They are on the steps to the bell.
Noisy bells have been ringing at Manhattan subway stations for nearly two weeks straight, leaving shopkeepers confused and reaching for earplugs.
A shrill ringing sound resembling an old-fashioned school bell fills the stairs to the platform for the Downtown 1 line at the 50th Street Subway station, though it’s unclear where exactly the noise is coming from.
There are no toll bells in sight anywhere nearby, and their volume seems to wax and wan without meaning to throughout the tunnel.
“It’s only really loud here,” said Adilan Garo, who owns three businesses inside the subway tunnels and has to endure the noise all day at work, “and once you’re there, the sound is extremely faint.”
Gallo demonstrates how he walks down a flight of stairs only to suddenly lose the sound of the bell a few feet away, then walks up the stairs and the sound gets louder, then walks up two or three more flights of stairs and suddenly hears the bell ringing behind him.
“It’s really weird, to be honest with you,” Gallo said, noting that no bell could be heard from around the corner of the staircase.
It’s unclear when exactly the bells began ringing at the Broadway and 8th Avenue station: some eagle-eyed listeners say they first noticed them on June 23, while others speculate they’ve been hearing them for at least a week.
Employees at Gallo’s pizza place, See No Evil Pizza, keep their doors closed to block out the noise.
“It’s annoying but we keep the door closed so we can’t hear it,” one employee said.
“It stopped for about a day and then started working again. So it could be a power issue. I’m not sure.”
“We called the landlord and spoke to the previous tenant, Duane Reade, and they don’t know what’s causing it either,” they added, referring to the store on the next street.
The MTA was not aware of the bells when contacted by The Washington Post on Thursday and did not respond to additional questions, even though the bells were still ringing on Sunday.
At Tiny Dancer, the coffee shop across from See No Evil Pizza, you won’t hear many bells ringing.
“It doesn’t bother me that much,” said barista Katie Kong, who started work a week ago.
“I know it’s annoying to other people. For example, my boss asked me, ‘Are you still listening to that?'”
Regular commuters passing through the station noticed the bell, but most just wrote it off as part of the cityscape.
“I didn’t think anything of the sound. That’s the New York vibe. We don’t care about this kind of stuff,” one person said.
