SFist Rants: Cum on Feel the Noise

After a long day following a long week, we stumbled home to our apartment around midnight Saturday night looking forward to nothing but a long, restful sleep and an early morning rise to go to the gym. We didn't get it. Turns out our courtyard neighbors decided to throw a party that night. In the courtyard. So what we got that night instead was loud noises til 3 in the morning, not very restful sleep, and a late start to the gym followed by much napping-- an entire day's worth of plans shot down by the blasting of ? and the Mysterians "96 Tears" at 1:30 at night.

We were not amused.

There's actually a lot of space between our place and the courtyard. In fact, we're not directly connected to it. In between us is an alleyway and then, after the alleyway, there's a small apartment complex. But still, the party was loud enough that we could pretty much hear all the conversations going on. Or would if we could hear anything over the music as the stereo was cranked. How loud was it? We couldn't hear the TV when we tried to watch a little SNL. It was louder than we usually crank it when we listen to our own stereo. It was so loud we heard things-- unheard rhythm guitar riffs, studio effects, lyrics-- we hadn't heard before when we heard the standard classic rock party tunes played before.

At first, we were kind of cool about it. We've thrown our fair share of parties. When we were younger and dumber, we even took pride in the mighty blast of our stereos. And don't even get us started on the sheer, monstrous wall-of-noise our college band created. And we so don't want to be the kind of person who calls the cops on people throwing a party. Everyone hates those people. But then we got thinking. See, most parties are indoors, which means there's a veneer of trying to keep the noise down. It might not work, but at least the party-throwers can say, "hey, we tried to contain it." But if you're throwing a party in a courtyard and blasting music into the courtyard, the veneer is gone. There is, in effect, absolutely no attempt whatsoever at trying to contain the noise. Not even an attempt to pretend to. This made us a little pissy.

And so we lied there, contemplating doing the nasty, as it were, and calling the cops on our neighbors. Should we have the right to sleep? Or is this just one of those city-type things and the perils of living on Valencia Street, the thing you occasionally have to put up with to live where we do? Are we turning into cranky old men who don't like loud noises and wants somebody to stop them from happening? We're we the only people to be blasted by the music and unable to sleep? Did we not get the Evite? And who plays Lou Reed at a kicking party? Lou Reed is totally the kind of music you play towards the end of the night when everyone's completely drunk and wasted and you want them to go home.

So we decided to be cool and not call the cops. But next time, next time we release the hounds. We are cranky old men.