Life As Performance Art 53

Living at close quarters with socially challenged idiots is no walk in the park. I do have more sympathy for NIMBYs these days, not because I agree with them (I don't), but because having neighbours who do not know how to coexist with others in society is problematic, and this is something that doesn't get properly addressed with the way they house people who are getting off the street. This isn't to say that they're all bad, and there exist in all populations idiots who just love to crank up their stereos and serenade the neighbourhood with their lovely shit to the ears. I think the problem here isn't so much street people making noise, but young selfish street people making noise. Just as in market rentals the noise problems usually come from young selfish people who likely have never lived on the street and still expect mommy to wipe their filthy stinky little ass for them. Not everyone knows how to coexist, for the simple reason that our last two generations have been raised in an environment of selfishness, narcissism and entitlement (remember the eighties? The Me Decade?) And now that we have increasing population density, the need to address this selfish mentality has never been higher. The sound technologies for stereos were developed during an era when it was taken for granted that almost everyone lived in detached houses, so they could crank it up as loud as they wanted. Now that we have a burgeoning population, less land, and high housing and building costs, many of us have little option outside of living stacked one on top of the other, or crammed in skinny little units side by side. Peace and quiet is not an entitlement. It is a legitimate human need for mental and physical health and wellbeing. No one should be allowed to play their music or have parties at a level of noise that is going to harm the wellbeing of their neighbours. Telling someone that they have a problem with noise is not helpful. We are not wired to live well with chronic, invasive noise. This has been scientifically proven over and over again. I know this, because I have to live with this here on downtown Granville Street, where I live in a tiny subsidized apartment downtown. If I could afford to move into something better, I would have been out of here years ago, but the reality of living in Vancouver has made a lot of people on low incomes into hostages here. At one time, if we didn't like where we were living, there were still plenty of low rentals around if we wanted to move. Not any more. This is like having to endure living in a bad marriage because you can't afford to live on your own, so that unless you want to wind up homeless, you remain shackled to an abusive monster. Fortunately, my housing providers are not an abusive monster, but the neighbourhood is: it is horrible, dirty, full of people with drug and alcohol problems (there is that little money laundromat, or should I say, Spirit of Howe liquor Store, next door to my building), and selfish idiots who are afraid of people and stagger down the street glued to their lovely little tech toys as though they are the only ones occupying this universe. What doesn't help is when staff in the Granville Residence next door lie to me about there being no noise coming from any of their precious tenants, since they are usually too lazy to check, or too arrogant to tell the truth. Fortunately, the other workers there are pretty good. I suppose the best option is using earplugs all the time and buying an extra fan, since I can't always open my window during the summer weather with the noise coming from the party monster next door. This is demoralizing, and what is even more demoralizing is the lack of support in dealing with this situation.