Letter from the editor . . .
By Lauren Dean
Some folks say excessive and abusive noise is something residents are expected to endure as the price of living in paradise. Those folks must not live within blasting range of the Center Street drinking establishment or scrunched between two rental houses regularly occupied by hordes of college kids who come to town to party down.
Folly Beach has a noise ordinance. Here’s a novel idea: post the ordinance in bars and rental houses and, hey, here’s another novel idea: enforce the ordinance. Ah, if only it were that easy. Hear me out.
Sunday night over Memorial Day weekend, I called the cops twice to the rental unit next door where a three-day party was in full swing. Nine cars that didn’t move the entire weekend were parked at rakish angles all over the yard. The cars that came and went, came and went day and night, spilling their screaming, swearing occupants across the yard like marbles tumbling from a sack. My cat, a quiet, timid loner of a cat who likes to hunt mice and lizards in the wooded lot next to the rental, was frightened by the continuous activity and didn’t come home for days.
Some people complain that it takes Public Safety too long to respond to complaints of excessive noise. That’s not true, and that’s not the problem. I have called the cops on two previous occasions. The first was a rowdy affair across the street where fresh meat was still arriving at 2:30 in the morning. Public Safety was there in less than 10 minutes and 15 minutes later the party was shut down. Most of the partygoers were under-age and were quickly rounded up and transported from the premises. The second time was about a raucous party next door where my neighbor had told me her twenty-something son would be “having some friends over for the weekend.” It became a joke between us from that point on whenever her son planned to stay there for the weekend. “Are you going to call the police?” she would ask. “I will if things get out of hand,” I would respond. It didn’t interfere with our friendship and I never had to call the cops on her son again.
When I called last week, Public Safety came right away. I called promptly at eleven o’clock. The noise ordinance says it “shall be unlawful for any person to engage in or commit any of the following acts: Make or utter any loud hollering, loud laughter, whistling, singing or shouting or other loud language or sound in such a manner that it creates a noise disturbance between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.”
Some folks would wonder why I couldn’t cut the revelers a little slack – folks expect to party when they come to the beach – but I had already endured an entire day of thumping rap lyrics, unintelligible yelling and shrieking, heard all about the “f—ing” this and the “f—ing” that, and now I was being subjected to what sounded like a striptease act with “take it off, take it offfffff, Mary” accompanied by loud clapping and hooting. All this in my little corner of paradise.
“Take your party inside,” the nice Public Safety officer told them and, surprisingly, they did. I opened the windows again and lay down to savor the breeze blowing in from the ocean and the sound of waves crashing against the shore. Ah, paradise. It had been a long three days.
Then suddenly there it was again – the yelling, the shrieking, the cursing. I lay in bed for some time pondering the situation. “It’s not as bad as it was. Surely it will wind down soon.” When I finally got up to close the windows, I checked the time. It was 2:46 a.m. I didn’t want to close my windows and turn the air-conditioning on. I wanted those people next door to shut the f— up so I could go back to sleep! I hesitated, and then I picked up the telephone again.
The same nice Public Safety officer showed up again, but this time he was more explicit. “Last time I asked you to take it inside,” he told them. “It’s three o’clock in the morning. This time I’m telling you to go inside. It’s time to go to bed.” He also told them boisterous noise at that time of night was against the law.
There are specified consequences to violating the noise ordinance, but there is one small caveat that has thus far made the ordinance virtually impossible to enforce. It doesn’t fine the people making the noise, it fines the “owner of the establishment or his agent.” Until the City can figure out how to hold bars and rental agencies accountable for excessive and abusive noise, we who call this little island our home will have to close the windows, get a prescription for sleeping pills, and invest in some good ear plugs. Or move. Paradise lost.
