Spring’s warm weather will also signal a resumption of the noise wars between residents and businesses along Inwood‘s Dyckman St.
The battleground lies along Dyckman in the resurgent two blocks between Broadway, Seaman and Payson Aves. That stretch in recent years has seen an influx of trendy restaurants popular with the younger set, including Mamajuana Cafe, Mama Sushi Restaurant, Il Sole and Papasito Mexican Grill and Agave Bar.
The cafés have brought new food and nightlife to an area residents say was once best known for cheap clothes and dollar stores. The new venues have enjoyed remarkable success, attracting outsized crowds of mostly young Hispanic people from across the city and nearby Westchester and New Jersey to dine and party into the wee hours.
Therein lies the rub.
Majorie Clarke, who has lived in the area for 31 years, says crowds in search of the funk have also attracted the noise of drunken revelers, motorcycle races and “boom cars,” the four-wheeled, and much louder, motorized equivalent of the 1980s-era boom boxes – basically a massive speaker system on wheels.
“Boom cars should be outlawed,” Clarke said. “Their only purpose is to disturb the peace. People outside the car can hear better than people inside.”
The noise wars started several years ago. Clarke recalled that a city Parks Department-commissioned restaurant and concert space at the Dyckman Marina on the Hudson River “used to have these large parties and functions. I live three blocks from the water and five stories up, but the noise would still keep me up.”
That restaurant was closed in 2007 after several people associated with it were arrested on drug charges.
Clarke said this new wave of restaurants have all arrived within the last five years. They attract a young, primarily Dominican and Puerto Rican crowd, she added, and host “huge parties, with cars lined up next to one another cheek and jowl” along Dyckman and adjoining streets.
The noise is made worse by boisterous drinkers at outdoor cafés, Clarke said. “Businesses seem to think the only way to make money is to sell liquor and make noise,” she said.
Clarke said police have been only intermittently helpful. “We call the 34th Precinct and sometimes they answer the phone, sometimes it’s busy. Other times they say they will get there when they can, as if we were not that important.”
Clarke and several neighbors started DIN Action, Dyckman Inwood Noise Action, to spearhead their fight. The DIN Action website at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DINaction/ includes a log of residents’ 31-1/911 calls to police about noise complaints.
The group has also loaded several videos on YouTube chronicling their fight, including one of a confrontation Clarke had with a restaurant manager.
Clarke has a doctorate in environmental science. She is also founder of the Riverside-Inwood Neighborhood Garden (RING), an award-winning, all-volunteer botanical garden that has been in operation since 1984 near Dyckman and Broadway.
She said noise from the restaurants and their outdoor cafés often stymies quieter events held in the garden.
“A lot of these places would be perfectly fine if you didn’t have music and loudspeakers, but some of them have speakers the size of cars,” Clarke said. “Plus a lot of these restaurants stay open past when they are supposed to be shut. They’re still blasting music until 3 a.m.”
Victor Santos, general manager at Mamajuana, said he has spent more than $50,000 soundproofing the restaurant since last year. To keep noise down, Mamajuana’s seasonal outdoor café has last seating at 10p.m., and is closed by midnight.
“I have two bouncers outside at night,” Santos said. “One wears a reflective vest and his job is to keep cars from double parking so traffic can keep moving. The other guy helps keep people moving when they come out of the restaurant so we can keep noise down.
“We’ve been here five years and the police have never had to come into the restaurant,” Santos said. “We put up signs asking people to be considerate of our neighbors. All of our neighbors have my cell phone number so they can call me if they need to.”
Susan Russell, director of operations and general counsel for City Councilman Robert Jackson, said several other restaurants along the strip have invested in soundproofing and other measures. Several business have agreed to “earlier closing hours than the law allows, to cut back on noise.
“There has been some culture clashing,” Russell said. “We have young, entrepreneurial Dominican businessmen and women moving in, and that new business is attracting new people and traffic to the neighborhood.”
Talks between community members and businesses were waylaid by the cold weather but should resume soon, she said.
“We’re trying to develop a culture in the area where we can get people to behave in certain ways so these businesses can be as successful as possible and people can still sleep upstairs,” Russell said.