“We’re not talking about street noise,” said Mr. Gerson, noting that motorcycle noise was a leading complaint from residents of his district. “We’re talking about noise that reaches into apartments, bedrooms, living rooms, places where people live. It’s so loud it’s like a physical assault. It’s jarring.”

Especially, he said, in warm weather.

“Elsewhere in the world, the birds come back and start chirping,” Mr. Gerson said. “And in these neighborhoods, the motorcycles come back and drive everyone crazy.”

In the East Flatbush clubhouse, though, bikers complained that they were being misunderstood. Among the benefits of a loud exhaust system, they said, is that it alerts drivers, many with their radios on in soundproof cars, to a motorcycle’s presence.

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“Every person that rides a bike can give you several stories of how that loud pipe saved them from potentially being killed,” said Jermaul Holloman, the Dirty Ryderz’s round-faced, large-bellied president, who rides under the nickname Naughty. “They don’t respect the dangers that we go through. Anyone that says loud pipes don’t save lives has never rode a bike.”

(In response, Mr. Gerson said that the noise from a legal, unmodified exhaust system was enough to announce that a motorcycle is nearby.)

Ellen Patterson, a member of the concerned citizens’ group who was with Mr. Holloman this day, said the organization hopes to one day get federal decibel limits raised. In the meantime, she said, the bikers, who have a powerful ally in Councilman Leroy Comrie of Southeast Queens, plan to turn out in force to testify at the next Council hearing. Their worry, Ms. Patterson said, is that under the law, police would punish riders whose legal exhaust pipes have stamps that are hard to see.

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If the stamp is hidden, as it often is, she said, “do you really think that they’re going to get on the ground to try to see it? No, he’s going to ticket you.”

For riders like Derick Coard, a city bus driver who attended the meeting, that is a scary prospect, especially because multiple citations could lead to a biker’s losing his cycle. A nice Japanese sport bike can cost $10,000, he said, and a Harley-Davidson several times that.

There is, of course, another reason some people have loud motorcycles: the adolescent joy in producing a deafening noise and bothering the neighbors. That, Mr. Coard emphasized, is not what he is defending.

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“We sponsor a Little League team, for God’s sakes,” he said. “How rogue can you be? There’s corrections officers in my club; there’s police in my club; there’s nurses. Why should the few have to suffer for those that are living outside the law?”