This post has been read 2464 times!
December 9, 2011
The Financial District, Tribeca, and Battery Park City have few places for the citizens to enjoy good music, drinks, and New York class society. The main problem is that the local press consists of Fuddy-duddy people who have zero interest in promoting this culture. As Mayor Bloomberg progressively required earlier and earlier closing times as a condition for liquor license renewals, this all went unreported for the most part. 
An example of this pro-boring reporting was in a local throw-away today. The W New York Downtown and their Living Room bar attempted to throw a Rock and Roll style party with art. The paper focused on the noise and nuisance to the city, see below. The W Hotel is a few feet from the massive noise of the World Trade Center construction site and anyone living nearby should be quite accustomed to noise.
The Battery Park Broadsheet article read, “W New York — Downtown, the hotel located at the intersection of Washington and Albany Streets, made W history with its first-ever rock concert on Wednesday evening, but raised more than a few hackles among local residents kept awake by noise levels during sound testing on Tuesday and the concert on Wednesday. The event — which celebrated ROCKED, a photo exhibit of cutting-edge musical talent featured in W Hotel concerts — took place in a temporary, plastic tent behind the hotel without more than a few hours advance notification….Lucas Visser, a resident on West Street, said that the W hotel alerted his building manager at 4:30 p.m. on the day of the concert. “During the day on the 6th and 7th they were blasting music so loud that my windows were shaking badly. It was loud enough that talking on the phone was near impossible. The actual event began last night at 6:00 pm and lasted until midnight, and again the windows were shaking. My children were up later than usual, though amazingly they were able to get to sleep. My wife and I weren’t as fortunate,” wrote Mr. Visser in an e-mail…..Noise concerns were not as important as the lack of advance notification for Esther Regelson, a 26-year resident of Washington Street. “That space behind the W Hotel was supposed to be public space, and that space lay fallow until suddenly they have a party to pat themselves on the back. It seemed outrageous! They should be having a party for the neighborhood. It just smacks of being a bad neighbor,” she said.”
W Hotel Living Room