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I’m traveling through Puerto Rico. On every nice beach, when there are people, they are playing loud music. Now that is part of the local culture. To me (a Euro
by xixixao 2y ago
I’m traveling through Puerto Rico. On every nice beach, when there are people, they are playing loud music. Now that is part of the local culture. To me (a European), it is abhorent, ruining the supposedly relaxing atmosphere of a beach (even more so that the music to me seems extremely repetitive).
I could not convince anyone here to stop doing this. Again, for locals, this is their culture.
Similarly, I don’t think most Americans can grasp the difference between American cities (including in Puerto Rico) built for cars vs for pedestrians. Most will argue (including here), that this is a function of the size of the place. And America is big, and in places sparsely unpopulated, undeniably. But this is not the reason. Europe too is big. With many less populated places. And there are cars everywhere, most people own one.
It’s now cultural. Culture can change, but when combined with architecture at an industrial scale, I’m afraid the change will take much longer than a natural human lifetime.
- bbqfog 2y agoThey probably find it equally abhorrent that a European would come and police their culture. Please don't travel somewhere and complain about local culture. You're a guest, possibly and unwanted one.
- heavymetalpoizn 2y ago[dead]
- AStonesThrow 2y agoHow do we know that this is "Puerto Rican Culture Plays Loud Music on Beaches"? What if it's some obnoxious rebellious college kids who think they can get away with it? What if it's some tourists, like from Cuba or Argentina, who are rich and so nobody in authority will handle complaints against them, because tourism feeds PR's economy so effectively? What if most Puerto Rico residents don't really go hang out at the beach at all, and they stay home with their families, and they cook in the kitchen and they enjoy conversations? What if Puerto Ricans are mostly like Americans, and their faces are all in their smartphones, and some of them play loud music and some ignore it, and some hate it but don't complain, and some complain but also play their own loud music to try and drown it out? What if Puerto Ricans don't have one monolithic culture that you can generalize while we're here on an English-speaking forum, based on the mainland USA? What if Puerto Ricans don't actually eat elephants or giraffes? https://youtu.be/mzK9_TbzReQ?si=-QsUIwt_0SIcY-gt&t=28 https://youtu.be/mzK9_TbzReQ?si=-QsUIwt_0SIcY-gt&t=28
- xboxnolifes 2y agoI think you completely missed the point.
- bbqfog 2y agoNo, I’m sure I didn’t.
- psunavy03 2y agoPeople can rant and rail about America's car-centric culture, or they could just accept that the culture is what it is and work to mitigate the negative aspects of it. I don't get why so many people feel they need to tilt at windmills this way.
- harimau777 2y agoThe problem is that there's not really a way to mitigate those negative aspects. Car centric culture is almost universally miserable.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoSo, I think the problem is that the culture is unsustainable [1] [2]. Look at new vehicle prices [3]. Look at the operating cost of a vehicle [4]. For many, currently, this cost is at least if not more than $1000/month (car note, insurance, fuel, etc) and very roughly, ~60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Vehicle repos [5] and auto loan delinquencies [6] are hitting historical highs. America built a structurally deficient urban planning model. In Iowa, for example, they are allowing roads to go back to gravel because they lack the resources to maintain the status quo of road infra [7]. Also, consider rural america continues to wither and clear out [8]. This is all important ground truth to have to mitigate the negative aspects as you say, versus throwing good money after bad. Maybe we could encourage folks to migrate to college towns from the exurbs with subsidies and job guarantees, versus them staying in place while where they exist today rapidly declines. They would then continue to support the town as residents through their social security or pension income they would spend locally through retirement until death. New urban builds take decades while retrofits and reconfigurations take much less time, effort, and fiat. "Skate to where the puck is going to be." [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-towns-really-says-about-infrastructure-spending https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-to... [2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-are-a-one-life-cycle-product https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-ar... [3] https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/ https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/ [4] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-cost-owning-car https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co... [5] https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-levels-unseen-since-2008-financial-crisis/ https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-lev... [6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-loan-payments-auto-delinquencies-spike-to-highest-level-in-decades https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-... | https://archive.today/dfCjJ https://archive.today/dfCjJ [7] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-to-pay-for-rural-iowas-roads/ https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-... [8] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-population-over-past-decade-first-time-history https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-popula... (draw your attention to "Figure 2. Population Change In Nonmetropolitan Counties, 2010 To 2020") (think in systems)
- bluedino 2y ago> I’m traveling through Puerto Rico. On every nice beach, when there are people, they are playing loud music. Now that is part of the local culture A lot of American beaches will have signs up saying no music. As well as no beer etc but they aren't always followed.
- bombcar 2y agoIn America, “no beer” often really means “no glass bottles” and if you avoid that, nobody cares.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- alistairSH 2y agoFWIW… head the Vieques, rent a small SUV, and hit Chiba beach or the other south coast beaches in the nature reserve area. Almost empty. The only noise is nature and waves.
- rkowalick 2y agoGoing to Vieques in 2011 was one of the most sublime and wonderful experiences of my life. I never felt like I was at an undiscovered treasure more than I did there: The beaches, the biolumniscent bay, the feral horses, the view over the bay in Esperanza, all of it so breathtaking.
- nebula8804 2y agoEurope might be big to some people but America is really big. [1]:https://i.imgur.com/6Af0Yip.png https://i.imgur.com/6Af0Yip.png [2]:www.thetruesize.com
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoThose look pretty similar in size? Especially including Scandinavia in Europe
- nebula8804 2y agoCan you really include uninhabited ice regions? The point is that the size of the country incentivized car based transportation and large distances between destinations. I guess if you flattened the entire contingous european continent(from portugal to Moscow) as one large standardized country and really only developed most of it after cars became a thing, you'd potentially have the same system as the US.
- tmnvdb 1y agoThis really is nonsense but somehow every time this topic comes up people being it up. The size of the country or its population density is not really relevant. People in Europe dont take a train from Greece to Sweden. They fly. In fact most fly Vienna to Amsterdam. In the same way somebody from New York would definitely fly to LA. (They are not driving now btw) That doesn't preclude the existence of public transport connecting NY to Philadelphia. It also does not preclude NY from being walkable! Or bikeable. It doesn't stop NY from having good public transport! It doesn't force you to drive to work in NY. This is much more about local policy. Different solutions at different scales!
- peterlada 2y agoCan you include the barely inhabited Rockies, the Badlands, the arid low and high deserts, the Sierras?
- 1y ago
- hnhn34 2y agoI'm Puerto Rican and this hurt to read because I wish the noise problem was limited to beaches. Multiple cases of noisy, inconsiderate neighbors (in different apartments and cities) drove me insane, to the point where I left and don't plan on ever coming back. The way it affected my sleep during my formative years probably did irreparable damage. Feeling like you don't belong in your own country is maddening and difficult to accept.
- dewey 2y agoSimilar experience for me (As an Austrian) often hiking in Hong Kong where everyone (old and young) walks with tiny speakers dangling from their backpack blasting music during the whole hike. I never even thought people would consider that.
- refurb 2y agoI would also argue that pedestrian friendly depends a lot on when the city was built. If you look at the US, the old (by American standards) cities like Boston, NYC, are pretty car-free friendly. Same with the cores of European cities which are much older. The further west you go, the newer the city and the more they are designed around having a car.
- tmnvdb 1y agoThis is true in the US but not a law a nature. Its the result of policy. There are whole cities built from scratch (outside the US) within the last 70 years that did not choose this model. And there are many new developments in older cities all over the world that reject the "car-only" model. There is no unstoppable flow of history at work here. It's politics and policy.
- watwut 2y agoAmerica is big, but most people live on coasts. The density of population is larger there.
- tim333 1y agoIt's something that put me off staying in Dahab Egypt. It was pleasant and very cheap but everywhere played terrible music! It's also something I like in Singapore - the people there are quite studious so you can generally sit and read peacefully without people banging things etc.