What Price Silent Night?

By Steve Manes for Backroads

Over the past year, NYC has launched a battery of quality-of-life initiatives against sidewalk vendors, reckless cabbies, lawless bicyclists and jaywalking pedestrians. If New York City's Greenwich Village Community Board #2 has its way, motorcyclists will be the next to join the growing club of avenue outlaws.

The issue isn't motorcycles, per se, but motorcycle noise. Attracted by the bustling nightlife of Greenwich Village and Soho, loud bikes have become an increasingly annoying presence to many downtown residents.

"This used to be a quiet neighborhood," complained a Horatio Street resident. "But the noise has become intolerable. I have to sleep with earplugs because of the loud bikes."

This may have less to do with an increase in the number of loud bikes cruising the Village than it does her proximity to Hogs and Heifers, a popular late-night motorcycle bar located at Washington and W.13th Street. A half-dozen blocks away, another NYC biker bar, Red Rocks West in Chelsea, felt the sting of the neighborhood several weeks ago. 10th Precinct police began ticketing motorcycles for the most minor of infractions. Under fire from the police and community, and facing possible retaliation against its business licenses, Red Rocks was forced to knuckle under to pressure to get rid of the bikes.

Further downtown in Soho, police have been targeting motorcycles for increased enforcement under its Operation CycleCheck. The prime focus has been West Broadway and, not coincidentally, the streets around the local Harley emporium, American Dream Machines.

The sudden crackdown against bikes caught most NYC motorcyclists by surprise. But it's an issue that has been boiling in downtown community boards since 1993. At that time, the environmental noise subcommittee of Community Board #2 focused on complaints about loud motorcycles with a number of anti-bike initiatives under its broad Operation Silent Night agenda. The proposal included curbside seizure of parked motorcycles with visibly altered exhaust systems and banning motorcycles from selected Village streets.

Despite existing vehicle equipment laws that prohibit altered exhaust systems, as well as a new city law restructuring the fee schedule for noise violators (up to $4200 for loud pipes), the CB managed only to win lukewarm cooperation from NYPD to enforce their initiatives. Having lost confidence in a law enforcement option, the CB called for more draconian laws.

In November of 1997, Community Board #2 president, Alan Jay Gerson, dropped a bombshell on NYC motorcyclists. In a New York Times article Gerson stated that the Board would seek to ban motorcycles entirely from Greenwich Village, between West Street and Bowery to the east and Canal St and W.14th Street.

"The police should view motorcycle noise as a criminal assault," said Gerson.

As heavy-handed as this may sound, two other downtown community boards joined CB2's proposal for "motorcycle-free zones". It left the CB's critics, including some community representatives, wondering who is going to enforce such a law.

Says Robert Cuttler, a NY State peace officer, "If [the CB] is so inadequate as to be unable to get NYPD to enforce these existing, decades-old laws, what makes them think they will be able to get them to enforce an exclusionary law? This isn't a rhetorical question."

Most motorcyclists believe there would be no neighborhood outrage if NYPD would simply enforce existing noise laws against its most audible violators.

Cuttler continues, "Law-abiding motorcyclists, who are not the problem, will obey the new law while those who are breaking current laws will just break one more."

"There is a sign on the street downstairs: '$220 Fine For Honking'," said one Noho resident. "I have never seen anyone cited for it and you can hear for yourself how ineffective that law has been. So why isn't the community board making an effort to ban cars in Greenwich Village? This is a law enforcement problem."

Many motorcyclists believe that the CycleCheck stops won't bring the results the community board wants either. Almost all bikes cited for loud pipes are issued "illegal equipment" tickets: a questionably deterring $45 fine. A violation of NYC's updated noise code would cost the offender at least ten times that. But police aren't routinely issued the decibel meters needed to write these more expensive tickets nor are they trained in the arcane DOT noise-testing procedures needed to make them stick in court.

In a recent Manhattan Spirit interview, Gerson claimed, "Noise from motorcycles is among the worst problems in our district. There is no noise problem which is worse".

Many Village and Soho residents drop their eyebrows at this statement.

"That's ludicrous. The bikes can be annoying, especially on weekends," said Ray Ortiz, a Broadway resident. "But you sometimes can't hear them over the car horns. If they can't do anything about the illegal horn honking, I would prefer they did something about boom-box cars first. The bikes come and go, but it's better than listening to gangster rap shake my windows for a half-hour while a double-parked driver munches on his Big Mac."

"I don't know how people live on the avenues," said the Horatio Street resident. "I moved here to get away from that noise. Motorcycles are definitely the worst noise problem here."

The only consensus among downtown residents is that the Village is indeed a very noisy place to live. But opinions about who or what are the noisiest offenders depends on whether one lives on a busy avenue, a quiet side street, next door to a 24-hour Papaya King or on top of a loud music club.

In response to angry letters from motorcyclists about what is perceived to be targeted harassment, CB2 announced a June 23rd public meeting with motorcyclists and neighborhood residents.

"Our round table is a last-ditch effort to find a way to end excessive motorcycle noise while accommodating quiet cyclists," Gerson said. "We expect elected officials to attend the round table".

Downtown motorcyclists were skeptical whether this was an effort to reach a compromise with bikers on curbing motorcycle noise or a staged show for the benefit of the press and these unnamed elected officials. For instance, the only local motorcycle group hand-delivered an invitation to speak at the meeting were the NYC Hells Angels, and they don't even reside within CB2.

Before the CB2 round table, I met with Motorcycle Association of NY State president, Mike Melis, and the American Motorcyclist Association's Legal Affairs Specialist, Sean Maher. Neither Maher nor Melis put much stock in the CB's threat of a bike ban. Maher pointed out that President Clinton had recently signed a new federal highway bill, HR2400, which specifically prohibits states, or local governments within those states, which use federal money to build, maintain or administer its roads from discriminating against motorcyclists. Since federal monies are generally shoveled into a common pipeline at the DOTs, it's impossible to track whose dollar was spent where.

Around a hundred people, fairly evenly divided between motorcyclists and community members, attended the round table. Surprisingly none of the promised elected representatives appeared (was downtown sending Gerson a message?) The board introduced themselves and 2-1/2 minute comments were entertained from the audience.

Anti-motorcycling sentiment was predictable and honest. With the exception of one angry young man with a barely concealed grudge against motorcyclists, the speakers were generally civil. NY ABATE's treasurer/secretary, Donna Cirell, was eloquent and forceful, blowing away the smoke obscuring the illegality of a motorcycle ban. Melis, a former NYPD Mounted sergeant, struck a centrist's note, stressing that this was a law enforcement issue, not a legislative one. He informed the board that the best course of action was to bring increasing pressure on precinct commanders to enforce existing noise laws. NY Coalition of Motorcyclists president, David Mangheim, extended that opinion by offering to help train NYPD officers on noise laws at no charge. Maher's low-key delivery advised the community that the only answer was an open dialogue between motorcyclists and the board without the inflammatory threat of a motorcycle ban.

Motorcycle riders offered some interesting personal observations on the proceedings as well. Kevin Glick noted that news photographers were too eager to snap pictures of the Hells Angel spokesman and local politicos, perpetuating the outlaws vs. community stereotype, which is at the base of some of the public's misunderstanding about motorcyclists. Another rider pointed out that talk of a motorcycle ban was counterproductive -- that if it was passed, the AMA would quickly challenge it. The CB would gain nothing but hostility from motorcyclists.

Police community affairs representatives were predictably political, informing the board that loud bikes were indeed a small minority of motorcyclists. They said that police were writing the same noise tickets over and over again to the same "bad-boy lawyers on forty-thousand dollar Harleys." One cop reported that in Soho, one of the worst areas for motorcycle noise, a disproportionate number of noise tickets were being written to the same dozen motorcyclists. When asked by a Prince Street resident why those bikes weren't simply seized, the officer replied that DOT laws permitting confiscation of vehicles for noise violations don't apply to motorcycles. This comment drew disbelieving groans from some motorcyclists who knew that cops have in the past done exactly that.

It was evident that the community didn't have a great deal of faith in the police to deal with the loud bike problem. This feeling was unfortunately reinforced late in the meeting when a large gentleman took the floor stating that loud pipes saves lives, he liked the sound of loud pipes, and he was a New Jersey cop.

Most Village motorcyclists don't object to the Board's goal of getting rid of loud bikes. In fact, sympathy for those who ride loud bikes is hard to find even among motorcyclists.

"They're posers," said an irritated Harley rider who was recently stopped in a CycleCheck sting in Soho and let go without a ticket. "They want attention. But they don't understand that the attention they're drawing is all negative and it's aimed at all of us."

"I don't like drag pipes. They're obnoxious, they make our neighbors complain and they're lousy for street motor performance," said the owner of American Dream Machines. ADM's storefront faces one of the most gridlocked streets in lower Manhattan, a busy entrance to the Holland Tunnel. "It's non-stop horn-blowing and fender-benders all day long here and the cops set up checkpoints for loud bikes? That's crazy."

But many that have drag/straight pipes on their motorcycles believe that quieter, stock pipes are a death sentence for motorcyclists.

"Cars don't even see each other here. Do you think they see me? If it saves me one accident, my pipes are worth the tickets," said a rider outside Ducati of Manhattan in midtown.

A Motorcycle Safety Foundation instructor disputes this. "If they actually believe this, it's a placebo. I've watched them ride. What most of them need are defensive driving lessons."

Several motorcyclists pointed out that they are also Greenwich Village residents who enjoy their quiet time.

"I'm probably more angry about loud bikes than my neighbors because I'm the one who is ultimately going to have to pay the price for these guys. Most of them don't even live around here. If they get kicked out of the Village they will just go elsewhere, leaving me without the right to ride in my own neighborhood. Will they care? About as much as the community board, I'm sure."

The AMA further warns that unless motorcyclists voluntarily turn down the noise that their communities will do it for them.

"We have been fighting anti-motorcycling laws all over the country," said Sean Maher last year. "We will continue to do so but motorcyclists should understand that the AMA's resources aren't endless either. Motorcycle noise is a very hot issue now."