Posted on 06/28/2009 5:30:04 AM PDT by RayChuang88
My wife and I were on a crowded 1 train last year when a young red-headed woman turned to the woman seated next to her, who was playing her iPod way too loud.
“Hey, mind if I listen?” the redhead said, and without waiting for a response, plucked the woman’s left earbud, placed it in her own ear, and began bobbing her head to the music. The iPod owner looked mortified. The car grew silent save for the blare. I looked at my wife, who had heard me rant about this so many times she knew exactly what I was thinking: At last, someone was taking a stand.
Of all the daily discourtesies we endure, none to me is more irksome than headphone leak. You know, that treble-drenched drone emanating from iPods halfway down the subway car. What puzzles me is why people do not complain more often, why we don’t rise up in numbers and insist these people turn their music down, or else. Where is Howard Beale when we need him?
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We can avoid this problem by getting a decent set of in-ear headphones that avoids the "broadcasting" issue for the most part. You can get this model:
JVC HA-FX33-B
...for under US$20 at most retailers, and for under US$30 you can get this model:
JVC HA-FXC50-B
...from Amazon.com.
As someone who never listened to music on the subway he rode daily until recently, I think people are amazingly thin-skinned these days. It’s a noisy subway car, barreling down a tunnel, not mass.
There’s another good reason I like using an in-ear headphone—it blocks out external noise, too. I’ve been on long trips with my brother’s family and using an in-ear headphone allows me to listening to the audio on my iPod clearly even at freeway speeds and with other people talking in the vehicle.
If I had “ear-bud leakage” people might learn something. I listen to audio books.
Have you ever sat next to someone on Metro who was playing their ipod so loud that you could hear the F-WORD being repeated in a rap song for 20 minutes? I don’t think I am thin-skinned to think that is a bit much. The fact that the Metro is already noisy doesn’t make music leak OK. It makes it that much worse.
Back in the Eighties, I had an old station wagon. In it, I’d mounted an amplifier and an equalizer, and had it all wired to a pair of huge Electrovoice home stereo speakers in the back. I don’t/didn’t like my music loud, but I did like it clear and controllable.
I pulled up at a stoplight on Railroad Avenue in Pittsburg California, one day. Some youngster pulled up at the light, next to me, blaring some kind of noxious crap out of his stereo.
I responded with a full broadside of Bach’s toccata and fugue in d minor, beautifully done on a pipe organ in Ottawa, I think. It was the first and only time I ran that lash-up to it’s full potential. I had a headache after that for about a day and my ears rang for a bit longer.
The look on his face was priceless.
Hello, are you too young to remember boom boxes!
Obscene content is another matter, I’ll grant you. I do recall way back in the 1990s, in Boston, telling someone, “Excuse me, but there are kids on this train, and we can all hear your music.” I’ve heard a lot of earphone leakage in Washington, DC, but not so much obscene rap. You called the subway “Metro.” Are you in DC? Maybe it’s worse on some lines than others.
That was my first thought.
My DDH lived in an apartment complex composed of four apartments-2 up, 2 below. The guy directly below him was a DJ who worked at an “urban” radio station , and he’d play (c)rap music at all hours (he worked nights IIRC). Anyhow, DDH ignored this unless the racket went on past 11PM. Then DDH would take his enormous 1980s-era speakers, set them face down, and blast the 1812 Overture (the section with cannons in it) at the guy. The music below would cease, the 1812 overture would be stopped, and peace would reign. Neither man ever spoke directly to the other. I don’t know whether to call this nonverbal communication at its finest, or pure passive-aggressiveness, but it worked.
Ron’s a wimp. Why isn’t HE asking people to turn down their music?
The problem is that people like Ron are too timid to say “boo”.
GREAT. Too bad you did not have some Emmerson, Lake, and Palmer to shoot at him.
What we need is a good miniature EMP generator that is capable of frying an iPod and/or cellphone from 10 feet away. Let Billy Mayes sell it for $19.95 and you would make a killing.....
Technology in that you no longer need to be a weightlifter carrying a BOOM box to be obnoxious in public. Now the passenger in the seat next to a 10 year old can be watching porn on his video player that fits in his pocket.
Popular Culture in that it simultaneously emphasizes 'do your own thing' AND 'you are a member of a victim class'. Thus a request for courteous behavior generates a rant about personal privilege and 'you don't like it because you is the man!"
If parents try teaching courtesy (as they most certainly should), they get trumped by peer pressure and popular culture. Schools gave up the idea as the 60s radicals started filling the educrat ranks (if not before). As for the other source of mores and values, religion, what go you think? News and culture emphasizes the bad like pedophiles and fraud because the reporters are trained cynics and antithetical towards moral absolutes.
Virginia-DC, blue line (yellow or orange if there is some kind of incident). It gets even worse if you are unfortunate enough to have to take the red line East of Union Station. There are always a lot of Metro security people in those red line cars during off-peak, too, can’t imagine why.
I think the problem is deeper than simply annoying neighbors with too much noise, and its twofold. First, people are becoming more and more isolated from each other as they listen to headphones, text and talk on cells in public. Second, I think being plugged into music every waking hour is entirely unhealthy and unnatural... its an addiction.
Yes, the Toccata and Fugue is a good answer to anybody’s annoying music played too loudly. Another good answer is bagpipe music.
“You know, that treble-drenched drone emanating from iPods halfway down the subway car.”
No, I don’t know. My nephew brought his Honda car ‘round for a timing belt yesterday, and, as we worked, commented on the quiet. 5 or 6 cars on the dead-end dirt road in 5 or 6 hours, birds at the feeder, and a deer snorting in the edge of the woods. We also heard a “my-opened-and-chromed-exhaust-pipes-are-my-penis” Harley rider on the paved 2 lane a half-mile away, but haven’t had to listen to jake-braked lumber trucks going down the same hill the Harley guy climbed since the beginning of Barney Frank’s Fannie’s recession. And public gathering places? I avoid ‘em like I avoid jury duty.
“Of all the daily discourtesies we endure, none to me is more irksome than headphone leak.”
I’d put a check in the box next to the option:
“Hateful bumper stickers that liberals have on their cars condemning George W. Bush and/or Republicans and/or conservatives and/or Christians.”
I thought the idea of headphones was to be able to hear while others could not. I guess I was mistaken!
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