2022.08.01为什么富人喜欢安静？

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IDEAS
WHY DO RICH PEOPLE LOVE QUIET?
The sound of gentrification is silence.

By Xochitl Gonzalez
illustration of Brooklyn street at night with a couple walking past and giving a dirty look to a group of people on a brightly lit stoop who are talking and laughing
Jorge Colombo
AUGUST 1, 2022, 7 AM ET
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New york in the summer is a noisy place, especially if you don’t have money. The rich run off to the Hamptons or Maine. The bourgeoisie are safely shielded by the hum of their central air, their petite cousins by the roar of their window units. But for the broke—the have-littles and have-nots—summer means an open window, through which the clatter of the city becomes the soundtrack to life: motorcycles revving, buses braking, couples squabbling, children summoning one another out to play, and music. Ceaseless music.

I remember, the summer before I left for college, lying close to my bedroom box fan, taking it all in. Thanks to a partial scholarship (and a ton of loans), I was on my way to an Ivy League college. I was counting down the days, eager to ditch the concrete sidewalks and my family’s cramped railroad apartment and to start living life on my own terms, against a backdrop of lush, manicured lawns and stately architecture.


I didn’t yet know that you don’t live on an Ivy League campus. You reside on one. Living is loud and messy, but residing? Residing is quiet business.

I first arrived on campus for the minority-student orientation. The welcome event had the feel of a block party, Blahzay Blahzay blasting on a boom box. (It was the ’90s.) We spent those first few nights convening in one another’s rooms, gossiping and dancing until late. We were learning to find some comfort in this new place, and with one another.

Then the other students arrived—the white students. The first day of classes was marked by such gloriously WASPy pomp that it made my young, aspirational heart leap. Professors in academic regalia gave speeches about centuries-old traditions and how wonderful and unique we were—“the best class yet.” Kids sang a cappella and paraded with a marching band. I’d spent my high-school years sneaking out at night to drink 40s on the beach and scheming my way into clubs. I understood that what was happening around me wasn’t exactly cool, but it was special. And I was a part of it.

I just hadn’t counted on everything that followed being so quiet. The hush crept up on me at first. I would be hanging out with my friends from orientation when one of our new roommates would start ostentatiously readying themselves for bed at a surprisingly early hour. Hints would be taken, eyes would be rolled, and we’d call it a night. One day, when I accidentally sat down to study in the library’s Absolutely Quiet Room, fellow students Shhh-ed me into shame for putting on my Discman. With rare exceptions—like Saturday nights during rush—silence blanketed the campus.

I soon realized that silence was more than the absence of noise; it was an aesthetic to be revered. Yet it was an aesthetic at odds with who I was. Who a lot of us were.

Within a few weeks, the comfort that I and many of my fellow minority students had felt during those early cacophonous days had been eroded, one chastisement at a time. The passive-aggressive signals to wind our gatherings down were replaced by point-blank requests to make less noise, have less fun, do our living somewhere else, even though these rooms belonged to us, too. A boisterous conversation would lead to a classmate knocking on the door with a “Please quiet down.” A laugh that went a bit too loud or long in a computer cluster would be met with an admonishment.

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In those moments, I felt hot with shame and anger, yet unable to articulate why. It took me years to understand that, in demanding my friends and I quiet down, these students were implying that their comfort superseded our joy. And in acquiescing, I accepted that.

I had taken the sounds of home for granted. My grandmother’s bellows from across the apartment, my friends screaming my name from the street below my window. The garbage trucks, the car alarms, the fireworks set off nowhere near the Fourth of July. The music. I had thought these were the sounds of poverty, of being trapped. I realized, in their absence, that they were the sounds of my identity, turned up to 11.

I loved the learning that I did in college—academic and cultural. And I managed to have a lot of fun, in the spaces that the students of color claimed as our own. We had our own dormitories, our own hangouts; we even co-opted a room in the computer center where we could work the way we preferred, with Víctor Manuelle or Selena playing in the background. Some white students resented that we self-segregated. What they didn’t understand was that we just wanted to be around people in places where nobody told us to shush.

When i moved back to Brooklyn after college, I found that the place had changed. Neighborhoods that had been Polish and Puerto Rican and Black were suddenly peppered with people who looked better-suited to my college campus than to my working-class home turf. Many of them needed the affordable rents because they had opted into glamorous but poorly paying white-collar jobs. Alas, these newcomers hadn’t moved here to live alongside us; they’d come to reside.

The first time it happened was the night before Thanksgiving. Three or four of us—all people of color—were eating takeout in my best friend’s studio apartment. The radio was playing, and we were debating, as we often did, who was the best rapper alive. There was a knock at the door and when we opened it, my friend’s neighbor, a 20-something woman new to Brooklyn, was standing there, exasperated. “Did your mothers not teach you the difference between inside voice and outside voice?”

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The next time it happened was at brunch in Fort Greene, the time after that in a newly opened hotel bar in Williamsburg. After a while, I stopped keeping track. The people complaining clearly thought they were trying to enforce a sonic landscape that they deemed superior, but what they were really doing was using shame to exert control. Over the restaurant, the building, the borough. Us.

For generations, immigrants and racial minorities were relegated to the outer boroughs and city fringes. Far, but free. No one else much cared about what happened there. When I went to college, it was clear to me that I was a visitor in a foreign land, and I did my best to respect its customs. But now the foreigners had come to my shores, with no intention of leaving. And they were demanding that the rest of us change to make them more comfortable.

The society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise was founded by a physician named Julia Barnett Rice in 1906. Rice believed noise was unhealthy, and enlisted New York City’s gentry (including Mark Twain) to lobby for things like rules governing steamboat whistles, and silence pledges from children who played near hospitals.

The group met in posh spaces like the St. Regis hotel, but Rice insisted that she was not solely interested in protecting New York’s upper class. “This movement is not for the relief of the rich,” she wrote in The New York Times, “for the poor will benefit by it fully as much as, if not more than, those who can leave the city whenever they wish.” In 1909, the organization celebrated the passage of an ordinance that prohibited street vendors (many of them immigrants) from shouting, whistling, or ringing bells to promote their wares. (The ban applied only to Manhattan, though the city had fully incorporated as the five boroughs a decade earlier.)

Attempts to regulate the sounds of the city (car horns, ice-cream-truck jingles) continued throughout the 20th century, but they took a turn for the personal in the ’90s. The city started going after boom boxes, car stereos, and nightclubs. These were certainly noisy, but were they nuisances? Not to the people who enjoyed them.

As my grandmother used to say, “I’m not yelling, this is just how I tawk!”
In 1991, the NYPD launched Operation Soundtrap, a campaign in which cops would trawl streets—often in majority-Black-and-brown communities—hunting for and confiscating cars with enhanced stereo systems. (“If they don’t turn down the volume, we’ll turn off their ignition,” the chief of the police department vowed.) When Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994, he used a cabaret-license law to force clubs out of gentrifying neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and Chelsea. The battle against nightlife continued during the Bloomberg years. New York was effectively codifying an elite sonic aesthetic: the systemic elevation of quiet over noise.

In the years that followed, many of New York’s nightclubs migrated to Brooklyn, which remains loud and proud. An analysis of 2019 data ranked it as the loudest borough in New York. It earned this distinction by racking up the most noise complaints to 311—the city complaint hotline. Which raises the question: Was it the noisiest borough? Or was it just home to the densest mix of loud people and people who wanted to control those loud people?

I find many city noises nerve-racking and annoying: jackhammers doing street maintenance, the beeping of reversing trucks, cars honking for no good reason. Yet these noises account for a small minority of all noise complaints. Nearly 60 percent of recent grievances center on what I’d consider lifestyle choices: music and parties and people talking loudly. But one person’s loud is another person’s expression of joy. As my grandmother used to say, “I’m not yelling, this is just how I tawk!”

The upper east side of Manhattan, which runs from 59th Street to 96th Street, is one of the borough’s quietest neighborhoods. Save for trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I didn’t spend a lot of time there growing up. In fact, my first real foray uptown came that summer before college. The woman who’d endowed my scholarship wanted to meet me. I stepped out of the elevator of her Fifth Avenue apartment building in my Sunday best, and was promptly greeted by a maid—another Latina. I waited, very quietly, for my benefactor—a pleasant older woman in a Chanel suit—to join me for tea. For an hour I pretended to be a meek, muted version of myself. No one had told me to do this. I instinctively understood that, in this unfamiliar environment, the proper way to express my gratitude was to hush myself.

That day recently returned to me when I realized that the same luxurious stretch of Fifth Avenue is also home to the National Puerto Rican Day Parade. Puerto Ricans have been coming to New York since the United States seized the island as a colony after the Spanish-American War, but the great wave of migration occurred in the 1950s and ’60s. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans moved to the Lower East Side, Spanish Harlem, parts of the Bronx, Bushwick, and Sunset Park, where I grew up. In the late 1950s, community leaders wanted to show their children—many of whom had never been to la matria—pride in their identity by coming out of the margins and marching through the heart of Manhattan. Over the years, the parade has grown and grown.

It is a loud affair, and I take pride in saying that we are a loud people. (Is it a coincidence that one of J.Lo’s biggest hits was “Let’s Get Loud”? I think not.) We love our music. We love to dance. We love being Puerto Rican. And perhaps this is why the parade inspires such discomfort. In the ’90s, Upper East Siders implored the city permit office to move the parade to the Bronx, to “their neighborhood.” A 2003 New York Times story reported that “one day a year the Upper East Side takes a deep breath and prepares itself.” Only after Michael Bloomberg, then the city’s mayor, made a public appeal did retailers and property owners along the route stop boarding up their windows as if a hurricane were barreling down on the city. Some restaurants and coffee shops still close for the day.


In June, after a two-year COVID hiatus, the 65th Annual National Puerto Rican Day Parade marched up Fifth Avenue. I had the honor of being an ambassador for arts and culture, which meant I got to ride in the back of a red convertible. The event is a big party, or more accurately, a thousand different parties all celebrating the same thing: being Puerto Rican in the greatest city in the world. Every float, every car, every delegation was playing reggaeton, salsa, merengue, boleros, and Bad Bunny. Everywhere you went you heard Bad Bunny. People were dancing bomba and plena and bachata. There were chants of “Puerto Rico!” and “¡No se vende! ” I waved at all the beautiful people, and when we passed the apartment building where my former benefactor lived all those years ago, I shouted out an extra-loud “¡Wepa! ”

For 35 blocks, we were as loud as we wanted to be, and nobody could tell us nothing. And then we got to the end of the route. The crowd thinned out and the blockades ended, and we were met with a giant traffic sign illuminated with the words quiet please.

This article appears in the September 2022 print edition with the headline “Let Brooklyn Be Loud.”




理念
为什么富人喜欢安静？
绅士化的声音是沉默的。

作者：Xochitl Gonzalez
布鲁克林晚上的街道插图，一对夫妇走过，向一群在明亮的门廊上谈笑的人投去鄙夷的目光。
Jorge Colombo
2022年8月1日，美国东部时间上午7点
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夏天的纽约是一个嘈杂的地方，尤其是当你没有钱的时候。有钱人都跑到汉普顿或缅因州去了。资产阶级在中央空调的嗡嗡声中安然无恙，他们的小表妹在窗式空调的轰鸣声中安全地度过。但是，对于有钱人--穷人和穷人--来说，夏天意味着一个开放的窗口，通过这个窗口，城市的喧嚣成为生活的背景音乐：摩托车旋转，公共汽车刹车，夫妇争吵，孩子们互相召唤出去玩，还有音乐。无休止的音乐。

我记得，在我去上大学前的那个夏天，我躺在卧室的风扇旁，把这一切都看在眼里。多亏了部分奖学金（和一大笔贷款），我正在前往常春藤大学的路上。我在倒计时，渴望抛弃水泥人行道和我家狭窄的铁路公寓，开始以自己的方式生活，在郁郁葱葱的修剪过的草坪和庄严的建筑背景下生活。


我还不知道，你不是住在常春藤大学校园里。你是住在一个校园里。生活是喧闹和混乱的，但居住？居住是安静的事情。

我第一次来到校园参加少数民族学生迎新活动。欢迎会有一种街区聚会的感觉，Blahzay Blahzay在吊杆箱上响起。(那是90年代。）在最初的几个晚上，我们在彼此的房间里聚会，闲聊和跳舞到很晚。我们正在学习在这个新的地方找到一些舒适的感觉，并且彼此之间也是如此。

然后，其他学生来了--白人学生。第一天上课的时候，有一种光荣的WASP式的盛况，使我年轻的、有抱负的心雀跃起来。穿着学术服装的教授们发表演讲，讲述几个世纪以来的传统，以及我们是多么美好和独特--"迄今为止最好的班级"。孩子们唱着无伴奏合唱，和军乐队一起游行。我的高中时代是在晚上偷偷溜出去在海滩上喝40年代的酒，并谋划着进入俱乐部。我明白在我周围发生的事情并不完全酷，但它很特别。而我也是其中的一部分。

我只是没有料到接下来的一切会如此安静。起初，这种沉默悄悄地影响了我。我和迎新会的朋友们在一起时，我们的一个新室友会在一个令人吃惊的早些时候开始炫耀性地准备睡觉。有人暗示我，有人翻白眼，然后我们就收工了。有一天，当我不小心在图书馆的绝对安静的房间里坐下来学习时，同学们嘘寒问暖，让我为自己放录音机感到羞愧。除了极少数的例外--如星期六晚上的高峰期--寂静笼罩着校园。

我很快意识到，沉默不仅仅是没有噪音；它是一种值得崇敬的美学。然而，这种美学与我的身份不一致。我们很多人都是这样的人。

在几个星期内，我和我的许多少数民族同学在那些早期喧闹的日子里所感受到的舒适已经被侵蚀了，一次一次的责备。让我们放松聚会的被动攻击性信号被直截了当的要求所取代，即减少噪音，减少乐趣，在别的地方生活，尽管这些房间也是属于我们的。一次喧闹的谈话会导致一个同学敲门，说 "请安静下来"。在电脑群中，如果笑得有点太大声或太长，就会受到训诫。

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在那些时刻，我感到热血沸腾，羞愧和愤怒，但却无法表达出原因。我花了很多年才明白，这些学生要求我和我的朋友们安静下来，是在暗示他们的舒适取代了我们的快乐。而在默许的同时，我也接受了这一点。

我已经把家里的声音视为理所当然。我的祖母从公寓对面传来的钟声，我的朋友们从窗户下面的街道上喊着我的名字。垃圾车、汽车警报器、在国庆节附近燃放的烟花。这些音乐。我曾以为这些是贫穷的声音，是被困的声音。我意识到，在它们不存在的情况下，它们是我的身份的声音，被放大到11。

我喜欢我在大学里做的学习--学术和文化。在有色人种学生声称是我们自己的空间里，我设法获得了很多乐趣。我们有自己的宿舍，有自己的活动场所；我们甚至在计算机中心合租了一个房间，在那里我们可以按照自己喜欢的方式工作，背景音乐是Víctor Manuelle或Selena。一些白人学生对我们的自我隔离感到不满。他们不明白的是，我们只是想在没有人告诉我们嘘声的地方与人相处。

当我大学毕业后搬回布鲁克林时，我发现这个地方已经改变了。那些曾经是波兰人、波多黎各人和黑人的社区，突然出现了一些人，他们看起来更适合我的大学校园，而不是我的工人阶级的主场。他们中的许多人需要负担得起的租金，因为他们选择了富有魅力但工资低的白领工作。唉，这些新来的人并不是为了和我们一起生活而搬到这里来的；他们是来居住的。

第一次发生这种情况是在感恩节的前一天晚上。我们三四个人--都是有色人种--正在我最好的朋友的工作室公寓里吃外卖。广播正在播放，我们正在辩论，就像我们经常做的那样，谁是活着的最好的说唱歌手。有人敲门，当我们打开门时，我朋友的邻居，一个刚到布鲁克林的20多岁的女人，正站在那里，气急败坏。"你们的母亲没有教过你们内部声音和外部声音之间的区别吗？"

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下一次发生在格林堡的早午餐上，之后一次是在威廉斯堡新开的酒店酒吧。过了一会儿，我就不再记录了。抱怨的人显然认为他们是在试图实施一种他们认为优越的声音景观，但他们真正在做的是利用羞辱来施加控制。对餐厅、建筑、区的控制。我们。

几代人以来，移民和少数种族都被归入外区和城市边缘地区。遥远，但自由。没有人关心那里发生了什么。当我上大学的时候，我很清楚我是一个异国他乡的游客，我尽力尊重它的习俗。但现在外国人来到了我的海岸，并不打算离开。他们要求我们其他人改变，让他们更舒服。

抑制不必要的噪音协会是由一位名叫朱莉娅-巴尼特-赖斯的医生在1906年成立的。赖斯认为噪音是不健康的，并发动纽约市的绅士（包括马克-吐温）进行游说，例如制定管理汽船汽笛的规则，以及在医院附近玩耍的儿童的沉默承诺。

该团体在圣瑞吉酒店等豪华场所举行会议，但赖斯坚持认为，她并非只对保护纽约上层社会感兴趣。"她在《纽约时报》上写道："这一运动不是为了救济富人，""因为穷人将完全受益于它，如果不是比那些可以随时离开城市的人更多的话。1909年，该组织庆祝一项法令的通过，该法令禁止街头小贩（其中许多是移民）大喊大叫、吹口哨或敲响钟声来推销他们的商品。(该禁令只适用于曼哈顿，尽管十年前该市已完全合并为五个区）。

在整个20世纪，对城市声音（汽车喇叭、冰激凌车的广告语）进行管制的尝试一直在进行，但在90年代出现了个人化的转变。城市开始对吊杆箱、汽车音响和夜总会进行管制。这些东西当然很吵，但它们是扰民的吗？对喜欢这些东西的人来说不是。

正如我的祖母常说的那样，"我没有大喊大叫，这只是我说话的方式！"
1991年，纽约市警察局发起了 "声音陷阱 "行动，在这项行动中，警察将在街道上巡逻--通常是在黑人和棕色人种占多数的社区--寻找并没收装有强化立体声系统的汽车。("如果他们不把音量调低，我们就关掉他们的点火装置，"警察局局长发誓说。) 1994年，当鲁迪-朱利安尼（Rudy Giuliani）成为市长时，他利用歌舞厅许可证法迫使俱乐部离开下东城和切尔西等正在形成的社区。在布隆伯格时代，反对夜生活的斗争仍在继续。纽约正在有效地编纂一种精英的声音美学：系统地提升安静而不是噪音。

在随后的几年里，纽约的许多夜总会都迁移到了布鲁克林，这里仍然是喧闹而自豪的。对2019年数据的分析将其列为纽约最吵闹的区。它赢得了这一殊荣，因为它向311--城市投诉热线提出了最多的噪音投诉。这就提出了一个问题。它是最嘈杂的区吗？还是它是最密集的吵闹人群和想要控制这些吵闹人群的人的家？

我发现许多城市的噪音让人神经紧张，而且很烦人：用千斤顶维修街道，倒车时卡车的嘟嘟声，汽车毫无理由的鸣笛。然而，这些噪音只占所有噪音投诉的一小部分。最近近60%的抱怨集中在我认为是生活方式的选择上：音乐和聚会以及人们大声说话。但一个人的吵闹是另一个人的快乐表达。正如我的祖母常说的，"我没有大喊大叫，这只是我说话的方式！"

曼哈顿上东区，从第59街到第96街，是该区最安静的社区之一。除了去大都会艺术博物馆之外，我没有花很多时间在那里成长。事实上，我第一次真正进入上城区是在大学前的那个夏天。捐赠我奖学金的女人想见见我。我穿着周日最好的衣服走出她所在的第五大道公寓楼的电梯，很快就有一个女仆--另一个拉丁裔迎接了我。我非常安静地等待着我的恩人--一位穿着香奈儿套装的愉快的老妇人--和我一起喝茶。在一个小时里，我假装是一个温顺、沉默的自己。没有人告诉我这样做。我本能地理解，在这个陌生的环境中，表达我的感激之情的正确方式是让自己安静下来。

最近，当我意识到第五大道的同一条豪华路段也是全国波多黎各日游行的所在地时，那一天又回到了我身边。自从美国在美西战争后夺取该岛作为殖民地以来，波多黎各人就一直来到纽约，但巨大的移民潮发生在20世纪50年代和60年代。数十万波多黎各人搬到了下东城、西班牙哈林区、布朗克斯的部分地区、布什维克和日落公园，我在那里长大。在20世纪50年代末，社区领导人希望通过走出边缘地带，在曼哈顿中心地带游行，向他们的孩子--其中许多人从未去过拉玛利亚--展示他们对自己身份的骄傲。多年来，游行队伍不断壮大。

这是一个响亮的事件，我很自豪地说，我们是一个响亮的民族。(J.Lo最受欢迎的歌曲之一是 "Let's Get Loud"，这是不是一个巧合？我想不是的）。我们热爱我们的音乐。我们喜欢跳舞。我们喜欢成为波多黎各人。也许这就是为什么游行会让人感到如此不适。在90年代，上东区居民恳求城市许可办公室将游行移到布朗克斯，移到 "他们的社区"。2003年《纽约时报》的一篇报道说，"每年有一天，上东区会深呼吸，做好准备"。只有在当时的市长迈克尔-布隆伯格（Michael Bloomberg）发出公开呼吁后，沿途的零售商和业主才停止用木板封住窗户，仿佛一场飓风正向这座城市袭来。一些餐馆和咖啡店仍然关闭一天。


6月，在COVID中断了两年之后，第65届全国波多黎各日游行在第五大道上游行。我有幸成为艺术和文化的大使，这意味着我可以坐在一辆红色敞篷车的后面。这个活动是一个大聚会，或者更准确地说，是一千个不同的聚会，都是为了庆祝同一件事：在世界最伟大的城市里成为波多黎各人。每辆花车、每辆汽车、每个代表团都在播放雷鬼舞、萨尔萨舞、梅伦格舞、波洛舞和Bad Bunny。无论你走到哪里，都能听到Bad Bunny的声音。人们在跳Bomba、Plena和Bachata。人们高呼 "波多黎各！"和 "不卖！"的口号。 "我向所有美丽的人们挥手致意，当我们经过我的前恩人多年前居住的公寓楼时，我特别大声地喊了一句 "Wepa! "

在35个街区里，我们想怎么大声就怎么大声，没有人可以告诉我们什么。然后我们走到了路线的尽头。人群渐渐稀疏，封锁结束，我们看到一个巨大的交通标志，上面写着请安静。

这篇文章出现在2022年9月的印刷版上，标题是 "让布鲁克林大声说话"。