HOUSTON – On a Sunday night you'll see lots of people on Dixie Drive in Houston's Third Ward. There are a lot of nightclubs, a lots of motorcycles and residents who live nearby complain there's a nonstop, deafening noise that lasts late into the evening and sometimes early into the next day.
"The motorcycles, every time they come and every time they leave, they rev-up their engines and squeal their tires," said Richard Lyders, who lives a few blocks away in the Riverside Terrace neighborhood.
To document the problem, Lyders shot home video of the scene on Dixie Drive one Sunday at 11:45 p.m. On the video you can hear the loud, crackling sound of several bikers revving-up and peeling out.
Jean Labrie has lived in the area since 1968 and said she has never seen anything like it.
Labrie said every Sunday for the last four years the motorcycles start up at 6:00 p.m. and go on revving and squealing until 2 a.m.
With three different nightclubs on the block, the street is packed with cars, bikers and people on Sunday, but club owner Lila Roberts, owner of Diallos Nightclub, said the crowds of patrons, bikers and non-bikers are perfectly behaved and quiet when they are on her property.
The problem, she said, is when many of those bikers hit the streets near her club and begin to show what those bikes of theirs can do.
"Look, I follow all the rules the city has and I enforce those rules in my club," Lila said. "You can see for yourself there is no noise problem on my property, but when the bikers get out on the street and leave here, what am I supposed to do? I have no control over that."
The dispute is now one between the residents and the club owners on Dixie Drive; a dispute that so far has no solution and appears to be growing bigger every weekend.