Motorcycle Noise Not MPD's Highest Priority

There’s been talk around town and in city council meetings that indicate some residents are upset by the level of noise emitted by certain motorcycles. I live less than a mile from downtown, one block off Berrellesa and when I saw a motorcycle pulled over this past Sunday I knew our city had decided to take action. A quick trip down to Ferry Street later in the day confirmed my suspicions.

The City of Martinez is a series of contradictions; it’s a gritty town; an oil refinery town, the Los Angeles Times even called it an industrial town and to our credit one that covets its open spaces and wildlife.

Noise is part and parcel to living downtown and there are certain concessions people should be prepared to make regarding quiet enjoyment when they choose to live in a mixed use light industrial zone. Ask any of the reporters who have conducted live interviews, downtown is just plain noisy and this notion that by removing one offending sound you’ll somehow muffle the rest, well, not only is this unrealistic its unreasonable.

Some residents find themselves inconvenienced by the momentary sound of a motorcycle passing by in the middle of the afternoon, yet while I write this at 7:35am the sound of the waterfall in my koi pond is being drowned out by the blasts of train whistles. I agree there are some motorcycles with modified pipes that create a rumble in my stomach as they pass by but that’s nothing compared to the rousing sound of railcars slamming together in the industrial yard in the wee hours of the morning.

Then there’s the street sweeper at 5:30am and fuel tankers getting in and out of the rack as they pick up their first drop of the day. Forest Gump had it wrong, life isn’t a box of chocolates, it’s an Eagles Song “Get Over It”.

Our police department’s highest and best use is to spend time pulling over motorcycles? Really? I don’t imagine Yvonne would agree. She works at the elections building and while I was playing my role as pesky beaver person she came up to me and Cheryl and told us how scared she was one morning coming out of the train station on her way to work. She begins before 5:00am. Yvonne mentioned two men followed her as she walked through the parking lot; she was so uncomfortable that she turned around and went back into the train station. The station attendant said he noticed she was being followed but didn’t think to involve himself.

Our public resources have been squandered and politicized enough. Given the choice of whether I want my police force’s attention trained on noise pollution in the middle of the afternoon or seeking out skulking predators lurking in the shadows, I’ll let the reader guess where I’d allocate our most precious resources.

But back to bikers, when I drove past Ferry Street Station Sunday I saw a large group of people spilling out onto the sidewalk apparently spending money and having a good time. Noel was upset when I told him what was going on; at his base in Little Creek, VA he put his pipefitting/welding experience to commercial use and worked for a motorcycle shop modifying bikes. His response to me was, “do those people know a lot of bikers are vets?” how many citizen groups can our city afford to disenfranchise?

The city wants to be known as a sports town, what about the couch potatoes? The city is an arts and theater destination, what about the residents who can’t afford the price of admission? There’s a problem with making declarative statements based on individual biases – you leave a whole lot of the population out.

Until those who claim to have a vision for our town acknowledge some of the limitations that go along with having 321,600 barrels per day worth of refining capacity – well in my opinion they’re wearing blinders. Real visionaries look for the opportunities in the limitations, they don’t ignore them.