Garbage Gazette: This Is What We Call Clean?

If you want a job done correctly, you’ve got to do it yourself. Or, at the very least, you’ve got to get someone other than the Department of Sanitation.

The above two photos of a street basket on Sheepshead Bay Road and East 14th Street were taken a day apart – one yesterday, and one today. The pile o’ garbage in the before photo had sat there for about a week, getting worse by the day as pedestrians gave up trying to get garbage in the over-packed can, and settled for putting it near it. I had planned to run it today to show yet another filthy street corner in the making.

But when I passed by this morning, I found the basket had been emptied. Oh, happy day!

Or not, as the Department of Sanitation may have taken the contents of the can and the large bags laying around it, but they left the remaining trash and litter along the curb and flowing down into the sewer. And don’t expect the proprietor of nearby CVS or Alfa Vision to pick it up; the city’s litter enforcement teams abandoned the neighborhood long ago (and, really, we’re not so sure either of these businesses should be held responsible for the city’s failure to empty cans on local commercial strips frequently enough).

So, apparently, this scene above is what the city’s Department of Sanitation calls sanitary. We call it half-assed.

Is there a street corner or empty lot you know of that has a major garbage problem? Take a photo and send details to nberke [at] sheepsheadbites [dot] com.