“Yes, yes, yes . . . ” No!
More than two-thirds of city residents say they regularly hear their neighbors having sex, but few are brave enough to complain about it, according to a survey released yesterday.
Getting subjected to all that ecstasy is agony, said roughly half of the 400 New Yorkers polled by BrickUnderground.com, a news and information site for homeowners.
But even though they bemoan the moans, bumps and grinds, just 14 percent of apartment dwellers said they ever confronted their neighbors or the building management.
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“What this shows is if you live in New York City, you don’t need to worry about keeping quiet in bed on Valentine’s Day, because the chances are slim that someone is going to complain,” said Teri Karush Rogers, BrickUnderground’s founder.
“On the other hand, the morning-after elevator ride could be awkward.”
All sex is public in many of the city’s paper-thin-walled buildings, and residents say when their neighbors are in the throes of passion, there’s no way to tune it out.
“It’s like a train wreck — you have to stop what you’re doing and listen, even if it’s awful,” Melissa Buck, 29, of the Upper East Side, told The Post.
“A friend and I were cooking dinner at 6:30, while it was still light out, and we heard the neighbors. Why can you always hear the girl? It lasted probably 10 minutes, and we had to stop cooking and listen.”
Like many of those surveyed, Leslie Vandike, 30, of East New York, Brooklyn, said the best way to get neighbors to lower the volume is to egg them on.
“Last summer, I was having a barbecue. Everybody was outside. Suddenly, we hear this loud screaming,” he said. “Upstairs, our neighbor was having sex. Everybody was like, ‘You go, girl,’ cheering them on.
“We never heard anything else after that.”
According to the survey, the most common sounds heard through the walls were thumping (60 percent), moaning (56 percent), screaming (28 percent) and “other” (23 percent).
But just 12 percent of New Yorkers said neighbors ever complained about their lovemaking, and only 24 percent said they went out of their way to pipe down.
The city’s 311 system does not have a separate category for complaints about neighbors having sex, but of the 263,000 noise complaints received in 2009, 35,274 were for neighbors making “banging/pounding” sounds and another 7,196 were for “loud talking, officials told The Post.