Here’s Why Leaf Blowers Are Evil Incarnate
I am sitting here, indoors, in our Palm Springs house. The neighbor’s landscapers are out there with their fucking leaf blowers, which are gas-powered notwithstanding a city ordinance banning gas-powered blowers. It’s maddening. But not just here….back in Illinois, same thing. I hate those things.
Excerpt from this Wall Street Journal story:
Welcome to fall, which means one thing: leaf blowers.
The leaf blower is to suburban life what the 3:30 a.m. rave in the short-term-rental apartment upstairs is to city life. They happen. They are completely out of your control. They make you want to commit murder.
To be fair to leaf blowers, there are lots of things that make noise in the suburbs. Lawn mowers, garbage trucks, generators and Joe, the old guy down the street with the jacked-up Dodge Ram 1500 Hemi with a Flowmaster Super 10. They all cause a certain amount of country-style agita. But no other suburban noisemaker has the ability to infuriate as quickly and thoroughly as a leaf blower can, even if your local noise ordinances restrict their use to the hours between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Gas or electric, it makes little difference. Both are loud—up to 100 dB at 50 feet, or the equivalent of a chainsaw. The gas variety has the added benefit of belching exhaust fumes all over the neighborhood. And they are hellishly ubiquitous in the ‘burbs.
Is there a sound in the world more annoying than that of a leaf blower? It’s basically a gas- or electric-powered mosquito attached to the world’s largest megaphone, and the mosquito was already designed to produce the single most annoying sound in the world. Yet, mankind has managed to amp up, to an excruciating level, what nature had already made unbearable. Thanks, Mankind.
In addition to the volume of noise it makes (the window that can block the sound hasn’t been invented), the leaf blower is an auditory water torture. First, it’s ON at an ear-breaking, entirely too-close range, getting louder, then softer, then louder then…OFF. Is it done? Can I turn the TV back on or resume my telephone conversation? Can I relax—ON! EVEN LOUDER THAN BEFORE! As long as this torment continues, all other life activities cease as you wait and wait for it to be over…then wait for it to begin again. You’ll be mentally exhausted by the time the final leaf is blown.