Photo by Marco Torres
While some individuals have been slapped with $1,000 fines, Boondocks's owner Shawn Bermudez (center) was arrested on February 25 for violating the noise ordinance. His manager Ryan Hughes (right) accepted a ticket another night.
Photo by Marco Torres
Boondock's manager Ryan Hughes accepted a ticket another night.
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Tensions had been building between Boondocks' owner Shawn Bermudez and the newly formed Houston Police Department noise-ordinance task force when enforcers paid a visit to the Montrose club on February 25. When police arrived at the edgy little venue on the Westheimer Road curve, they requested that Bermudez escort DJ Spinna, in town from New York City, from his music-making perch so that the out-of-town turntablist could be slapped with a noise citation.
Four and a half months earlier, on October 12, Houston City Council had passed an overhauled sound ordinance by a 13-to-1 margin. Where the old law required the use of a decibel meter to measure sound, the new ordinance gives police officers the authority to write tickets — and without a noise-measuring device — based upon the audible sound that can be heard from the sidewalk.
Bermudez, like many bar owners, musicians and law experts who spoke with Houston Press, says that the ordinance gives HPD officers an unfair advantage when they're interpreting the cryptic concept of loud noise. They add that, in fact, enforcement of the law has become so subjective that neighborhood patrol officers and noise cops have disagreed on how to administer it — in one case, the two groups clashed during a tense public dispute.
Not so, says HPD sergeant and Noise Ordinance Revision Committee member Mike Hill. He insists that the 300 officers he's trained are getting it right. In Hill's opinion, noise-ordinance officers have a firm grasp on a law that also takes into account sound nuisances such as barking dogs and DIY construction noise.
Back at Boondocks, Bermudez, standing toe-to-toe with noise-ordinance disciplinarians, told officers that he should receive the ticket instead of DJ Spinna. "We didn't want to invite someone down from New York and have them get a ticket," says Bermudez. "We didn't want it to get around that stuff like that was happening to out-of-town people booked at our place."
Houston police officers wasted no time handcuffing Bermudez, who was transported to the central jail and charged with a Class C misdemeanor. Though he was initially told by cops that he was interfering with an investigation, Bermudez would only be charged with "generating sound causing others to be aware of vibrations or resonance."
Boondocks isn't the only club busted under the revised ordinance: The reprimanded include businesses in the Montrose (Mango's, AvantGarden, Royal Oak, TC's), the Heights (Fitzgerald's), Midtown (Hefley's, Junction), the Washington Avenue corridor (Brixx, Fox Hollow, Roosevelt Lounge) and a venue located off Southwest Freeway outside of 610.
A number of small-business owners think that the new sound ordinance is a way for the cash-strapped city to make up for revenue lost by its red-light cameras, a program that the City of Houston botched last fall. (See "Red-Light Camera Circus," Mandy Oaklander, September 15, 2011) Before the October amendment, fines topped out at $500. Now, noise violations can leave a bar or club owner $1,000 in the hole.
Some bar owners, who claim that cops are sometimes showing up at their venues without citizen complaints, continue to be cited, even after they go to great lengths to soundproof their venues.
At the same time, the pro-ordinance side, which includes homeowners and apartment dwellers trying to coexist in mixed-use neighborhoods, has grown tired of finding used crack vials and condoms on their lawns. (According to a City of Houston Administration and Regulatory Affairs report, HPD annually spends $2.3 million responding to an estimated 58,000 noise complaints.)
Houston City Council member Ed Gonzalez suggests the establishment of entertainment districts akin to those found in New Orleans. Whether that would ever fly in fast-growing Houston, which lacks zoning restrictions, is another question.
While club owners and city officials continue to disagree on the law's execution — in January, an HPD officer responded to a noise complaint with shotgun in hand — Bermudez has tried another approach to monitoring sound: He sometimes parks his car in the church lot behind Boondocks, rolls down his windows and listens into the late-night hours, trying to determine if he's safe. Or not.
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One of the most curious post-October 12 ticketing events involved an open-mike night at a Midtown venue with virtually no housing nearby. The host was playing a song on his acoustic guitar through a small club PA when an officer came in and told him to turn down the volume.
"My guy may not have handled the situation with the delicacy he could have," says the bar's owner, who wishes to remain anynomous. "But still, what's going on here? It was an open-mike night, for Christ's sake.
"Everyone deserves peace and quiet, especially late, but this seems to be more about harassing people. And until we get some real standard for what is too loud and what is not, the police are going to be free to mess with any venue they have it in for. What's next? They're going to come in and tell me my jukebox is too loud? My radio's too loud? The basketball game is on too loud?"
Another opponent of the noise ordinance is Treaty Oak Collective's Brandon Lemons, who books and promotes shows at Mango's, Fitzgerald's and Rudyard's. Lemons thinks the noise ordinance is damaging Houston's reputation outside Texas.
