Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Friday April 20 2018, @06:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the say-what-again dept.

Vox presents an article about restaurant noise levels and why they've risen over the years.

When the Line Hotel opened in Washington, DC, last December, the cocktail bars, gourmet coffee shops, and restaurants that fill its cavernous lobby drew a lot of buzz. Housed in a century-old church, the space was also reputedly beautiful.

My first visit in February confirmed that the Line was indeed as sleek as my friends and restaurant critics had suggested. There was just one problem: I wanted to leave almost as soon as I walked in. My ears were invaded by a deafening din.

[...] In reckoning with this underappreciated health threat, I’ve been wondering how we got here and why any well-meaning restaurateur would inflict this pain on his or her patrons and staff. I learned that there are a number of reasons — and they mostly have to do with restaurant design trends. In exposing them, I hope restaurateurs will take note: You may be deafening your staff and patrons.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 20 2018, @06:05PM (3 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 20 2018, @06:05PM (#669741) Journal

    You know, in the '60's lots of people liked to go to places with really loud music. It took a few years, but many of them have ended up deaf. I avoided those places, and I've still got decent hearing. This is just one data point, so don't take it too seriously, but others have reported the same thing, so you might consider it.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday April 20 2018, @07:06PM

    by Nuke (3162) on Friday April 20 2018, @07:06PM (#669766)

    I avoided those [loud] places, and I've still got decent hearing. This is just one data point

    Me too, so two data points. In fact there are millions of data points - any hearing specialist will tell you that loud environments damage your hearing.

  • (Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday April 20 2018, @07:09PM

    by NewNic (6420) on Friday April 20 2018, @07:09PM (#669770) Journal

    Counter example:

    I used to help organize the Saturday night concert every week while I was at university (mid '70s). So, I heard a lot of loud music over a 3 year period decades ago. My hearing is not 100%, but it is still good. I often have trouble hearing my wife, but I think the problem is not my hearing, but my attention.

    My father, on the other hand: worked in his factory his entire career and he had quite severe hearing loss towards the end of his life.

    So, perhaps it's not the loud music in the '60s that caused the problems as much as the loud work environments.

    --
    lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
  • (Score: 2) by ledow on Saturday April 21 2018, @12:32PM

    by ledow (5567) on Saturday April 21 2018, @12:32PM (#670031) Homepage

    To be honest, all the people I see that are into really loud music have that problem. They don't even need to be particularly old.

    And it's self-exacerbating. If you start getting hearing trouble because of the loud music, you turn the music up, which means you damage your hearing more, which means...

    Sure, it's fun to blast out some loud music in the car occasionally, or be at a noisy party. But when that takes preference to every scenario, such as chatting with friends in a pub, etc. then you are exposing yourself to enough of it to damage your hearing. Oh, and seriously hurting your ability to have a conversation that isn't about music and how cool you are.