Turn off that leaf blower!

That's what I yelled out my window yesterday morning at the landscaper using a roaring-loud leaf blower to clear something from in front of my house. Leaves? I guess, but there are not that many scattered on the ground this time of year.

 I was working at home, on a conference call with some people in New York and Southern California. I couldn't hear what they were saying, and they couldn't hear what I was saying. But they could hear the leaf blower, all the way from in front of my home in Walnut Creek.

My co-workers could also hear me yell "Turn it off!" But the landscaper couldn't hear me, not over the sound of that damned leaf blower.  (And, I was using a new phone, and, no, I had not yet learned where the stupid mute button was.)

Actually, that's been the first time I've been home in the middle of the day when the landscapers with the leaf blowers have come to my cul-de-sac.  I'd say the sound from that machine was as loud as a locomotive rushing 10 feet from my window.  I probably could have endured it--I knew it would stop eventually--if it weren't for the fact that I was trying to talk to people to get work done.

My experience with our neighborhood leaf blower guys comes the week that Quiet Orinda, a grass-roots group of residents in that town, premieres its professionally produced documentary about the nuisance and environmental hazards of leaf blowers.

The big screening will take place 7:15 p.m.  Saturday at the Orinda Theater as part of the 12th annual California Independent Film Festival. Quiet Orinda was formed in 2009 to raise awareness about the air and noise pollution caused by leaf blowers and to promote legislation to encourage healthier alternatives to these machines.

The video, Quiet Orinda, presents "candid, unrehearsed" interviews with Orinda residents who describe how the use of leaf blowers in their neighborhoods hurts their well-being and their enjoyment of their homes and community.

Saturday's screening will be the first public screening of the video.Tickets can be ordered in advance at the California Independent Film Festival website.

Quiet Orinda has a petition drive going to gather signatures to urge the City Council in that town to consider banning the use of leaf blowers.

Does Walnut Creek need a similar campaign?

Contra Costa anti-leaf blower group taking their message to the movies

Quiet Orinda, a well-organized group that is trying to get their city to ban leaf blowers, has created a short documentary that it will air at the California Independent Film Festival in Orinda in April.

The documentary has residents describing the reasons they moved to Orinda--its quiet, its beauty--and how they find it so disturbing when landscapers bring in blasting, shrieking leaf blowers to clean yards up.

You can view a trailer of the documentary at the Quiet Orinda website.

"Quiet Orinda was formed in 2009 by a group of Orinda residents concerned about the problems of air and noise pollution caused by the widespread use of leaf blowers in our city. Our aim is to educate the citizens of Orinda about healthier alternatives to leaf blowers, and to promote legislation to encourage these alternatives. We invite you to join with us today; please click on the “Register” button on our home page."

The Quiet Orinda folks are also gathering signatures and provide a link to a new report by Clean Air California that describes the air and noise pollution consequences of having three million leaf blowers in the state: "The majority are gasoline-powered leaf blowers. If growth trends continue, soon there will be more than 6 million leaf blowers in California, at which time, air pollution, water pollution, blown dust, and noise, will be twice as bad as today."

Readers of this blog indicate that they are not thrilled by the noise these machines make around Walnut Creek. But a 1990 Walnut Creek ordinance allows leaf blowers to operate within city limits during certain times and under certain conditions. The ordinance covering leaf blowers is in Municipal Code, under Title 4 (Public Welfare, Morals and Conduct), Chapter 6 (Nuisances), Article 2.


Under "Prohibited Noises Enumerated," and Maintenance Equipment it states: "The use and operation of any noise-creating commercial or residential landscaping or home maintenance equipment or tools including, but not limited to, hammers, blowers, trimmers, mowers, chainsaws, power fans or any engine, the operation of which causes noise due to the explosion of operating gases or fluids, other than between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. on weekdays and 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. on weekends and holidays. (§1, Ord. 1753, eff. November 8, 1990)."

Tippi, Tippi, Tippi: Hitchcock’s classic The Birds (and Tippi) in Orinda Friday night; and, by the way, What’s your favorite Hitchcock film?

Tippi Hedren will be in Orinda Friday night at a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece The Birds, as part of the California Independent Film Festival, which is moving this year from Livermore to its new location in Orinda’s beautifully classic Art Deco cinema.

This 1963 film is about a northern California coastal town (Bodega Bay) that is attacked by a sudden, frightening, and even apocalyptic horde of wild birds, perhaps symbols of nature seeking their revenge on humans. The film starred a then-unknown actress named Tippi Hedren (mother of Melanie Griffith), as San Francisco socialite Melanie Daniels.

People talk about Hitchcock films being suspenseful and scary. Suspenseful maybe. Scary, not really. What I love about his best films is how psychologically rich they are, how lushly romantic, how darkly humorous, and how sharp they are about picking apart our views of male and female identities and of relationships between the two genders. Hitchcock had a dark, twisted sense of humor, and of the human condition, which is very much evident in The Birds.

Friday night’s event begins at 7 p.m. The screening of the film is preceded by a chat between Ms. Hedren and Diablo magazine’s senior editor Peter Crooks.

The event is nearly sold out, but tickets are still available. Tickets benefits Hedren’s Roar Foundation Shambala Preserve, and cost $15 for students and $20 for adults. They may be purchased online or at the Orinda and Rheem Theatre Box offices, or by call CIFF's ticketing office at (925) 277-1355.

I’ll be going with my son. It’s time to introduce him to the genius of Hitchcock, and I think The Birds is a good one to start with. I first saw it around his age, and it both terrified and delighted me.

What’s your favorite Hitchcock film? I have to say that mine is the poetic and pathologically romantic Vertigo, but The Birds is very much high on my list. Notably, The Birds and Vertigo, as well as 1948's Shadow of a Doubt, very much depend, for story and theme, on their San Francisco and Northern California locations.

And, yes, I have taken friends, who are fellow Hitchcock lovers, on my own tours of Hitchcock’s San Francisco (Fort Point, Mission Delores, Maiden Lane, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and that apartment highrise at the top of Nob Hill) and Hitchcock's Northern California (San Juan Bautista, Muir Woods, Bodega Bay, and the town of Bodega).