It Really Blows

Ah spring is here. Love the fresh smell of exhaust from the blowers in the morn. and the sweat smell of feces in the air.

And the sound of progress in the yard.

This upsets me more than the "porn store."

"damaging noise" ?

Re: photo

Those aren't leaf blowers ...

oh enough already! leaf blowers and their "damaging noise" are part of life in modern day suburbia. for pete's sake, you act like a little noise in the middle of your day is the end of the world. if you don't like it move to the country, just stop bitching already!

Re photo:

"Those aren't leaf blowing guys at work"

They are illegals !

what happened to the PAWS thread? It wasn't any nastier that the FOBAS thread or any of the other threads here.

i once had a blower...then i got divorced.

oh enough already! leaf blowers and their "damaging noise" are part of life in modern day suburbia. for pete's sake, you act like a little noise in the middle of your day is the end of the world. if you don't like it move to the country, just stop bitching already!

For the record-

leaf blowers are for sissies. get a big rake

so are snowblowers.
snowblowers are for massive driveways, not your 100 square feet of black top

What's that? Your 80 year old mum and dad cant shovel or rake?

Then hire the neighborhood kid to do it.

What's that?

Neighborhood kids are too busy watching MTV, smoking dope and creating havoc at the library. That damn MTV.

Where's David Toma when you need him?

5 guys walking around holding their leaf blowers ... just waiting until quittin' time so they get some vids from Montclair Video.

what happened to the PAWS thread? It wasn't any nastier that the FOBAS thread or any of the other threads here.

There are new ones for both on the Forums page

What's more upsetting? Too many leaf blowers or too many undocumented workers? I thought so.

5 guys? Was there a special on day-laborers that day?

"What's more upsetting?"

All the crybabies

It's a leaf blower chorus. No ear protection either. Those dudes are going to be deaf.

what!? what?!

i wonder if the neighbor which took this picture will have the decency to approach the owner of that home and relate the matter before posting it on a website?

I read these threads and wonder if living in 700,00k homes breeds whiners. Leaf blowers, lawn mowers, power saws...all part of suburbia.

Fed up was right.

Silly, don't you know that's Nancy Pelosi's house?

Leaf blowers are great for finish/clean up after mowing, weeding, etc.. I only use mine for final clean-up, you know, to get that nice anal retentive look to my sidewalks and driveway.

"i once had a blower...then i got divorced.

Posted by: Hiding in Baristaville | March 29, 2007 10:41 AM "

that's what you get for cheating on your wife!

Fed Up is absolutely right. We are NOT living in the middle of some agrarian pastoral paradise. Folks here have chosen to live in a town that has many of the conveniences and attractions of an urban setting -- well, with that comes a bit of noise. As for the five guys in a pack ... you could probably have one guy doing the job, but it would take 5 times as long. So the upside is that the noise doesn't last as long.

For those who think that the work should be done by hand, with a rake or broom -- that argument could also set us up to have all road work done by hand, with picks and shovels. How about in construction ... wood could be cut with a hand saw, etc. Face it ... we live in the 21st century and the conveniences of modern life make noise ...

nope...didn't cheat.

But Damule and others: Aren't you concerned about your ecological footprints? What would Al Gore say? Tsk, tsk.

My only objection to the leaf blowing is when it begins at 7 am on Sat or Sun mornings. Now THAT blows!

How bout start times of 9 am on the weekends for us sleepers in?

I find the comments on the ethnic appearance and/or potential residential illegality of these DRSs (Debris Removal Specialists) to be the usual natterings of very small minds. But the guy on the left is wearing a Boston Red Sox cap -- the model with the logo and the bill on the back of the hat -- the very one which I can never seem to find at the hat store. This high-class attire makes him a welcome visitor to my mind, but perhaps not to the Yankees fans (Eww!) in Baristaville. And opening day is not far away...

If they start before 8:00 I believe that's against the town regulations - so just call the cops.

No power machinery can be operated before 9am on weekends.

You tell em Jimmy.

Get a rake you pansies

What blows is the township government. To prove it today we have the news that we can get $1 million in fund to reduce the budget, but rather than give us the relief we so badly need, it'll be squirreled away for some future spending. WE HAVE TO CHANGE THINGS SO WE CAN VOTE ON SPENDING PROPOSALS!!!

Leaf blowers=burning up fossile fuels=increase in CO2=global warming

Right, Al Gore?

Hand them 5 rakes...

PS: I hate the noise, too. And BTW: don't you just LOVE it, when your neighbor's landscaping crew blows all those old leaves over to your flower beds?! That would be much harder to do, if they were raking...

Hey, Mr. Hartnett, how about spending some time on this issue?

It's amazing that people are worried about a store that carries adult videos and who is using a leaf blower, but not about a $1M refund check the BOE is letting sit in a drawer so they can hide it until after the budget approval. Money that could be used to offset the tax increase, but that the BOE wants to hide so they can get around the new state budget cap and take more from your pocket.

Montclair Watch, the group started by Pegi Adam and others, is looking for help from anyone with insurance expertise to look at this million dollar escrow situation. I think it's a smart decision to look for informed opinions before we get too deep into the conspiracy theories.

The point is, the money was refunded to the BOE, the BOE should have included this money in the budget, they didn't. So, now they get their money from the taxpayers and they can later access this $1M. They have actually stalled receiving this money until after the budget approval. Dana Sullivan finally admitted it existed this week when directly questioned. Others on the BOE were not even aware it existed.

Let's not wait so long that they get away with it.

I was walking along Bellville Ave in Glen Ridge a couple nights ago, and saw seven or eight grown men playing soccer in Clay Field. As I crossed the street at the crosswalk, I picked up their soccer ball, which had just been run over by a big SUV. The park is designed for young kids and has a swing set and large play structure with a slide. This was bordering the field, so that a ball kicked out of bounds could knock one of the toddlers and potentially injure them. The men were taking advantage of the soccer goals placed at either end of the field. As I passed the Clay Field sign, I noticed that it said “Field use by permit only,” and “Field use restricted to those 9 and under.’ At that time I was wondering if I should report this to the police, and thought perhaps I’d better not.. Should I have reported these illegal soccer players to the authorities?

YES REPORT THEM!!! WHO KNOWS WHOSE BALLS THEY MIGHT KICK NEXT!

YES REPORT THEM!!! WHO KNOWS WHOSE BALLS THEY MIGHT KICK NEXT!

"Should I have reported these illegal soccer players to the authorities?"

No, you should MYOB. they weren't bothering anyone.

I once saw one of these guys, an illegal type no doubt, up on No. Mountain tending to a house on a 95 degree August afternoon, dragging behind him a 80 pound leaf blower, and the guy had the balls to take a drink of water from the owner's garden hose without asking permission. And he kicked a soccer ball a few times too. The nerve of some of these bastards.

"You tell em Jimmy.

Get a rake you pansies"

Hey Shitalker,
I need as much beauty sleep as I can get!

If it takes 5 day laborers with leaf blowers to clean that yard, imagine how many it would take to do it with a rake. I do not think that Mexico has enough citizens to satisfy our need.....

"Leaf blowers=burning up fossile fuels=increase in CO2=global warming

Right, Al Gore?"

Ever hear of a video conference mr gore?

i am proud to be a leaf blowin, snowblower usin, mega gas grill/outdoor pizza oven die hard ...so i don't wanna hear nothin 'bout any noise..i drive a prius, ugly, good on power, and eco friendly

Hey hi remember me? Well anyhow lemmee tell ya about OUR band of blowers here.. I'm in my Apt. sitting at the computer and suddenly I get this smell of exhaust. I knew they were leaf blowing but it smelled so bad I got up and looked outside. Well this was a crew of men with a truck. They were using leaf mowers or some such thing, but instead of sucking up the leaves they were blowing them into the air. Mind you this is in our small parking lot where there is blacktop so there is also lots of dirt. Well the dirt & dust & leaves were being blown as high as the top of the building, and the dirt was getting into the apartment. Its like they wee having fun. Also any parked cars were getting totally filthy. Just another reason we need to get out of here! Meanwhile our Landlord, as he calls himself is nowhere to be found and he NEVER picks up a rake. But then he's already threatened us saying he has friends in the Blmfld. Police. A real CREEP.

can't stand these things. have called the police for the sat. am early offenders to no avail. i even wrote to a councilman, no reply.
they can't hear our complaints now and we won't hear them in the future. win win in politics? Ban these energy hogging, environment smogging, hearing destroying machines.
we need a recall!

i think i'll invent a super macho cajone busting window washer. look out spray bottles! Supersonic Clean Windows will blow you away!

Some of these guys just blow all the stuff into the road & leave it there. Is that legal?

All part of the scenery for the limousine liberals in town. The illegals which the Dems support wholeheartedly and the leafblowers, another part of the Al Gore hypocrisy. Why the hell should I subsidize you lazy motherf--ers' lawn care with all the additional tax dollars burned on illegals?

I've heard from experienced gardeners that clearing away all of the leaves from the bases of trees and shrubs is detrimental to the health of said trees and shrubs, and any other plants growing around them. Throughout winter the leaves provide some protection from the cold, eventually breaking down into soil, if given the chance. The pristine, "leafless" look is artificial and not in the best interest of the plants. But that's not as interesting, I guess, as the debate about who is doing the yardwork. Not every immigrant who does landscaping or construction or restaurant work is illegal, by the way. Legal immigrants need to work, too.

By Winifred Rosen

Leafblowers are diabolical machines. Even if the claims their promoters make for them were true, the damage leafblowers do outweighs such meager benefits by many, many orders of magnitude.

Thanks to decades of relentless lobbying by their manufacturers, the two-cylinder engines that drive leafblowers have never been regulated by any Federal or State agency. The engines, as a result, are crude, cheap, and inefficient, as well as harmful to the environment and everything living in it. Because they are designed to be air-cooled, the engines release 100% of their tailgate emissions directly into the environment, and since they also burn fuel very inefficiently, a leafblower running for one hour emits as many hydrocarbons and other pollutants into the atmosphere as a car driven at 55 mph for 110 miles.

The noise leafblowers make is hideous. Although they operate on only two cylinders, these machines run at at speeds roughly three times faster than a car’s. In the process lots of energy is released in the form of high frequency sound waves with decibel levels that far exceed acceptable limits. The incessant, high-pitched whine of a single leafblower in the distance is enough to set peoples’ teeth on edge; a couple of blowers going nearby can push almost anyone to the brink of homicide. The idea that leafblowers save time - which is the one and only argument for using them - is outrageous, since it implies that the time stolen from the rest of us is worthless.

Using these hideously noisy, highly polluting machines on sidewalks and driveways is bad enough. Turning them on lawns and gardens, beneath shrubs, between hedges, and around the trunks of trees - as everyone is obviously doing these days - is irrational. Unless, that is, the people who are doing it are landscape professionals, in which case it is negligent, almost to the point of criminal.

If that seems extreme, consider that wind blows from the nozzles of these machines at speeds in the range of 180 mph. Winds of that force do not occur naturally on Earth, except inside hurricanes and tornadoes. Worse, still, because the wind is carrying away large quantities of heat from the hyperactive engine, it is also very hot and exceedingly dry.

Subjecting everything at ground level to blasts of hot, dry, hurricane-force winds would be ill-advised at any time, since it cannot fail to injure plants and open pathways for pests and disease, while at the same time aiding and abetting the pathogens by distributing them over the widest possible area. In the summer, though, when the air is hot and the ground is dry and the plants are dehydrated and badly stressed to begin with, subjecting them to tornadic blasts of hot, dry air is, nonsensical, to put it kindly.

Leafblowers literally scour the earth: stripping off topsoil, desiccating roots, and killing vital soil-dwelling organisms, while, at the same time, propelling into the air clouds of dirt, dust and dangerous contaminants: volatile compounds, mold and fungal spores, weed seeds, insect eggs, pollen, molecules of the myriads of toxic chemicals people spray and sprinkle on their gardens, trees, and lawns, not to mention bird and rodent feces, and more.

It goes without saying (but must be said anyway), that leafblowers pose the greatest threat to the health and hearing of the untold numbers of landscape workers who use them on a daily basis, in most cases without adequate protective equipment, for intervals that far exceed OSHA guidelines. Unfortunately, the workers themselves tend to exaggerate the benefits and deny the risks of blowing leaves with machines, which they strongly favor over rakes, for reasons that probably have more to do with symbolism than practicality.

Ironically, leafblowers were not invented to blow leaves; they were originally designed as crop dusters. In other words, they didn’t come about in response to a genuine need for a mechanized solution to the leaf-removal problem. Because there wasn’t any problem. Now we do have a problem, but it isn’t leaves, it’s these infernal machines.

Gasoline-driven leafblowers have been banned in scores of California counties, including Los Angeles and hundreds of municipalitiesacross the U.S. and Canada, and none of the horrors that were predicted by landscapers - untidy lawns, escalating costs, declining property values - has ever come to pass.

The phenomenal proliferation of leafblowers has far more to do with marketing than efficiency; indeed, when all the real costs are factored in their alleged benefits don’t even begin to justify their penalties and risks. Cheap to produce, priced to sell, and aggressively marketed, the real function of leafblowers is to rake in money for the huge corporations that manufacture them.