates that large fairs and festivals in Denver must have their noise capped at 80 decibels from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
I hope those participating in Denver festivals are prepared to perform on air guitars and deliver their speeches in sign language, because at 80 dB they’ll have to.
It’s too bad, because festivals should be loud and turbulent. Cities are noisy places for a reason.
Gentrification can be a force of positive change. But at some point, you begin to suck out all of a city’s life and individuality.
After all, a little noise won’t kill anyone in LoDo.
And there’s always the suburbs.
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
