In the year before COVID, 311 received 3,000 helicopter-noise complaints; last year, it received 26,000. Stop the Chop, a group of concerned citizens, is fighting back.
The current civic mood is one of disgruntlement—flight attendants being harassed, shoving matches in testing lines, anti-vax protests. It’s easy to blame the peevishness on the pandemic. But maybe everyone’s just irritated by all the helicopters? In the year before, 311 received three thousand helicopter-noise complaints; last year, it received twenty-six thousand. Blades fly sorties to J.F.K. and East Hampton. Tourist convoys patrol Central Park.
It was time for a counter-offensive. At 1600 hours on a recent Sunday, Wood and Norris joined a ragtag corps of air observers to scan the skies along the Hudson. A command post, consisting of bicycles and an anti-helicopter sandwich board, was established in hostile territory, just outside the Thirtieth Street heliport. The troops, about fifteen in all, were affiliated with, a group seeking a federal de-helicopterized zone . The mission: scout the enemy, gripe, commiserate.
On the waterfront, preparations were under way. Official hats were distributed, binoculars produced. Radar was consulted. Someone held a decibel reader. Bogeys appeared from across the river, where FlyNyon, a major tourist outfit, operates. The first helicopter thundered toward the landing pad. Everyone braced against the wind. “Ninety-nine decibels!” someone bellowed.
Disaster scenarios were reviewed. “I’m thinking about a fully loaded Sikorsky flying down Flatbush Avenue into a school,” Benepe said. A woman fretted, “Somebody could drop poison into the reservoir. I’ve seen them hovering low.”
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