It's quieter here

It is just plain quieter here on the left coast.

Over the past few weeks as I have been traveling back and forth it has dawned on me that there really is a lack of street noise - honking, people talking, fire engines roaring. I was on a business call from my NYC apt last week and my colleague stopped mid-sentence to comment about how she loves the sounds of NY. I paused and realized she meant the noise coming from my window thru the phone - sirens, buses, cars.

It reminded me that my old answering machine message had a siren roaring thru it - it went something like this, "Hi this is Debbie, ROOOOOAAAR, I can't take your call right now....." Every out of town friend thought I had set it up to fake a loud fire engine roaring thru my living room. I on the other hand hadn't even noticed it.

You don't realize how much noise we live with until you get out of Manhattan. Now I get it--all New Yorkers are basically sleep deprived from noise - that's why *we all seem so agitated.

Of course, I am torn--I like the quiet and I don't really miss the noise. What I do miss is the energy--there I said it - the cliche sentence every non New Yorker always mutters about NY that we all think is SO sappy.

*Note for the duration of this blog I will continue to refer to myself as a New Yorker. I just happen to be living in San Francisco.

Comments

[Esther]

There's one great scene in what is otherwise a real snoozer of a movie, even though it stars Kevin Spacey (the real one) and John Cusack. John plays a journalist from NY who goes south to investigate a crime, and his first night, he can't sleep. It's too quiet. He goes to his bag, takes out a tape recorder, puts in a tape and hits play: NYC traffic. He snuggles up in bed, goes back to sleep, no problem.

The energy is yours again anytime. I'll call your machine in SF and leave you messages with traffic and sirens.