Ever since it was updated in 2013, the former tennis facility Forest Hills Stadium has been bringing a steady stream of big-time concerts to Queens. Lately, those shows have pushed some of the neighbors to their breaking point.
As the New York Times reports, several residents of the Forest Hills neighborhood have hired an acoustic consultant named Alan Fierstein to measure noise levels during concerts at the stadium, including last Friday’s marathon appearance from King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Noise from shows at the venue reportedly causes nonstop rattling windows and shaking doors. One resident interviewed by the Times, Douglas Gilbert — who lives 600 feet from the stadium stage, and who was part of lawsuit against the stadium that was dismissed this year — said his house becomes “unlivable” during concerts.
Multiple lawsuits attempting to police the noise pollution have been filed this year. One, from a group called Concerned Citizens of Forest Hills, was recently dismissed when Judge Robert Caloras of State Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to prove the concerts were a public or private nuisance. According to court filings, Gilbert was among those spearheading that suit.
In a separate lawsuit put forward by the corporation that manages the Forest Hills Gardens neighborhood, Judge Joseph Esposito, also of State Supreme Court, granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the stadium from exceeding legal noise limits. Esposito told the plaintiffs to pay for an independent sound expert to monitor the noise levels, but a spokesman for Forest Hills Stadium tells Stereogum that the corporation opted not to foot the bill. Fierstein was there to measure the sound on behalf of Gilbert, whose lawsuit was already dismissed.
The city also sent its own noise inspectors to Friday’s King Gizzard show. In two homes near the stadium, they found noise levels to be in violation of local regulations. One summons was issued in response to the offending event, the second such summons issued this year. The number of concerts at the venue has steadily increased over the past several years, from 16 in 2019 to 37 and counting this year.
Other residents have come out in support of the stadium. Tiebreaker Productions, the promoter that has a long-term lease on the venue, has pointed to an online petition in favor of the stadium, signed by more than 20,000 people, one of whom wrote that the stadium is a better neighbor than some of the human locals. Tiebreaker told the NYT that $1.5 million of its $15 million in refurbishments had gone toward “sound mitigation,” measures that Fierstein called “Band-Aid soundproofing.” Fierstein suggests the stadium should surround audience members with an abundance of smaller speakers that would concentrate the noise within the venue.
In other King Gizzard news, on Monday there was a sweet moment when the band played the Stage at Suffolk Downs in Boston. They brought a fan named Timmy onstage who wanted to pay tribute to his friend Joey, who died in an avalanche, by playing guitar on “Perihelion,” Joey’s favorite King Gizzard song. “I can’t believe it guys,” Timmy wrote on Reddit a few hours later. “I didn’t think this would be possible. What the band and crowd did tonight to honor my friend Joey will never be forgotten.” Watch that footage below.
The Boston “Perihelion” video is from King Gizzard’s official bootleg of the show. They are DIY live-streaming every night on this tour, a project frontman Stu Mackenzie wrote about on Instagram:
Every show of the USA/CAN tour is streaming live on our youtube for FREE!
Everyone said it was a bad (and expensive) idea but seeing thousands of you on the first few streams is giving me LIFE HAHAHA YAY!!
These streams look so crazy good too. Allan and Jackson making it look hella cinematic and having heaps of fun up there with us @jack.sunflower @allendobbins_ @heapskeenllc
Boogieman sam @sanjalapeno has the soundboard mix absolutely dialled and it’s getting better each night.
We’re DIYing this VERY hard so a few tech diffs here and there but we wanna deliver all of you beautiful people who we love something that is free and intimate and real
Heres some snippets from night 2 stream at Forest Hills Stadium New York. I cant believe they let us play places like this hahaha
PS… I’m gonna say that bootleggers can bootleg any show they want. We’re gonna work on a website update where you can download sams soundboard mixes from this tour. And maybe the stem mixes as well… that would be pretty crazy huh
PPS no philly stream – they said no. But we’ll still try record audio for y’all bootleggers
We’re having so much fun
LOVE STU XOX
Monday’s Boston show also featured the live debut of “Flight b741,” the title track from Gizzard’s latest LP. Watch that below.
