A Lot Of Noise

Noise. Shrill, raucous, grating, relentless noise, echoing in the night just when you are trying to sleep. Music blaring, tires screeching, bass tones thumping, car doors slamming, people shouting. Painful, unacceptable noise.

This summer may well go down on record as the year the noise dam broke, spilling frustration, resentment, and anger in its wake.

On the outskirts of Sag Harbor, a trio of hot new clubs has neighbors forming ranks in an us-or-them stance, bemoaning their lost peace and quiet and demanding action. They want the village to do something, anything, to make the revelers and the traffic jams and the amplified hip-hop music - which starts in the afternoons on weekends and doesn't stop until 3 a.m. or so - go away.

In a residential area of North Sea in Southampton Town, where some of the most popular nightclubs are located, homeowners seem to be hard put to decide which is worse, noise or traffic congestion. The North Sea ambulance barn is across the street from one trendy spot, and volunteers responding to weekend calls must keep a wary eye out for revelers stumbling along the dark roadside to their cars after an evening's drinking.

Montauk, which takes pride in its reputation as the Wild West of the South Fork, also seems to be nearing the end of its lasso. With many more bars and nightspots per head than its neighboring hamlets, and far more dependent than other villages on seasonal visitors for economic survival, Montauk usually has accommodated whatever came its way. Recently, however, there has been so much noise about noise from the hamlet that calls itself "The End" that a special East Hampton Town police officer was assigned last week, from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. on weekends, to respond to complaints.

In East Hampton, meanwhile, the Town Board has been grappling all summer with the question of how to regulate noise at night, a problem that is not apt to be solved before it becomes moot for another year.

Perhaps there is no solution. Certainly no one has found one yet. Over the years, the fines for excessive noise have escalated both in Southampton and East Hampton, but they are still nowhere near steep enough to be anything but an annoyance, a cost of doing business. If a few hundred people pay a cover charge of $10 or $20 just to get inside the action, a fine of $250 is, indeed, as one sleepless Southampton resident put it, "a joke."

Can it be that there simply are too many lions in the cage, all rattling the bars? Is it possible that we have no right to expect peace and quiet anymore? Surely not. What is needed, at least in this town, is a redoubled effort. Southampton took the lead not long ago in towing almost 100 cars from illegal parking places on residential roadsides near popular nightclubs. A police effort on that scale has never been attempted here; perhaps it should be.

And surely, too, August has something to do with all this - the heat, the crowds, the short, fierce window of time until the party ends.