White-noise machines vs. live band 14 stories down: Live band wins

dining rooms in the city: painful. (The downstairs Chalet bar is not nearly as bad.)

As an early local professional restaurant critic to regularly cite noise levels in my reviews, I carry a sound pressure meter. I recall Bastille's upstairs dining room routinely registering ambient noise of over 90dB there at peak hours. That level is a menace to customers, even more so to employees with daily exposures of 10+ hours.

I understand why restaurants design their rooms this way (deterred camping equals more table turns per service equals more profit), but >90dB requires everybody to scream to be heard, and often results in misheard orders. I can tolerate the high 80s, which is pretty typical these days for newer places, but above that, my enjoyment of a place quickly plummets.

There's a class-action lawsuit waiting to happen on behalf of industry workers against these dangerous workplace noise levels, much like the ones that helped usher in the smoking ban at many restaurants and bars.

I once bought a white noise machine, I had to return it after one night as it kept me up all night going "I have black friends" "where can I get a pumpkin spice latte" "is it OK to where uggs with yoga pants" .....

*runs*

made Earle's forget.