Calgary, Canada, Go ahead, make a racket and let's pass this noise bylaw

OFF THE WIRE
http://www.calgaryherald.com/ahead+make+racket+pass+this+noise+bylaw/3841258/story.html Lakritz: Go ahead, make a racket and let's pass this noise bylaw

By Naomi Lakritz, Calgary Herald November 19, 2010

Ahh, the first big snowfall of the year on Monday. Wasn't it beautiful? Winter descending for another season upon Calgary, the soft flakes coming down in the quiet night air -- quiet being the operative word. With snow piling up on the slippery roads, it was indeed blissfully quiet because the owners of the souped-up cars and motorcycles that usually go screaming through the streets in the wee hours had to keep their obnoxious vehicles in the garage Monday night.
And just as an aside, because I'm curious -- who are these people who are out making noise at 3 a.m.? Don't they have jobs or school they have to go to in the morning? Do they zoom home when the first streaks of dawn appear in the sky, climb into coffins and pull the lids shut for another day's sleep, like vampires who live only for the hours of darkness?
I'm glad to see City Hall is serious about the possibility of beefing up the noise bylaw so that the owners of these souped-up vehicles can be dealt with.
And while I totally support Ald. John Mar, who has been in the forefront of this whole initiative, I disagree with his recent comment that most Calgarians don't know how loud their vehicles are. We ordinary folks who drive around in ordinary cars know that our vehicles are not making any untoward noise.
The jerks who tear through the streets in souped-up vehicles know exactly how loud they are and they revel in annoying people -- why else would they do it in the wee hours in the morning, if not to take sadistic pleasure in jolting Calgarians from slumber? It's not like they're out innocently running errands at that hour. They know they're loud, they fix up their vehicles to be loud, they take pride in being loud, and they think the louder they are, the cooler they are in what passes for their own minds and the more they will be perceived as cool by like-minded Neanderthals.
Day or night, this noise needs to be stopped, and that includes the show-offs who modify their Porsches and other expensive cars to make them louder and draw attention to themselves. There's enough urban noise pollution in Calgary without them adding to it. No vehicle needs to be louder than it is when it comes from the factory; any car or motorcycle that is nerve-janglingly loud is merely the outward manifestation of its owner's silly ego trip. The rest of us remain unimpressed by the aforesaid owner's exalted opinion of himself.
It's disturbing to see what a bad rap the concept of quiet is getting lately. Not long ago, I saw an article about noise complaints in a different city and someone interviewed for the piece sneered that the complaints are the dominion of those who read the New York Times in their pyjamas Sunday mornings. I'm not sure why people who simply want some peace and quiet in which to enjoy a Sunday morning routine or who desire some silence so that a bit of birdsong from their yard isn't drowned out, are automatically objects of derision. But maybe it's because of what seems to be an absolute imperative to make noise, any kind of noise, these days.
The compulsion of Facebook, Twitter, et al is to communicate constantly, to blather even if there is absolutely nothing at all that needs saying, to fill up the cybersilence with the breaking news that you just did some mundane thing or other. As columnist Jack Knox, of the Victoria Times-Colonist, says of Facebook's newsfeed, "No one cares if you had bacon for breakfast, unless you're a rabbi."
So this manufactured need to be forever communicating translates off-line into the need to fill up all the silences in the real world. Silence has become intolerable, and those who crave a respite from the shrillness are stereotypically dismissed as cranky old geezers in cardigans, who, in a society which has no patience or consideration for age anyway, aren't on the noise junkies' radar screens, except when their concerns about decibels are deemed good for a laugh.
There is going to be noise in an urban environment shared by more than a million people. It's inevitable. But what's not inevitable is the unnecessary noise added to the cacophony by souped-up vehicles. I do not mind when a Calgary Transit bus wakes me up around 7 a.m. with its low rumble as it passes by on the boulevard near my culde-sac. It's part of city life. But I do mind when some idiot goes tearing along that same boulevard at 2:30 a.m., revving some type of noisy vehicle whose decibel levels could shatter glass. There is no need for him to be doing that. His right to make noise ends where someone else's right to have it quiet begins.
Keep up the fight, Alderman Mar; we need a bylaw with real teeth in it.