A Los Angeles strip mall has been forced by the city’s throngs of drug-using vagrants to blast music overnight to keep them away— and some neighbors admit the obnoxious din is necessary.
The classical music is blared from a speaker at Gower Plaza — next to the city’s Walk of Fame sidewalk tourist attraction — at ear-splitting levels starting at 9:30 p.m. and continues for 12 hours.
“It’s much too loud,” said neighbor Christina Barbero, 41.“[But] it keeps the transients from attacking customers and cuts down crime.”
Barbero — who recently witnessed a homeless man attack a pizza delivery driver in the mall’s parking lot at 8 p.m. — said the music has helped shoo away vagrants.
“There used to be homeless people and transients in the mall but they have moved on,” she said. “I like what the owners have done. The music has helped. The area feels safer these days.”
The orchestral tunes — which include Frédéric Chopin’s classic solo piano piece Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 — blast from a speaker attached to surveillance cameras atop a portable trailer.
The set up, by LiveView Technologies, shares real-time images with the security center as an ominous voice orders people to leave.
Overall, crime in Hollywood is 64% above the national average and violent crime is 139 per cent higher than the national average, according to areavibes.com.
Barbero’s fiancé, Angel Wright, 50, said the tunes are also used to “get you to look up so they get a better shot of your face.
“It’s an invasion of privacy,” Wright added.
Nearby resident Paul Twarowski, 34, who recently moved to Hollywood from Denver, said the area sometimes gets scary due to drug addiction.
“[It’s] a way to deal with people who get violent after drug use. There are a lot of people who just take a little bit too much fentanyl and can’t control themselves. And it’s a sad thing to see,” he said.
Sisters Ashley Luna, 17, and Kimberly, 16, live in an apartment immediately next to the mall with their parents and six-year-old miniature poodle, Michelle.
“There’s been suspicious activity in the area. The music keeps the homeless people away since they don’t want to stay here and sleep. It’s supposed to annoy them and deter them,” Ashley said.
“It gets annoying,” she added. “It’s a struggle to sleep at night or in the morning. You often hear the same song repeating over and over.”
A Reddit user recently complained that the noise coming from the mall, on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Gower Street, is “really loud.”
The frustrated poster, who uses the moniker “EverythingButTheURL,” wrote: “I measured it at 80db and I can hear it 2 blocks away indoors. I’ve complained everywhere I can think of and nobody will help.”
Domino’s staffer Jeffery Diaz, 27, also called the nightly music is “too much.”
Calls to authorities, including police and the local councilmember, have gone unanswered.
The building manager also declined to help, they said.
‘I’m at my wit’s end with this,’ they added. ‘It’s crazy how little the city cares about the wellbeing of its residents.’
The shopping center, which sits just blocks from the Dolby Theatre that hosts the Oscars, is home to several businesses, including a nail salon, sushi restaurant, Domino’s Pizza and 7-Eleven.
The mall sits on the same block as a large Salvation Army center that supports the homeless.
It is also a few doors down from a branch of Los Angeles Superior Court which handles mental health cases, including Jennifer Aniston’s alleged stalker, Jimmy Wayne Carwyle, and Raymond Boodarian, accused of murdering American Idol music supervisor Robin Kaye and husband Thomas Deluca in July.
The Post has reached out to the strip mall manager for comment.
