GERMANTOWN - On Chelten Avenue in Germantown, you can end your gas pumping experience on a high note.The Speedway station recently started playing opera music from their outdoor speakers.
The noise level seems to vary by the song and time of day.A social media post from a resident who lives near the station called out the tactic, out of sheer frustration about the late night noise.That’s how Tina Jones heard about it."If I was a resident and it was in the middle of the night, blasting where it’s disturbing, having kids and stuff like that where I gotta’ get up for school, I would have a problem with it, but if it’s something like this, it’s peaceful to me," she says. "Whatever works, it’s better than violence."Staff at the gas station would not comment to FOX 29, but it’s believed the music is used to deter loitering and nuisance crimes.Marquez Davis says he can see why."I’d want to move, I’d be like ‘Yo, you gotta cut that music down, it’s too much,’" he says. "The opera music all the time is irritating."The gas station has signs that state "No Loitering." They also put up paper signs by some of the pumps that say, in part, "Due to safety concerns and increased complaints, we cannot allow loiterers or panhandlers to pump gas."On Wednesday, FOX 29 saw a boy, who was not an employee of the station, asking to pump customers’ gas.