Losing sleep over noisy New York bars
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Lisa Napoli: You know those plastic bottles from Nalgene that became a trendy way of showing you care about the environment? Turns out, that they may be hazardous to your health. The maker of the bottles is going to stop using the polycarbonate plastic — because one of the chemicals in it has been found to be toxic, causing hormonal changes in animals.
And now, another story about drinks. This one’s about booze, and the streets of New York. Here’s Ashley Milne-Tyte:
Ashley Milne-Tyte: Bars have been mushrooming in Manhattan’s hippest residential neighborhoods, and so have complaints about noise. Ciaran Staunton owns O’Neills on Third Avenue. He’s open from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m.
Ciaran Staunton: It’s not called the city that never sleeps because people couldn’t think of anything else to call it. That’s what it is.
But it turns out plenty of people do want to sleep — at least after 2 a.m. Staunton says bars need to respect their neighbors. But he says those wee hours are lucrative.
Staunton: Sometimes in some areas of the city that could be what we would call the gravy — to wait all day to get those couple of hours.
On a warm spring day in the East Village, several residents said bar noise doesn’t bother them. Painter Jim Carlock says the 4 a.m. last call grounds the city in its grittier past.
Jim Carlock: It’s what makes New York New York, people going out, having fun, partying, I mean, that’s what downtown has always been about since the beginning of New York.
Not to mention he says that nightlife is a huge boon for the economy.
In New York, I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.
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