SCREAMS! People are screaming in Millennium Park again.
And then laughing. Great whoops of laughter.
And behind it all, the roar of tons of water falling 50 feet onto the heads and backs and shoulders of children. The water sounds like loud applause at the symphony. The kids sound like they’re on a roller coaster.
“It sounds like a bomb,” says a soaked-to-the-bone Nick Holder, 12, from Rochester Hills, Mich.
“It sounds like a jet,” says a slightly damp Daniel Clyne, 14, from Troy, Mich.
“It’s like Hurricane Katrina,” says a still-dry Michael Richards, 16, also from Rochester Hills.
It’s the Crown Fountain on a warm Tuesday afternoon. An ever-changing mix of dripping babies, toddlers, kids, ‘tweens and teens (plus a few adults) are making a happy, wet cacophony in the sun-drenched expanse between the park’s two giant video-screen fountains. It sounds like Six Flags Great America set up shop on Michigan Avenue.
A piercing whistle cuts through the din, a dad calling his toddler back to him. She, in a bubble-gum pink ruffled swimsuit, scurries back in a flurry of tiny splats. Nearby, soaked teens prance around with umbrellas somebody is giving away for free, giggling and protesting as they push each other under the wall of water.
To the west, cars, trucks and buses rumble along Michigan Avenue, honking horns, idling engines. From the north, singing courtesy of a sidewalk busker or a radio wafts toward the fountains and is almost entirely drowned out by the water and the squeals. It’s Bob Dylan, at his bitterest. “How does it feel?” he sings.
And just to the east are 2 1/2 acres of yarrow and calico aster and Virginia bluebells and fountain grass and scores of other plants that make up the park’s Lurie Garden. There, the noise is muffled. A crane working on the Art Institute expansion swings noiselessly to the south. A jet silently crosses the cloudless blue sky.
The dominant sound is of footsteps and conversations that fade in and out as small groups of people stroll by. A red-winged blackbird sings “oak-a-ly.” Little brown house sparrows cheep, flitting above the garden’s blanket of purple flowers.
“You didn’t think you would find this here,” says Evanston native Eliza Gilford, 22, who is sitting with friends on a wooden boardwalk at the edge of a pool of water.
They were on their way to the bustling Crown Fountain, but the hushed garden pulled them in.
Told the Crown Fountain was as loud as a theme park and only a few hundred feet away, Gilford raises her eyebrows: “I cannot even hear it.”
* But it’s what makes summer in Chicago fun
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DECIBEL METER
180 A JET ENGINE AT 1 FOOT
140 Fireworks
120 Cicadas
110 Street festivals
90 MP3 PLAYERS
85 AND ABOVE MAY CAUSE HEARING LOSS
70 FREEWAY TRAFFIC
60 LOUD NEIGHBORS
40 REFRIGEATRO HUMMING
20 WHISPER
Sources: Deafness-and-hearingaids.net, dangerousdecibels.org, howstuffworks.com and OSHA
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Listen to the sounds of summer and vote for your favorites at chicagotribune.com/noise
