Urban L.A. Longs for Sounds of Silence

Re “Sounds of the City Are Not Music to One Man’s Ears,” Voices, May 26: Many thanks to Ted Rueter for addressing L.A.’s biggest quality-of-life issue--noise pollution. I live in a beautiful, park-like area of Sherman Oaks. But on an audible level, I feel like it’s an industrial area. There is incessant buzzing from leaf blowers as gardeners come and go six days a week, 7 a.m. to dusk. Trash, delivery and service trucks send their shrill beeps piercing high into our canyon area, as their apparently careless drivers all but “park” their vehicles in reverse gear, until dogs and people alike are tense and aggravated.

Gone are the lazy naps on balmy afternoons, with breezes wafting through the open windows, that I remember taking on well-earned days off up through the 1970s. No more working at home to get some quiet, uninterrupted concentration time, either. It’s easier on the nerves to try to think in the hermetically sealed office building I commute to.

Pulsating percussion is piped into restaurants and onto outdoor dining patios; it wails on up and down supermarket aisles and makes shopping in a department store a grating experience.

Wake up, L.A! Noise is out of control. Politicians and all citizens need to act now. Just as humans need trees and green spaces in their cities, they also require relief from excessive, mindless and gratuitous noise. I know I do.

Gary L. Nudell

Sherman Oaks