Last Saturday afternoon, three friends and I visited one of our regular dining establishments in Long Island City. As it was a beautiful day, we headed for a table in the otherwise-empty garden (the term “garden” is always relative in New York, but relatively speaking, it’s a nice one). We ordered food and socially-acceptable midday alcoholic beverages – mimosas, bloody marys, coffees with various liqueurs. We were a spirited but not abnormally rambunctious group of friends, full of the usual banter punctuated with laughter.
About a half-hour into our visit, we began to hear indeterminate conversational sounds, as if from a television or radio, coming from over the wooden fence. Two minutes or so in, my friend Anthony looked stricken, “Emily, that’s your laugh!” Conversation stopped. We listened more closely. One by one, we began to make out our own voices in a recording from five minutes before.
What the hell?
Whenever the server or the restaurant owner walked out, the playback stopped, only to begin again when she left. As it became obvious that someone was paying very close attention, we got bolder, “Turn it up! I can’t hear myself!” The volume went up. The quality was astounding, as if recorded on professional equipment.
Realizing he might sound truly pathological, Anthony went to investigate with the owner. She immediately sighed, “Oh, the neighbor again. He’s a sound engineer and total freak who is trying to harass all my customers.” She asked if she could take our names and numbers and told us she planned to call 311. “You’re just lucky he didn’t bang the pots and pans this time,” she said.
