Month: September 2007

Noise Free America – Ohio Chapter

September 5, 2007

Advanced Custom Sound
1894 Elm Road N.E.
Warren, Ohio 44483

Dear Sir or Madam:

Noise Free Ohio is a chapter of Noise Free America, a national non-profit organization devoted to restoring peace and quiet to our neighborhoods. We were somewhat appalled to read about the recent coverage your businesses had in a recent Tribune article, written by Larry Ringler in the spring of 07, with tones of praising such businesses like yours, as though they are providing some kind of valuable service to the community.

Larry Ringler was also written a response from our national group, as well as our affiliate organizations regarding that article. While it may be true that you may feel that your customers have a “choice” about how they listen to their noise, what many businesses such as yours fail to recognize is that at the same time these thoughtless and selfish people are depriving the rest of us, of the choice NOT to listen to it.

Many of the products you sell and install are creating a national health crisis and I write to enlighten you about some of the damage you are doing to persons, property and communities.

Please read on:-

First, at an increasing rate, cities across the nation are passing or strengthening noise ordinances, and the sad truth is, the people who buy these audio weapons are bringing these new laws on themselves. They know the moment they buy and install your equipment, they are going to be:
Breaking the Law
Annoying the Public
Creating a dangerous highway situation for emergency workers whose sirens cannot be heard
Waking people who have to work nights and sleep days (as well as the rest of us who try to sleep at night in cities plagued by these weapons).
Ruining their own hearing and that of their passengers
Damaging the brains of small children trapped in their car seats only inches away from the speakers
Destroying property values
Take a moment to educate yourself about what loud noise does to a human body – both the noisemaker and his victims.

Make a note every time you sell one of these subwoofers, or an entire trunk load of them, that the 10% of the population, myself included, suffer real health damage from the combination of high decibels and low frequency vibrations. We suffer chest pain, stomach pain, headaches, rapid heart rate, sweating and/or nausea. Elevated blood pressure, and worst of all, instant and involuntary aggression brought on by a rush of adrenaline. Not healthy in the least. Medically speaking, this is not endemic to just an elderly population, it can and does happen in all age groups.

In large cities, one car in four stopped for booming produces a wanted criminal, an illegal weapon, drugs or all three. Booming is often a form of drug advertising. The Police in most large Cities know this. The excuse that this is a healthy hobby or an alternative to drugs for kids, as commonly touted by those associated with your kind of industry, is a lie and nothing more. Installing equipment that has no other purpose except to disturb, defy, damage, ignite and destroy (the words used by the manufactures themselves) is not a hobby. It is an act of defiance of the law, it is antisocial, it has no socially redeeming value.

If you are not warning the “kids” or adults who spend their money on these subwoofers, that using them at full blast is illegal and that they can be fined, you are not only assisting in the commission of a crime, you are yourself being socially irresponsible. The audibility requirement in the Florida state law for citing a specific example of this issue was reduced in July 2005 from 100’ to 25’, resulting in a doubling of the tickets written. This law was fought for by a SWAT team commander with the Orange County (Orlando) sheriff’s office – he feared for the lives of his deputies because their sirens could not be heard over the din on the highways and at traffic lights.

Warren, Ohio has a limit of 50 feet, meaning that noise should not be audible within 50 feet. Often it can be heard from blocks away. Current activity in City Council is addressing possible target enforcement of this law which your patrons behavior brought upon themselves because of the growing number of fed up law abiding, peaceful tax paying residents. Our city’s noise ordinance addressing this issue is in effect 24 hours a day, and I have included a copy of it for your convenience. Perhaps the responsible thing to do would be to hand out copies of it to your customers if you are going to continue to sell these noise weapons.

Just for enlightenment on this issue, here is what other Cities and States are doing to quiet this plague:

– No noise audible at 10 feet.
– No noise that can be heard from the car at all.
– Initial fines of $500, $1,000, $1,500. In one little town in New Jersey……….$3,000
– Jail time – 30-90 days.
– Suspension of car tag or driver’s license (or both) – 30-90 days.

The next time you sell an expensive mess of subwoofers to someone, ask yourself what he is going to do with it and then ask yourself if you can go to bed at night with a clear conscience. Better yet, go visit one or more of these web sites and educate yourself about he way you are earning a living:
www.nonoise.org
www.lowertheboom.org
www.noiseoff.org

You may be surprised at what you learn!

By the way, stiff fines, impoundment, confiscation and jail time DO make a difference. Even your customers would probably grow weary of paying $750 and having their car towed every time they are caught.

Finally, in the United Arab Emirates, one of the countries to which we selfish and greedy Americans export this dangerous practice to, their law simply states the first time you are caught booming, the authorities take away your car. This is how one official put it “if you are so stupid to think that this is the purpose of owning an automobile, you don’t deserve to have one”. In The United Kingdom, allowing noise to resonate from vehicles and invade other people’s right to peace in their own homes is an act seen as it should be seen; “Anti-Social and Irresponsible Behaviour” You may be asked to remove yourself from the neighborhood without permission to return.

Acting as such and breaking laws is not a freedom here in the US — nor anywhere through the eyes of 99% of the thinking rational world. Do us all a favor and please take some social responsibility for yourselves and your customers. If you react to this letter with an “I will do what the “bleep” I want… and I don’t care how it hurts anyone else” attitude, then this only reaffirms our belief that we need to work harder with local law enforcement to nail down on this already illegal in-your-face behavior.

Sincerely
R.S. Scott
Noise Free America – Ohio Chapter
www.noisefree.org
www.noiseoff.org

cc: Warren Police Chief, John Mandopoulos
cc: Warren City Safety Director, William Franklin
cc: Warren City Mayor, Michael O’Brien

 

 

Here are some links which feature various articles I have written or contributed to about my interest in native fishes.

http://www.farmertodd.com/NANFA/101202/

http://jonahsaquarium.com/nanfa/2002%2D11%2D05ohio/index.html

http://jonahsaquarium.com/JonahSite/nanfa/OHReg5-6-2000/1-OHReg5-6-2000.htm

To my surprise, there is actually a website which features malls all across the country, that struggle to remain fully occupied. You can click here http://www.deadmalls.com/ to stroll down memory lane with your favorite shopping venue as you may have grown up with in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s.

In Greater Cleveland, the concept of the new style “big modern malls” featuring retail stores, banks, recreation, and other uses, all under one roof, blossomed in the late 1950’s and hit a peak in the early 1970’s — so as my personal observation and experience shows me. Several downtown retailers could not resist the allure of a brand new facility with plenty of parking, as inner city retail districts were aging and often not meeting the demands of a new auto-dependent consumer base as trains and public transportation became the secondary means of getting around. Aging retail space base, crime, inadequate parking were all contributors of this flight of retail from the core.

But today, many of the original malls that killed the inner city retail base, have now themselves become victims of even further suburban sprawl—-Many will call this out-migration of business phenomenon poorly planned urban growth and management. There are other driving forces for sprawl, but forces such as tax abatements are a story alone.

Nevertheless, there is now a re-discovery of the older inner urban retail infrastructure as many buildings and streets in downtown Cleveland, for example, are undergoing a slow, but steady revitalization. Still, this brings us back to the aging “first malls club”– and I shudder to think that many of these retail behemoths could someday sit deserted amidst a vast sea of pavement which simply contributes to dirty stormwater runoff to our rivers and streams, also another story alone! With that in mind, I was inspired to dream up a new adaptive re-use of these malls as more than just retail alone.

I was a longtime patron of Randall Park Mall in Cleveland (Warrensville/North Randall) built in 1976. I remember when this crown jewel double decker mall opened and few people had ever seen anything quite like it. Huge anchor stores like Higbee’s, cascading fountains, red carpeted catwalks and ramps, theaters, and the list goes on.

Today, the mall is still a nice place to visit but nothing like it was when it first popped into the retail scene. I actually felt sorry for the place and so I offer some ideas on future uses for Malls like Randall Park, which struggle because of what I see, as an over production of retail space in North east Ohio among other factors.

I think malls as such can be great places not only for what, for example, the Randall Park mall is now, but for future “indoor neighborhoods” with trendy apartments, retail, post, groceries, fresh fruit and veggie and bakery markets, entertainment, all necessities for living, under one roof—maybe even a school or recreation center. Essentially, an “indoor complete neighborhood.”

This is what they were in terms of just shopping in the past, BUT, adding social amenities like high quality living addresses, will see such a place transfer into a whole neighborhood and city under one roof. Huge areas where anchor tenants once stood, can be creatively divided into apartments, condominiums, with indoor atriums, pools and recreation/fitness facilities with skylights and courtyards. Then, rents could be collected from several sources, rather than one entity such as a large anchor retailer as in the past. Such a facility could be a national example of creativity and brilliant adaptive re-use! Good for North Randall.. Good for Greater Cleveland etc.

If marketed properly, all the above would be great for those who do not wish to rely on cars, or those who wish to reduce dependency on oil. I think this idea could really help revitalize the inner older suburban areas. I feel this may be the future of older but great malls like Randall. What are your thoughts?

 

The following was inspired by the great Sierra Club hand out-and personal attention to the issue-which has made me physically sick. Spring is here and the chemical spraying/fertilizing madness has begun…. and it has become especially disturbing to see schools, hospitals, those who reside along lake-shore areas, and local government building properties buying into the nonsense! Read on….

Lawns On Drugs–Just Say NO!

Once upon a time, Spring was aglow and fragrant with the bright colors and sweet scent of benign beautiful plants like dandelion and clover, which had numerous culinary/nutritional values and medicinal properties. We made greens, salads and some even made coffee! After a long dreary and bland winter, awing at the avenues becoming a sudden corridor of color and sweet fragrance was a common and accepted sight in the mind.

Now the commercial lawn services came along and through their marketing methods have re-shaped our vision of how a lawn should look. They convinced us that anything other than a blade of grass is a terrible thing. “It must be destroyed or it will kill your lawn” they told you—-And hence was born the lawn chemical company’s version of a lawn: A sterile patch of green with no signs of life–a mono culture.

Once we began to see all the diversity in our lawns disappear through years of spraying and fertilizing, we have been conditioned to think the lawn must look like marketing’s version of a lawn–and the moment a dandelion happens to reappear in this new sea of ‘green only’ yards–we freak out and run for the Round-Up, or worse, call the chemical guy again! Let’s try and un-condition the thinking that lawn chemical companies helped to foster: the mentality of a mono-culture lawn as a perfect and healthy lawn.

Is it really healthy?

Commercial lawn chemicals, despite claims by dealers as “being safe”, are not in the best interest of a healthier environment. Getting a lawn hooked on them like drugs, renders it virtually useless in fighting infection and pests on its own, as its “immune system” gets weakened, and therefore becomes even more susceptible to disease and/or pests these companies apparently set out to destroy in the first place! Adding chemicals to a lawn is not a magic bullet situation; the pesticides kill indiscriminately and kill many beneficial organisms within, and on top of the soil. Alternatively, a naturally healthy lawn is one where 95% of all organisms are beneficial.

With nature’s system of balance in the lawn absent from over-spraying, we have to rely on even more spraying of chemicals to do what nature used to do for free. Lawns are now becoming addicted to chemical fixes to remain artificially healthy. This scenario is analogous to a vampire needing blood to appear alive. By interfering with natural balance we often do more harm than good.

Here are some thoughts to consider about lawn chemical use:

* Phosphates from fertilizers getting into storm water runoff travel directly to our lake/water sources via storm drains after rains. Bad for aquatic life and health of lakes/rivers. Blue/Green algal blooms result from too much nitrogen/phosphate from fertilizers–when the blooms die, the algae rots and is consumed by bacteria which deplete water of oxygen, thus impacting aquatic life; and in particular the fishing economy. (Lake Erie-Perch fishing) Such causes bad odors results in huge dead zones in the lake and is very unhealthy for swimmers.

* Pesticides like 24-D (a defoliant used in Agent Orange), Diazinon, Dursban and others are all linked to cancer according to the USEPA.

* Chemical drift remains in the air days after application which contributes to respiratory irritation from fumes.

* Residue (petroleum based) from chemicals remains on lawn for days after application and can get tracked indoors despite contrary claims. Bad for you and your pet.

* Several US cities and many Canadian communities have either banned uses of many lawn chemicals or placed restrictions of their uses for mere cosmetic reasons.

Think about it, is all the above worth a green lawn? It is just a lawn; not a food source we are trying to protect from a devastating pest situation. It does not have to consist of grass plants only. We should de-program the images sold to us by lawn companies and try accepting another. A “weed” is not always a bad thing and in fact is just a name given to any plant growing outside its community of origin. “Going Green” does not mean your lawn has to stay green even in dormant times. If you still desire a mono-culture look of just green, consider the fact that there are many organic and safer alternatives to the chemicals to achieve this.

My next related article will deal with the concept of designing a yard/lawn that is not nearly as co-dependent on our water and oil resources. We will talk about a yard utilizing native plants, trees, and shrubs which “grew-up” and evolved locally without the help of people in any given place, thus making them more independent of water, fertilizers, etc. In the meantime, I recommend the following websites to introduce you to this concept. Discover how wonderful and full of good life your yard can be!

http://www.ohioprairienursery.com/