Garrick is right when he points out that some people are just whingers. Back when I lived in Melbourne a local pub was having untold trouble because a block of apartments had been built next door. Because there was no prior usage rights the pub, which was a landmark and had been there for decades, had to immediately implement sound-proofing and the like.
Now, personally I think that this type of whinging is ridiculous. Apart from enduring the endless blare of car alarms (seriously people… what in the hell are you thinking? Car alarms are the most pointless thing in the world. When was the last time you responded to one that wasn’t your own?), if you’ve moved into the city, or near an existing noise, then you have made a choice.
And that choice includes putting up with whatever ambient noises existed there before you moved in. Purchasing an apartment next to a cathedral, and then complaining, is downright stupid. It’s not like you could claim you were unaware, it’s a four story high salmon-coloured building with a bell tower on it for christssakes.
Whingers, every one of you.
28 May, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Yeah – I read that -whingers. I mean if you move next to a cathedral…
Someone I know had a inner city appartment next to a busy set of lights with that really loud noise signally pedestrians to cross. It went all night and he used to HATE it – he simply hadn’t thought about it when he moved in. It was a 2 year lease or soemthing. Doh!
Some people will whinge anywhere – they probably would complain about lawn mowers (or my kids) in the suburbs and magpies in the country
28 May, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Well as someone who has moved into a place where the joyous tones of the transvestite sex workers on the street below float up til the wee small hours … I’m ready to be up there with the whingers. Cuba St I could actually handle, random shrieks, hysterical laughter and bitch fights at 2am … not so prepared.
And seriously I had no idea when I moved in!
29 May, 2008 at 12:36 am
Car alarms are an attempt to externalise your security costs onto other people. As such, they should be ignored on principle.
29 May, 2008 at 3:12 am
Nothing a healthy dose of Coase theorem won’t fix, lol.
Yeah, have to feel for you there Brenda. Wouldn’t classify you as a whinger in that situation. There are always the unknowns.
29 May, 2008 at 6:56 am
@brenda. heh. you might be whinging. you must have known what marion street is like!
although a bigger concern, if you’re in the building i think you are, keep an eye out for earthquakes…
29 May, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Earthquakes are up there with getting hit by a bus in terms of things I worry about daily.
And no, I had no idea what Marion St is like! I’m just hoping they’ll head back up to the Vivian St corner once the construction site is gone
29 May, 2008 at 2:42 pm
One of the highlights of Law School for me was a decision by Lord Denning about the law of nuisance and whether it was nuisance if the complainant had moved to the nuisance (as opposed to the nuisance arriving after the complainant).
Lord Denning’s judgement dissented from the majority and the law is a nuisance is a nuisance, whether it was there before or not (which make sense if you really think about it).
But Denning’s judgement is famous and it opens with the following:
In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in County Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last 70 years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short. It has a good club house for the players and seats for the onlookers. The village team play there on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to a league, competing with the neighbouring villages. On other evenings after work they practise while the light lasts. Yet now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there any more. He has issued an injunction to stop them. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built, or has had built for him, a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket. But now this adjoining field has been turned into a housing estate. The newcomer bought one of the houses on the edge of the cricket ground. No doubt the open space was a selling point. Now he complains that when a batsman hits a six the ball has been known to land in his garden or on or near his house. His wife has got so upset about it that they always go out at week-ends. They do not go into the garden when cricket is being played. They say that this is intolerable. So they asked the judge to stop the cricket being played. And the judge, much against his will, has felt that he must order the cricket to be stopped: with the consequence, I suppose, that the Lintz Cricket Club will disappear. The cricket ground will be turned to some other use. I expect for more houses or a factory. The young men will turn to other things instead of cricket. The whole village will be much the poorer. And all this because of a newcomer who has just bought a house there next to the cricket ground.
29 May, 2008 at 3:15 pm
the boy takes a while to get to the point, don’t he?
31 May, 2008 at 12:02 am
I used to live on a corner diagonally opposite the Sky City Casino with St Matthews in the City on another corner. Bell-ringing practice every Tuesday was easily avoided as you could just go out – three performances every Sunday morning I could just about abide. But, the bottle recycler truck coming for the Casino’s empties at 5.00 every flippin’ morning was what drove me in to the suburbs.
1 June, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Reminds me of all the hoo-haa after the Left Bank apartments were built that forced the Matterhorn to curb its live entertainment… there is of course the councils culpability in not enforcing decent urban residential building regs with regards to soundproofing etc…
3 June, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I beat you all. I used to live next to a Korean church.
I thank god every day that they have trained me to sleep through just about anything.
4 June, 2008 at 12:55 am
All this whinging about whingers is starting to get a little tiring…. ; )
13 February, 2011 at 6:22 pm
[...] some challenges the most difficult of which was apartment living. While western apartment dwellers whinge about car alarms, pubs and general traffic noise, my years of living next to a Korean church top [...]