am New York Minute: Aaron Friedman
am New York
By Erica Pierson

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Aaron Friedman, a jazz sax saxophonist and classical composer, became so incensed at those bleating car alarms — which we all know and hate — that he became an activist. Aiming to rid the city of car alarms, he started an advocacy group and set up the Web site www.silentmajority.com. Now City Council members are working to make car alarms illegal.

AMNY How did your fight against car alarms begin?

AF I was living in an apartment in Washington Heights, sitting at the piano and trying to write music, and car alarms were going off constantly. I started to think, "These alarms are being set off mostly by passing trucks." I went online and came across this article quoting an insurance industry spokesman saying that there is no evidence that car alarms do anything to stop car theft. At that point, I was just so incensed by the whole thing, so I ended up starting up a little group. We quickly we got the attention of [non-profit group] Transportation Alternatives and they ended up bringing me in to work for them.

AMNY You must hear everyone's complaints about car alarms. What are some of the worst?

AF I think the best story was about a couple hearing the alarm going off in front of a church at night in Williamsburg. They went downstairs to investigate and saw a priest with a hammer circling the car. There are also people who do nasty things to cars because the alarms are driving them crazy. People have set cars on fire, punctured tires, thrown eggs, put dog s*** on the windows.

AMNY You've never gone that far?

AF I'm not the type. But it's tempting sometimes.

AMNY The City Council has proposed banning car alarms. How far is that from becoming a reality?

AF There are two bills, they keep saying they are going to combine them into one. The strongest bill, introduced by Eva Moscowitz, bans both the sale and installation and the use of existing car alarms. Speaker Gifford Miller recently said to Eva that the only thing holding this up is his concern that car owners won't be able to turn off their own alarms. It turns out for 97% of the cars on the road, people who have factory installed alarms can simply not turn them on — they can lock the doors, without pressing the alarm button on the remote.

AMNY Stopping car alarms aside, what do you like most about the city?

AF The things I love the most about New York are all of the concerts going on. Last year I went to one of the few performances that has been done of Morton Peldman's second string quartet at Carnegie Hall. It is six hours long. There were a lot of people there, and they stayed, and it was this amazing communal experience. It reminded me that even though New York can be really noisy and claustrophobic, it is wonderful living here.

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