CITY COLLEGE–“It’s unbearable. Sometimes it won’t stop until three or four in the morning,” Maria Acevedo said. Acevedo lives in Morris Heights. After 10 p.m., her neighborhood seems split into two groups, the people who go to sleep and want a peaceful rest, and those who enjoy the nightlife on the street. While lights are out in some apartments and the windows are dark, other neighbors come together and set up chairs on the sidewalk. They turn up the volume on their speakers and sit talking and laughing for hours.
That means in Morris Heights, the night doesn’t truly end, it changes shape. Some find relaxation in the quiet of their bedrooms, others in the rhythm of music and conversation outside.
But what feels like community to some has become a disturbance to others. Maria Acevedo lives a few minutes from Burnside Avenue with her 8-year-old daughter in a building that faces the noisy middle of the night scene.
