The Academy Place

The Sounds of Academy Place
by Robin Locke Monda

urban

1. Of, relating to, or located in a city (The American Heritage® Dictionary)

2. Relating to or concerned with a city or densely populated area (Collins Essential Thesaurus)

I live in one of two nearly identical red brick apartment buildings situated halfway up a steep, two-block stretch of Hamilton Avenue. Hamilton is a one-way street (“going up!”) that begins on Richmond Terrace, directly across from Staten Island’s baseball stadium. The stadium overlooks the September 11th memorial, “Postcards”, with its breathtaking view of New York Harbor, Manhattan and Jersey City. I am a block from the family courthouse and the 120 Police Precinct, and three blocks from Borough Hall and the St. George Ferry Terminal. I live in the heart of Staten Island’s most urban area, St. George.

Yet the sights and sounds available from my window belie the “urban” label. I look out over Academy Place, a one-block street where dogs yap and romp, unleashed, on a tiered slope of a vacant lot with a surprisingly picturesque cluster of trees at its center. While the dogs lope around and sniff each other’s hindquarters, their owners socialize. An ever-changing mix of stacked lawn chairs, folding metal chairs and brightly colored tables attest to the daily re-convention of humans.

There isn’t much else on Academy Place. One end is anchored by the apartment buildings and a private parking lot. The other end meets Wall Street, where an eclectic jumble of houses to the right is separated from the commercial parking to the left.

So what’s to hear, besides the barking of dogs? You’d be amazed.

The Sounds on Academy Place
Mornings on Academy Place begin with bird song—all kinds of bird song. Underlying the morning arias is what educator, musician and audio researcher R. Murray Schafer would call a keynote sound: traffic hum. It’s always there. If it’s a foggy day, the hum is softened and distant. If it’s a clear day, the hum is throatier and nearer at hand. As the morning goes on, more immediate traffic sounds will come to my attention, like the car cruising for a parking space or the moving truck double-parked with its motor running.

Some mornings feature the sounds of garbage being hauled to the curb. A fenced-in pen across the street jangles as it opens and closes. A muffled scrape of plastic usually follows. I’ll hear the voices of people who have stopped to speak with the super. The next day I’ll awake to the grind and whine of a sanitation truck that’s crushing the garbage thrown in by a couple sanitation men. Their voices hover outside my upper story window. A high “beep-beep-beep” tells me the truck is backing up onto Hamilton Avenue.

Every weekday morning I (barely) hear teenagers walking to Curtis High School. They travel in pairs or small groups, often followed by a straggler, and cross from this side of Academy Place to the other, diagonally, as they approach the corner of Hamilton, where they will turn left and continue up the hill. The teens’ voices are subdued in the morning. They’re not very excited about going to school. Surprisingly, kids don’t play loud music anymore. Everyone’s got ear buds.

On certain days, at noon, the Brighton Heights Reform Church—one block up and two blocks over—broadcasts a recording of chimes.

In the afternoon, the teens come back down the hill. I hear them before I see them. The boys are riotous, shouting, hooting and hollering; the girls are laughing and shrieking. Sometimes I know a fight has broken out because a swarm of voices—mostly male—will compress into staccato shouts and whoops. When the fight comes around the corner, it’s like someone took the muffler off. Voices bounce and ricochet off the brick corridor created by the two apartment buildings. Sometimes I hear a collective “Ohhhhhhhh!” as someone falls against a car. The “wup-wup!” of a passing police car siren usually follows. The teens then disperse, their voices thinning to a flutter of echoes into the general atmosphere.

Sounds carry in intimate ways on Academy Place. Outside, someone kicks a Styrofoam cup and instinctively I glance to my floor. Once, when I spoke in a conversational tone near an open window, a person four stories down looked around as if someone had said something over their shoulder. The cadence and timbre of private conversations held halfway down the block reach me at my computer desk.

Then there are the public sounds of air traffic. In the morning and late afternoon news helicopters crisscross Academy Place’s air space. Sometimes a military chopper flies over, identifiable by its heavy, muscular thrump. Airplanes and jets draw audio chalk lines in the sky. Sometimes the jets give off a prolonged whistle. Occasionally, a plane headed for Newark Airport flies so low I’m tempted to duck.

Evenings on Academy Place feature a different range of sounds, depending on the time of year. Sometimes a sliver of the apartment building across the street flickers with light from the fireworks exploding in the baseball stadium down the hill. My building casts a monolithic shadow that keeps most of the building’s brick facade in darkness. The crackles and explosions, the “thump-thump-thump” interrupt my TV viewing. Occasionally a broadcaster’s play-by-play reaches me, whether I like it or not: “Ball!”

In the summer, nights on Academy Place are alive with crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and peepers—no city sounds at all. Maybe a cat yowling for a good time, but that’s as “country” as it is “city.” Throughout the year, on certain nights, I hear the clang and thrum of New Jersey’s refineries and shipping facilities. Or I’ll awake to the rapid-fire “chugitta-chugitta” that I imagine comes from the dredger on the Kill Van Kull. It’s a sound that reminds me of the rust-colored rail yards in Binghamton, New York, ca. 1955, and evokes a distant freight train headed straight for me. I like the sound.

Once in a great while—very late at night—I’ll hear a couple fighting. I always imagine they’ve spent a long evening in the city and are just returning home, more than a little inebriated. The fights are always ugly, sometimes pathetic. One voice pleads and cries. The other is brutal and harsh. The argument proceeds in staccato outbursts as they walk along Academy Place. Once in a while a couple will stop, as if making a stand, and the fight will escalate to a pitch that can only be called operatic. At that point I get out of bed, check that no one is being killed and call the police. The couple’s voices move on, then fade, as they turn the corner of Hamilton Avenue and drag their less and less audible trail of grievances up the hill.

About 15 minutes later, I’ll hear the smooth, stealthy hum of a single car motor and the “hitsh” of a walkie-talkie. It’s the police, responding to my call.

Photo collage of Academy Place: Robin Locke Monda.