Button up that bill!

Duck boat tours can be loud but on some streets it's . . .

10/3/2003

On Newbury Street, you may hear the clink of expensive silverware at fashionable sidewalk cafes and the twitter of BlackBerry alarms in the breast pockets of Armani suits. But one thing you won't hear is the "quack quack" of Boston Duck Tours. Though the trademark chorus of quacks from tourists aboard Boston's amphibious duck boats can be heard all over town, Newbury Street is designated a "No Quack Zone."

To some of the merchants and residents of the tony shopping zone, quacking detracts from the air of exclusivity they prefer. In the words of Fred Campbell, a sales associate at Marcoz Antiques, the ban keeps the street "sedate and upscale -- as it should be."

"We work very hard to control the environment," said Collette Royer, a store manager at Giorgio Armani. "If I were sitting out having lunch on Newbury street and four times an hour people came quacking by, I would find that distracting."

Duck Tours created three no quacking zones on its routes through historic Boston after getting complaints several years ago.

The ban has been difficult to enforce, though. Despite admonishments from drivers, passengers get swept up in the quacking spirit and can't seem to hold themselves back. "It's very hard sometimes to calm them down," said Jim Healy, a driver who likes to be called Commander Swampscott. "They love to quack."

When the inevitable complaints come in, company officials have to launch a "very sticky" process of determining who's to blame, said general manager Cindy Brown. "It gets into this whole litany of questions: What type of quack was it, was it an organized quack, did the conductor encourage it?" Brown said. Drivers caught evoking quacks in the zones get a stern warning.

To avoid that, some tour "conducktors" instruct passengers to do silent quacks by mimicking a duck's bill with their hands. Others tell their cargo of tourists to "moo" instead.

DONOVAN SLACK