Despite all my puffy-chested urbanite bluster of only a few days ago, last night brought with it the greatest argument for forsaking NYC as I've yet to hear.
At around 10:30 pm, right as I was logging off from my computer, taking the trash out and getting ready for bed, road work along our particular street here in Greenwich Village began in earnest. Lots of big trucks carrying tar and cement and large, Zamboni-like street-cutting mechanisms arrived for what sounded like a crash-course in lunar excavation. The air was gradually filled with the unrestful sounds of booming, clanking, rubble-dumping, demolition and scraping. The dull roar of idling trucks and the shrill beeping alarms that signal that a truck is backing up became the order of the night.
At midnight, the jackhammering started. Let's rewind that and roll that by again, shall we? AT MIDNIGHT, THE JACKHAMMERING STARTED!
Now, by and large, my kids have been conditioned to sleep through typical nocturnal NYC traffic. All our windows face the street, and being that we're only three flights up, our apartment suffers a sizable share of noise. But, like I said, both Charlotte and little Oliver (though he was tougher to adapt) have managed to find a way to sleep soundly through screaming sirens, honking horns, passing trucks and high-volume trunk o' funks boomin' beat-heavy Hip Hop as they rumble down our street. But a jackhammer directly under the window in the dead of the night? Afraid not. It was as if Einsturzende Neubauten had suddenly shown up to give an impromptu performance. In short order, the entire household was awake and crying. Once the jackhammer song began, we found our kids both sitting upright in their respective cribs, panic-stricken from the flashing lights darting across their walls and ceiling from outside and terrified of the ceaseless, grinding caterwaul. This continued well into the night, and no one got any real semblance of rest.
Now, I'm not sure which shitty city official or fatuous, corpulent bureaucrat thought it was prudent to have this maintenance performed overnight instead of during the day, but I can only imagine it's because of one of two reasons. Either (A) the city considers my little strip to be such an invaluable artery within the bustling crosshatch of streets that to close it off would cause impenetrable traffic congestion during the day or more likely, (B) the hard-hats and truck drivers involved in this unwieldy operation are ALL VAMPIRES!
The worst part of it is that they didn't even finish. Tonight, I believe, they plan on re-tarring.
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