Boondocks Hit With Yet Another Noise Ordinance Citation

•  Apparently the same person owns Boondocks and The Royal Oak. You would be surprised at how tolerant we are of the volume level of the MUSIC.....as Tomurphy15 has stated its the bass that rattles neighbors windows at all hours of the day and night. I would say the owner is just a complete shit stain that doesn't give a fuck about anyone but himself. I hope HPD continues to write tickets and put those assholes in jail until they learn that they cannot freely disturb the peace with some kind of repercussions. If they want to be a nightclub, then they need to soundproof the buildings and keep the musci inside......until then then they are just a neighborhood shithole dive bar.

•  no where near a club but jackass next door, though the volume isn't too bad, IT'S THE DAMN BASS!!!!!! If can hear the bass, but hear nothing else, at 1 am THERE IS A PROBLEM HERE!!!!!

• The thing is people dont seem to get its not the noise and thats been stated several times for boondocks, its the BASS! No sound meter can measure bass and when my windows are shaking from it just ridiculous.

• bar, not club.

• a while back i was at mangos - before they soundproofed the place - during an arrivial by hpd and heard the officer explaining to the manager that if they can hear the music from 50 feet oustide the club, they don't need a sound meter reading to issue a citation.

• Like anything involving this kind of uproar over randos complaining about stupid shit, I bet 9 outta 10 people living nearby totally dig Etro and Boondocks, but its that one rando with enough time on their hands to sit around and complain about stuff. then they get the power trip and feel important and entitled to controlling the neighborhood around them. Meanwhile 90 percent of the other residents are smart people who know that its best to not give a fuck about some moderate noise, but we don't hear from them at all. So, consequently, that one assclown appears to represent the whole of Montrose when it still really is a groovy part of town overall. Montrose is about as groovy as it gets in Texas without being in Austin, which is actually now part of either Cali or Oregon. But I digress. Dan, I see your point. I will try to run interference on HPD when I can, but I'll be at the Rudyards show tonight. Have a good gig though, good luck, turn it up to 11.

• I predict that Boondocks, no matter what measures they make to sound proof the venue,  will continue to get ticketed.  I'll go so far as to predict that I will receive a citation at some point during my event there this evening.  As long as someone calls in a complaint about noise, there will be a citation to go along with it.  That noise could be from people on the patio, an automobile with a deep exhaust, street noise.  Anything.  The DJ and the manager will be cited if the officer shows up at Boondocks.

• The problem is all the folks moving in from the 'burbs - they want access to party venues and great restaurants, but ONLY if they are far enough away to not disturb their beauty sleep and God forbid someone should park in front of their house while enjoying a night out.  Montrose was a great place 10 years ago - funky, fun and unpredictable.  It's now just a hop, skip and a jump away from becoming Katy.

• So what is it a matter of at this point? If it aint about the volume as you said, then I'm guessing yall think theres some concerted HPD campaign (or dare I say conspiracy) to derail Boondocks and disrupt your business. Well as seemingly inept as HPD appears sometimes, they are fucking law enforcement and the last thing they want to do is roll there three times in a month and write citations to the emo/punk/alternative/raver/goth/hipster/yuppie/hippie/druggie crowd at Boondoggles. They were speaking the truth when they said they don't really have time for that shit. They have real deal pipe-hittin vatos committing crimes in htown to deal with. So overall, my contention is that the boonies should do whatever it takes to keep the cops away, even if that means doing relatively unreasonable things like egg crate foam on the walls. Its a bummer the ordinance is written poorly Dan, but until you get Rusty Hardin or Dick Deguerin to rep yall in a massive city hall lawsuit, I don't think that particular statute will be changing anytime soon. And if Boondocks is doing all that and STILL getting harassed, then its lame shit but you will have to come to terms with being one of the many establishments in htown that get fucked royally.

• As a past City of Houston employee, I have to state that though your thinking is logical and true, that is not exactly how city policy and ordinances work.  Someone or some group of people on council has made this Noise Ordinance their pet project and because of that, they are doing everything within their power to push their initiative through.  And because they pushed this through without logically seeing how this would effect the community as it currently stands, they are faced with this current situation. 

• But it's not a matter of the volume at this point.  As a DJ with multiple monthly events at Boondocks, I can verify that the club does what it needs to do to keep the volume from exceeding the current decibel limits.  We perform sound checks prior to start of our events.  The PA has limiters set.  But with the way the Ordinance is currently written, none of that matters.  All a cop has to do is show up, declare that he has heard music coming from the venue and then start distributing citations.

• From what I understand, the tickets are only enforced if the person who made the complaining shows up in court.  Otherwise it is dismissed.  I COULD TOTALLY BE WRONG, HOWEVER. But what I'm talking about is a permit the venue could purchase (I THINK it's like $250), and basically it means the police have to test the decibels outside of the venue to see if it's really legally too loud.   Plus, how hard is it to set up everything, do a sound-check, then go outside with a decibel-reading app and see how loud the music is?   I realize that neighbors can be really fucking hard to deal with, but this is kind of ridiculous.  Is Boondock's trying to be a martyr here?  There has to be something that can be done to prevent this from happening.  Getting the damn permit would be a great first step, because it would remove the whole subjective nature of the citation by requiring the police to do a decibel test outside the venue.  

• How bout yall just turn the music down. Its not a fucking municipal legal controversy here. DONT turn the volume up to 11 and guess what: cops dont show up, the kids still get fucked up on the booze you sell while they dance the night away on the comically small upstairs dance floor, and your bar gets to remain open. Aint that hard to figure out guys. Whats the benefit of their particular loud level of music anyway? Do they get a bigger crowd the louder the music is? I do agree that the cops could be more reasonable by just telling you to turn the fucker down without writing citations and threatening jail, but yall could quite simply avoid all this shit by just turning the music down. Anybody whose like "hey everybody, Boondocks is tight but the tunes aint loud enough, lets roll to Royal Oak instead!" is a total clown and needs to be forced outta boondoggles anyways.

• But this is not a kid friendly area.  It is mostly artists, young adults and business professionals.

• why move to montrose if you dont like to party?

• Something tells me that a jury is not going to be too terribly concerned if a noise meter was calibrated or even used at all. If neighbors say their kids can't sleep, you're toast.

• What's the legal strategy for GHEC?  It seems like these tickets should be challenged facially. Do they have counsel looking at this?

• Isn't there a permit that Boondock's can purchase from the city that will not only raise the decibel level, but require police officers to verify their decibel level before issuing citations?  It seems like someone at Boondock's is doing something wrong...  Doesn't HPD offer a walk-through to make sure that levels are set correctly?  Wasn't all this discussed at that town hall meeting at Fitz a few months back?

• That's what I overheard the police officer say. He followed with examples of problems resuIting from Houston lack of zoning. I can only assume that he knows. I just didn't have time (in real time) to add all of that in.

•  "More of a zoning issue."  Really?  Funny, the last time I checked, this city didn't *have* zoning, which is why my old house was directly across the street from a used-car lot and behind an auto body shop.  And surprisingly, when we called the cops to report noise violations from either of *those* places, HPD mysteriously never appeared.

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