North Beach Rooftop Nightclub Noisy as 10 Motorcycles?

Noisy Rooftop Nightclub Will

Be as Noisy as 10 Motorcycles

To Hundreds of North Beach Residents 

If you live in a home within a quarter mile of the Avenida Animal Hospital on North El Camino Real you are about to be blasted every day by a proposed, nearby noisy rooftop nightclub. 

If you are a dog that is boarded at Avenida Hospital, be prepared to face daily acoustical waterboarding that will make you bark and howl all day and night. Dr. Nagy Amin, owner of that 50-year-old Vet Hospital, may have to go out of business because who wants their dogs boarded next to such a noisy place? 

And even though the OC-SPCA urged the city to be cautious with what they allow next to the Avenida Animal Hospital, plans proceed to create a rooftop bar/restaurant with amplified band music atop the building at 1509 N. El Camino Real, which is ten feet from the Hospital and next door to the Elks Club. 

The restaurant plans call for amplified music up to 92 decibels. How loud is that? Well, you know how loud a motorcycle is…and that is 90 decibels.  The band, Kiss, puts out about 90+ decibels. How would you like to have THAT sound blasting into your home night after night?  

Do you want THAT kind of annoying knife-scraping-bone sound drowning out your favorite TV show every night? Or distracting your kids while they try to study? Look, this sound will flow upriver like a large wave, all the way up to Buena Vista, the street up on the cliff at North Beach directly above the Beach Trail. It will not be 92 decibels when it gets there, but it surely will be annoying and distracting.  Is that what you want in North Beach? 

Now the decibel meter that measures the intensity of sound is much like the earthquake Richter magnitude scale.  An earthquake that measures 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times larger than one that measures 4.0, and corresponds to a 31.6 times larger release of energy.  So a 93 decibel level is much noisier than a 90. But even if your distance from the rooftop nightclub means you get only a 65 or 60 decibel level, it would still drive you crazy with annoyance. 

Why? Because unlike the fairly smooth noise of passing traffic that we all hear at night (about 65 decibels), amplified band music has sharp and harsh peaks from loud guitar riffs, deep bass drumbeats and screaming singers. Some of these can far exceed 92 decibels! 

Pity the 16 residential dwellers at 1520 N. El Camino Real, in the 3-story Venetian Villas building directly across the street from Avenida Animal Hospital and the rooftop spot at 1509. Most residents at 1520 have open air patios facing El Camino Real and the rooftop nightclub site.  I live at 1520 and I can throw a baseball and HIT the roof of the restaurant location which means that the rooftop noise source for me and my fellow residents here is only about 200 feet away!  Residents of our entire building might as well give up on sleep if this proposed nightclub/restaurant is allowed to operate, as proposed, up until 2AM! 

Since no one will want to live in this 1520 N. ECR building, what will become of this lovely, ultra-high quality, mixed-use structure that is currently full-up with 16 families and six commercial firms?  Will it simply sit vacant and fall into ruin and become another “Miramar Theater”? 

So let us count the casualties…. 

1. Dr Nagy Amin’s Avenida Animal Hospital may have to close after being there 50 years, 

2. Sixteen residential units virtually across the street may become un-rentable due to the noise, 

3. Since the 1509 nightclub greatly lacks on-site sufficient parking, the nearby parking lots of Domino’s Pizza, Venetian Villas, Dewey’s TV and Appliances, Bull Taco, etc. will have non-customers parking there, much to the chagrin of those property owners, 

4. And when those spots are full-up, patrons will park on nearby residential streets. Yours? 

5. Casualties also include those who are disabled. Currently, there is no ADA-compliant access to the rooftop area, no elevator, and a city-owned alley on the north side of the building  would require costly re-doing to become ADA-compliant. 

6. The Elks Lodge (Adjacent to the 1509 N. ECR nightclub). Its parking lot has been denied to the rooftop restaurant owner due to the liability potential if walkers or drivers injure themselves. Yet when some patrons DO cut through there or illegally park on the Elks’ big parking lot and injure themselves, law suits WILL follow. 

7. Our Local Police.  North Beach residents will surely complain every night and call the police to have the amplified rock band noise abated, especially at 92 decibels. You just KNOW that will happen so why LET it happen and drive the Police crazy? 

My wife and I WANT a rooftop restaurant in North Beach. But we want one that respects those who were here first. 

This rooftop bar concept is great for a restaurant farther down towards Ave Pico where there are not hundreds of people living as close as 200 feet from the offending noise. Maybe someone down there can talk Knuckleheads into creating a rooftop dining experience. The ocean view is lots better there, too.