Boston: Part One - Sound

Considering that I am not actually living in Boston proper, it never occured to me that the sounds of Brookline would be all that different from Ann Arbor. I was wrong.

First, though it doesn't look it, Summit Ave is apparently quite the throughway. At intervals throughout the day (though i only tend to notice them at night when i am trying to sleep) there is a really noisy vehicle that drives past the apartment. Where i live faces the street, and my room is a sidewalk and a pair of bushes away from the street, so every car that drives by basically sounds like it is driving through my room. So, at these intervals, a bus drives down the street, shattering the otherwise relative quiet of the night.

Second, between 1-1:15am every night a street cleaner (?) drives by. If I thought the bus was loud, this thing is ridicuous. At least that is only a once a night occurence though, and we all know how often I am sleeping at 1 in the morning.

Third, and definitely the most entertaining between my roommates and I, are the upstairs neighbors who, night and day, every day since i've been here, sound like they are rearranging all of the furniture in the place, racing elephants, and then moving the furniture back...repeat. The stomping and clomping, and droping shit never stops. And then when they come out into the stairwell, they are always talking really loud. Tonight Bree tried yelling up at them to keep it down, and though we can't be sure if they heard us, it only seemed to make the stomping worse. We are all hoping they are either moving in or out, and that they are not just obsessive compulsive furniture rearrangers.

Last, and most interesting to me, is the fact that I can hear the train from my window. Ever night, as i'm reading, or typing, or, on occassion, trying to go to sleep before 1am, i hear the bell as the train pulls up, the doors decompress (or whatever the hissing sound that train and bus doors make), and then the automated voice telling what stop the train is at. Then, the doors close, and the train pulls away. It was funny the first night i heard it because it took me a second to figure out why I was hearing a man's voice in the middle of the night when i hadn't heard anyone walking by.

Oh, and on a random note, a sound that has been quite prevelant since Friday has been the rain. I think there has only been one day since i got here that it hasn't rained. But I'm sure it is the season.

And those are the sounds of my new place.

P.S. I don't actually live near the D train, but i do live near the green line, and i couldn't find a better pitcture, and i haven't found a place to scan in pictures i've taken, so its really just a pictorial representation :)