Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Tuesday, May 18, 1993 Page: 6A QUICK WORDS: WHEELMEN HAS GOT TO
GIVE NEIGHBORS A BREAK
Wheelmen has got to give neighbors a break
Throw a brick through your neighbor’s window, and you’ll soon get
personally acquainted with your local policeLet smoke from your bonfire billow
through the window, and you’ll find yourself paying for damages.
Pump music from your place into that window at 1 a.m., disrupting sleep,
disturbing study — and you’ll have some explaining to do, too.
Or at least you should. That’s why our sympathies are with the neighbors in
the Wheelmen dispute in Wilkes-Barre, not with the bar.
The Wheelmen is a popular year-old club just south of the Wilkes University
campus. One reason for its popularity is the setting: The club is an old
Victorian mansion, with the burnished wood and antique decor typical of a
19th-century coal baron’s home. (It’s great to cut loose when surrounded by so
much stuffiness.)
But the setting is a drawback, too. For the old house on the quiet street
is surrounded by other old houses — and the houses still have people in them,
and the people still take a stuffy Victorian interest in getting a good
night’s sleep.
As The Times Leader reported Monday, sweet dreams and discos don’t mix.
Noise. Crowds. Fights. Vandalism. The bleary-eyed residents are getting fed
up. You would, too, if your neighbors turned their garage into a late-night
jackhammer repair shop — an event that amounts to almost the same thing.
The problem here is a simple matter of conflicting interests. The Wheelmen
“wants to be a place that people will be talking about from here to the
courthouse,” as co-owner Gary Zurenda put it. That means midnight crowds,
energy, and loud music.
The neighbors want peace and quiet in the privacy of their homes. We think
their interests should be considered first, since the club is a relative
newcomer to the largely residential neighborhood.
The club owners should adapt. Soundproofing; strengthened security patrols;
cranking down the the volume at 11 p.m. — whatever it takes, the owners
should provide it, and soon. If they don’t, the police should step in.
For accommodating the neighbors is a predictable cost of doing business in
a residential area. The owners want the benefits of operating on a peaceful,
tree-lined street. They can have those benefits, too — at this price: They
can’t unreasonably degrade the very peacefulness that drew them in the first
place.
Fair is fair, and that’s the only fair answer for the neighbors whose
windows (and walls) are rattling almost every night.
Wilkes-Barre