Meanwhile, there’s always the option of thumping the podium at City Hall. In response to vocal residents, Houston is installing improved railroad crossing protections at 12 intersections in Bellaire and West University — part of a pilot program creating Quiet Zones, where trains need not announce themselves with whistles. That leaves merely 601 crossings that are still part of the loud zone, otherwise known as Houston.
But maybe howling into the wilderness of city government or into neighbors’ raging parties is too intimidating. Therein lies the profit potential of Lehrman’s Noise Busters.
Daniel Kramer
Alief resident Howard Lehrman marketed snarky
bumper stickers before founding Noise Busters.
Daniel Kramer
Mary Griffin and her granddaughter Nahly live near
downtown, but that didn't stop workers from drilling for
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To hear Lehrman talk, he actually thrives on noisy confrontation — as long as it’s in service of peace and quiet. He created a tape to be blared through a car PA system that begins with three loud beeps, followed by this announcement: “Attention boomboxer, your license plate has been recorded and you will be reported to the police department.” It goes on to lecture about the evils of loud noise, concluding with a request that other drivers honk if they agree.
Of course, he hasn’t played the tape in public, but he has blown a shrill security whistle, like the ones that college women clutch on dark campuses. The whistle gets the attention of boomheads, and Lehrman yells at them.
He once stepped out of his Suburban, in the middle of traffic, and enjoined, “Turn that goddamn shit down!” The boomer complied. “As soon as the light changed, he took off like a bat out of hell,” Lehrman says.
“I guess he thought I was going to come after him with my big old truck.”
Without his truck, Lehrman must rely on his wits. Standing outside the 99-cent store, he finishes reading the noise ordinance to himself and looks up to see his quarry — the tattooed boomer — approaching the Lincoln. As the hulking man walks right in front of him, Lehr-man glances back down at his handful of printed-out regulations.
The boomer climbs into his car and starts the engine. Lehrman hesitantly glances at him. “Well…
“I should have talked to him before he got in the car,” he says.
The Lincoln backs out, pulls forward a few feet and stops. It begins emitting 81-decibel thuds. Lehrman takes a few tentative steps in its direction. And then it rumbles away.
“Now he’s gone,” he says. “Shit.
“See, as long as nobody says anything, it’s like, ‘Hey, it’s okay, so I’m not going to worry about it.’ ”
The booms fade into the distance. And yet Lehrman is still talking. As they say in the ’hood, he’ll live to bust noise another day.
