New York's Gotten Wasted! 
(A few personal observations from my time on the streets)

No such thing as a “typical street” in New York City exists. For some areas like Queens, Brighton Beach, or Brooklyn, streets are littered with cigarette butts, coke cans, gum, and various other trash. Other more attractive streets can be found in Midtown and the Upper East and West Sides. The filthy condition of some New York streets has been an assumption of outsiders for decades. But after those outsiders have visited, moved in, and passed the honeymoon phase, the environment is much less than comfortable and at moments unbearable.

            According to the New York Department of Sanitation, according to Fiscal 2011, 94.5% of all New York streets were deemed “acceptably clean.” After hours on the sanitation website and rummaging through useless and mostly outdated documents (such as the Mayor’s current street cleaning proposal dated 2006), I found that the percentage is measured by pictures sent in from 6,000 “sample blocks.” Of these clean blocks, some marginal number from 50%-69.9% were actually rated dirty according to the “seven-point picture-based” criterion of the cleaning scale.

            However, some initiatives exist around NYC that assist with this growing predicament. One of the most well developed programs is the 34^th Street Partnership. This partnership is entirely privately funded and helps maintain security and sanitation over a 31-block area from 10^th to Park Avenue and 31^st through 36^th Street. On almost all of the streets, one person with a large rolling trashcan and cleaning equipment passes by picking up debris and changing trashcan bags. The small park in Herald Square has tables and chairs with the sponsored organization’s logo on it. Not only are the furnishings cute and stylish, but also as clean as the streets surrounding them.

            Walking around this sector, I saw a middle aged man with a bleach white sweat suit uniform and large blue rolling trashcan passed me on the corner of 33^rd and 7^th. When I asked, the man beamed and said his name was Barry. I inquired if he enjoyed his job, and he said he loved it because his supervisors cared about him and the team was a real family. Barry went on to say that “even if it’s just minimum wage, it’s a job. With forty hours a week and only four days a week, I can’t be more grateful doing something I feel helps keep my community clean.”

            In our conversation, Barry shared why he loved his job, but with an 8.7 unemployment rate which is the highest in New York State, associations like the 34^th Street Partnership can provide more for New York City than job satisfaction. If the city is willing to trash its lanes, then it’s the city’s onus to clean it up.