Life in the hover zone

Residents of Atwater Village are learning the hard lesson about living near the scene of a big news event in Los Angeles. Imagine a fleet of TV choppers hovering over your neighborhood for days. Turbine engines whine at a volume and pitch that laugh at stucco walls. The nonstop rip of rotor blades can make a person crazy after the first few hours. Hearing the loud grind of machinery in the sky is especially irksome when you know that there is actually nothing new for the TV cameras to see from above. Still, tens of thousands on the ground are disturbed so the stations can get a shot or two to open the news. At the Atwater neighborhood council website, Jay Babcock begs, "How do we make the helicopters go away?"