It’s Officially Nearly the Holiday — as the M80 explosions prove
Last night, just after our dinner was interrupted by a couple shotgun-loud blasts of exploding 2-liter bottles, my wife and I both sighed and realized that the relative calm we’d been enjoying so far this summer was finally over, as it’s obviously time for the kids to get their explosion on. I’m just grateful they held out till July 1, as opposed to last year when it started in late June.
It really has been better in the neighborhood this summer — and I know I’m jinxing it by writing this down — but so far we haven’t been subjected to any 1:00 a.m. basketball tournaments, their hasn’t been nearly as much trash in the street, and most of my front yard plants are still standing. I’m not sure quite what has led us to this point, but I think it’s a combination of the threat of the curfew — the neighborhood’s dead quiet most nights by 10:30 — as well as the fact that our next-door-neighbor kid is hanging out with a different (better) bunch of kids this year and just has more stuff going on, so he’s not home and bored all the time anymore. And it hasn’t been nearly as hot yet this year, so the backyard pool hasn’t been set up yet — I can’t tell you how nice it is to be able to sit in your own backyard drinking a cool drink and not be hearing the screams and shouts and swears of a bunch of 12-14-year-olds all trying to up themselves in oral offensivity.
Either way, my fingers are crossed that, barring this week of course, when all bets are off, that the summer continues to be a quiet(er) one in my neighborhood.
“offensivity”
You made up a new word!
I can explain why you are not experiencing the 1 am basketball tournaments this summer — they have moved to my neighborhood. Nothing like getting up early Monday morning for work after being up all night listening to plonka-plonka-plonka-ching! for hours on end. Not sure how to deal with these kids — teenage boys and their teenage boy buddies. Punks, all of them. I don’t want any trouble, but I also would like to be able to sleep at night. I am thinking of setting their little b-ball court on fire.
witchrivets: i hear ya and empathize. it’s amazing how loud a basketball on concrete is when it’s the only sound out there. the advice i got last year was to talk to the parents, but i can attest to the mostly ineffectual result that got me. what i can say is if you’re going to up the ante and set something on fire, prepare for retaliation — my wife ended up yelling at the kids last year (at 1am) and they basically laughed at her and then we got fireworks thrown at our house a bit and later on got egged. though the egging really did get the parents involved, so that was a good thing in the long run.
but…um, at the same time, thanks for taking those kids off our hands:)
Maybe you can find a lit court somewhere and try to convince them to play there? When we were kids, we used to play at a local elementary school with a covered court that was lit until 2am. The walls of the school and such reflected any sound away from the nearby houses…
‘Course, you’re screwed for the next week when it comes to the fireworks. Maybe those of us in the same boat can all grab a drink some time one of these nights instead of just sitting in bed at 1am cursing the white trash around us.
Each year at this time, I always wonder the same thing:
“Why do they “outlaw” fireworks, but NEVER enforce the law?”
Have you ever seen anyone even talked to by the police for shooting off this stuff?
Oh, and you inner city dwellers should know, it’s no better out in the suburbs. Our dog has to be on Benedryl to cope.
I’m planning on waging all out psy-ops against my local noise problem problem with using my outside speaker and the “mosquito” noise.
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/06/download-mosquitotone-teenage.html
Serenity Now!
Actually the police do enforce the fireworks – I know for a fact that they had a patrol 2 years ago down by Oaks Park doing nothing but looking for illegal fireworks – and you know what they did when they found them? Made the people shooting them off throw them into the river. Yup. That’s a great idea huh? Instead of some fun fireworks – litter in our already polluted river.
So yes, if they find them they’ll stop you – but really do you think they have the bandwidth to get them all? (thank goodness!)
And Warner, just put your dog inside on the 3rd and the 4th – since really those are the only super noisy nights.
No big deal.
First, you guys need to talk to the kids and their parents. If that doesn’t work, I suggest my special 74 minute CD I call Annoyance 1, that is specifically designed to combat excessive noise. It is a random assortment of noises including high frequencies (same as the Mosquito,and others) other annoying hi-lo freqs, Chinese opera, howler monkeys, lemurs, and much more.
Tested and proven effective in both crack and meth infested neighbors.
Keep the decibel level below the legal limit and you’re set.
Divebarwife- He is inside, WITH the Benedryl, and it’s already started. On the 4th we actually farm him out to his “grandparents” where it’s quiet. And yes, I know the police don’t have enough forces to even get a start on all the fireworks, it just seems like they could make an appearance or two in the residential neighborhoods.
Spencer, couldn’t you just play endless Kenny G cd’s at peak volume instead? That would drive anyone out!
God I hate fireworks!
Here’s my suggestion for those folks who love to shoot their fireworks off at all hours:
1. Get a bucket.
2. Place a large amount of cash in the bucket.
3. Add lighter fluid to the bucket.
4. Drop a match in the bucket.
I am curious – we typically do ours around 10pm or so…done by 11ish, so we’re not shooting them off late.
So for those of you who don’t like the fireworks – do you not like them at all, does even doing them early like that make you boil, or is it just the wee hours of the morning thing that’s irritating?
This is our first 4th in 10 years without a dog. I don’t mind fireworks all that much now.
Over his last few years, we had to progressively sedate the old fellow more and more. It started with a can of beer (on the vet’s recommendation, I swear!) and moved right on up to horse tranquilizers. Considering my N. Pdx. neighborhood is like Beirut in the ’80s from approximately June 15 through August, it was pretty tough.
I still wince a little when I hear a crack or a boom, then relax. Now my only concern is one of those sky rockets landing on my roof and setting my house ablaze.
As to enforcement, I’ve called police non-emergency and been told they just plain wouldn’t respond. Presumably they’d stop someone if they stumbled across them, but that’s it.
I have no problem with 10pm to 11pm ON the the 4th. That’s to be expected, and is kind of fun to watch. What I have problems with is more what “himself” describes above, the mid-June into August booming. That’s a bit much.
I think fireworks are spectacular in a fireworks show that has controls in place to ensure safety for all. Fireworks in my neighborhood annoy me and give me the heebie-jeebs in fire season.
Can anyone recommend a fireworks-free community in Oregon (w/in 3 hours or so of pdx) to visit as dog-owning tourists on the 4th? We have drugs and stuff, but it would be worth it to get out of town for the night and pay for a hotel if we could just find somewhere to go. The whole month is pretty bad, but the 4th is definitely the worst, dog-wise.
A tourist market that someone needs to exploit, perhaps!
Much more annoying than fireworks once a year for a day or two. is listening to untrained dog owners whine and their untrained dogs howling.
Why don’t all you dog owners take the time during the 4th holiday and the days after, to train your dogs to NOT bark unecesssarily and/or incessantly during the the other 364 days of the year?
I mean, does your dog really need to bark everytime someone walks past your house? Does it need to howl everytime you put it outside?