You and your friends have polished off dinner in Soho and now you’re ready for drinks. Someone suggests taking in live music while you’re at it. You find yourselves wandering down pedestrian-only Peel Street. You notice people clustering outside Peel Fresco Music Lounge. Smatterings of applause slip out when the door opens. Everything tells you it’s worth a visit.

Sounds ideal, right? Not exactly, says Rob Baker, Peel Fresco’s general manager. Baker loves to keep folks coming to his cosy, two year-old jazz club. But he has a bone to pick with the way noise ordinances govern Peel Street, a neighbourhood where several commercial premises like Fresco sit alongside residential buildings. “The ordinances are vague and selectively enforced,” Baker says.

Here’s the scene. People linger on the street. They might have exited Fresco or another bar nearby. Or they might be passersby who found a place to stop and chat. A few carry on more loudly than a resident would like, especially if it’s after 11pm, when the ordinances kick in. An imbibed spirit might fuel the exchange. It’s not a situation unique to Peel Street either.

“Am I responsible for these people?” Baker asks. “Most of them weren’t even my customers. But the cops get called.”

One solution: require authorities to measure the complained about noise before issuing a formal warning. Fresco’s music is now mostly contained after Baker shelled out thousands of dollars on structural insulation and decided to personally man the door, opening it only when there’s a break in the music. The problem is the talking on the street. Baker says the Environmental Protection Department, charged with enforcing the ordinances, has offered to measure noise levels, but residents decline.

The enforcement standard for noise from public places is “a reasonableness approach”. But that’s highly subjective, and Baker says police have made clear to him who they think bears the blame. “One officer told me, ‘You make it far too comfortable for people to go outside with a drink.’”

Another idea would be to rewrite the Building Ordinance to enable construction of noise-cancelling measures. Baker recently learned that a polypropylene awning could reduce noise by 70 per cent. But he can't build such an awning under current regulations. "You're asking me to control the situation but not allowing me to do some improvements."

Proprietors can be served noise abatement notices carrying a maximum penalty of $100,000 for first-time offences and $200,000 for each subsequent incident. It’s a pretty penny to pay for a city that could be culturally richer with more places like Peel Street, which combines an increasingly rare, up-from-the-streets feel with a convenient location.

Let’s hope authorities balance the interests of both residents and proprietors and improve upon the fine art of noise enforcement.

Bong Miquiabas

Read the features:
Establish an art cinema on Hong Kong Island
Host mega-gigs at Hong Kong Stadium
Put a rooftop garden on top of the Museum of Art
Parks that are more fun than restrictive
Finish the TST construction works
Relax noise ordinances in bar areas
Build a super club
Ban evening traffic from Lan Kwai Fong