Is NYC Dirty?

[JeffreyNYC]

This is a topic that in my opinion seems to be of little interest to New Yorkers and that is the dirty city streets of NY.
After having been away from NY. for 10 years in Europe and seeing just how the streets are kept clean there, I am appauled at the filth, grime and smells encountered on our country's number 1 city streets!
I realize the population of New York is far greater than any of the European cities but New York is also sectioned off into boroughs and neighborhoods thus making them small cities and easier to clean.
Chicago has the advantage of alleyways behind all it's city streets where garbage bags can be collected for pick up. New York must put all the garbage out on the sidewalks infront of the buildings. Can nothing be built to contain the mountains of garbage?
The litter is unbelievable. Garbage cans are often overflowing and street cleaning machines move at such a fast pace that they couldn't get close to the curb to sweep up the garbage if they wanted to. This is also not just a localized problem. You can find this in any borough and any neighborhood. Sure, some are better than others but it's an overall generalization.
I don't mean to sound negative about NY. This is a fantastic city but the embarassment of showing visitors around the city with newspapers blowing down the street and plastic bags caught in branches of trees, not to mention the garbage scattered on the subway tracks, is something that we New Yorkers should care a little bit more about!

[Jessica]

There is not much garbage scattered where I live. *And you hardly ever smell any odors outside related to garbage. *But...my town only has a population of 30,000, so this is to be expected.

I did notice smells in NYC and a lot of filth around, but I don't see anyway to get around this in such a large and populated city. *If everyone made the effort to be sure that garbage was properly disposed of, and placed into trash bins, it might help.

One of the big surprises to me when I was there, was the condition of the pavement. *Streets here are well taken care of, so the bumpy, rough rides there were quite shocking. *Is it just hard to work on them because of all the traffic?

[ddny]

Well...it is an undeniable fact that there is a certain percentage of New Yorkers who don't know where to place trash.

Also...you're right, there's very little room to hide trash in the city because of the lack of alleyways. I'm not sure what the solution is to this problem. But I'm pretty sure that if NYC had locations to place trash bags, the city would be ALOT cleaner. Got any suggestions?

Don't worry about making a complaints about NYC. I have numerous complaints about NYC, but I still love it. It's only when people voice their complaints can there be a possibility for change.

[Eugenius]

Generally, the trash gets placed on the street in the late evening the day before "trash day" for the particular neighbourhood. *It is usually removed very early the next morning. *The major problem is the bits of garbage left behind after the bags are removed. *Perhaps the city should focus in on that and create incentives for the garbage haulers to clean up after themselves.

[JeffreyNYC]

Unfortunately it seems that the trash collectors are *some of the people who care the least about the cleanliness of the city streets. If you watch them in action this is quite obvious. I don't feel they should need to be offered incentives to clean better. Perhaps they need to be suspended or fired. In today's current economy there are probably people who might do a better job.
Inspectors should be sent around to look at the cleanliness of the streets after the streetsweepers and garbage collectors have passed.
Also containers should be built in buildings or on sidewalks to keep the garbage in. I think you'd see a much cleaner city then!
I also know there are laws for littering but if the laws were reinforced Bloomberg might not have to raise mass transit fares.

[NYatKNIGHT]

This is by far my biggest pet peeve with NYC. It gets downright filthy and it doesn't have to be that bad. I lived in other U.S. cities, and while the population definitely has something to do with it, I think people simply litter more here. And if they don't litter more then they have grown accustomed to living with the filth.

Over the past few weeks we have had a few blustery rain storms. When this happens, you find the city littered with cheap umbrellas. It's unbelievable, almost humorous, how many umbrellas there are all over the streets - just feet away from the garbage cans. It starts to rain, people quickly buy a cheap umbrella, the wind turns it inside out, they throw it to the ground.

Just an observation, and I hope this doesn't come off as prejudice, but it seems certain ethnic groups seem to tolerate the garbage more than others. Maybe it's a cultural thing, or maybe it's because so many immigrants use NY as a temporary home and just don't care. Either way, some of these neighborhoods look like the third world countries they stemmed from.

At the same time, New Yorkers don't seem to notice the litter. I don't mean piles of garbage, I mean the little scraps of plastic and paper that inundate every nook and cranny. When I moved back after living away for a number of years, the amount of litter was the most noticeable thing I encountered, and more shocking was that everyone just seemed to accept it as part of New York life. *

Yes, we need better recepticles, more frequent trash pick-up and street cleaning, but New Yorkers definitely need to try to keep it cleaner. The laws are in place - enforce them!

[JeffreyNYC]

I couldn't agree with you more! New Yorkers really seem to accept the litter as a part of life in NYC.
I have no idea why. Most New Yorkers are not from here and barring the people from 3rd world countries, most of these people come from cleaner places. I don't know why certain neighborhoods look like the third world! It seems like there are simple solutions to this problem. It is not discussed at all! I wish people would get more involved in the cleaning up of the city. I've been known to pick up trash on the streets of my own free will. Just as easily as someone can throw an empty plastic water bottle on the street, it can just as easily be picked up!
If anyone knows of any ways to get involved in beautifying and cleaning up NYC. let me know.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Less garbage now? Recycling in the 1890s?
While we're on the topic of New York garbage, here's an interesting article in todays Times:

NEW YORK TIMES
November 22, 2002
Finding Surprises in the Garbage
By KIRK JOHNSON


The idea that America's output of garbage rises ever skyward — more trash, year by passing year — has become one of the great unchallenged assumptions about how the world works. The sun rises, the swallows return to Capistrano and our moldering mountain of refuse grows higher. The disposable society, like the tide, sweeps all before it.

Daniel C. Walsh believed it, too, until he began poking through the musty records in the New York City Archives about 15 years ago. Dr. Walsh, an adjunct professor at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, stumbled on a long-unread paper trail that he said might be unique among big American cities: 100 years of painstakingly kept records about what New Yorkers threw away.

The millions of entries — recording the weight of each cartload and truck, with periodic detailed examinations of what the carts contained — began in the late 1800's. And when those entries are laid end to end in a timeline, as Dr. Walsh has done in a paper published last week in Environmental Science and Technology, they shatter a lot of myths.

The much-lauded greatest generation of the 1920's and 1930's, for example, threw out far more garbage, Dr. Walsh found, than New Yorkers living today in the era of shrink wrap and single-serve. Pounds of trash per person peaked not in the prosperous 1990's, but in 1940.

Most people might expect that the trash of old was also more organic in content, with a higher proportion of materials derived from plants and animals — a kind of dustbin extension of Grandma's kitchen, full of corncobs, peach pits, butcher paper and other compostable artifacts of a domestic age.

Wrong again. Organic waste made up a higher proportion of New York City's garbage stream at the century's end, mainly from paper, than in any period before — four times higher than it was in 1905, and almost twice as high as it was on the eve of World War II.

Even the history of recycling, the record showed, was not quite what it seemed. By many measures, Dr. Walsh found, the golden age of recycling in New York was not the save-the-earth 1970's, but the gilded-age 1890's, when mandatory curbside separation of trash was imposed. Recycling faded before World War I and did not return until the 1990's.

Well, then how about product packaging? Surely it must be true that there's more of that now. Here Dr. Walsh, a geochemist by training who is also the chief of environmental monitoring in New York City for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, found that the conventional wisdom is only partly true, at best. The increase in packaging has been more than countered by the decrease in packaging weight. Trash per person in New York has barely budged in the last 20 years.

The great trend of the 20th century, Dr. Walsh concluded, has been toward less garbage — or at least lighter garbage — because the economics demanded it and technology made it possible.

"There are very significant forces out there that are working to minimize the mass of the waste stream," he said. "The forces are strong and they're incredibly effective."

There are a few huge factors that explain — or, some critics might say, skew — Dr. Walsh's conclusions. A major element in explaining why the garbage today is lighter, and has a higher organic component, comes down to how New Yorkers heat their homes. The use of coal, which produces ash once tossed into landfills, began declining in the 1920's in favor of oil and later natural gas. By the early 1960's, when pounds of trash per person reached their lowest point in the century, that fuel transition had largely been completed.

Dr. Walsh also conceded that lighter garbage did not necessarily mean fewer items. The city's records reflect weight per person, not volume. Still, the trend is clear that trash, over time, only gets lighter.

The average plastic gallon milk jug, for example, is a third lighter than it was in the 1970's. The oil crisis that struck in the middle of the decade pushed truckers and manufacturers to seek alternatives that were lighter and used less raw material. Remember how much an ordinary American beer bottle weighed during the administration of Gerald Ford? Go to a Chinese restaurant and order a Tsing Tao, brewed in China by bottlers who haven't faced the same pressures to lighten up.

Garbage experts and historians of sanitation (a bigger club than you might think) say that Dr. Walsh has nailed a process that has largely been overlooked: that the market — not politics or social policy — mostly determines what happens inside the nation's garbage cans. But some also say that less waste per person and less waste as a society are not the same.

"I think there was not so much a reduction as a shifting of waste," said Mark A. Izeman, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based conservation group. The change in fuels toward oil and electricity, for example, might mean less garbage that New Yorkers put on the curb, he said, but more waste and pollution at the power plants where energy was produced.

Lighter plastics have also meant greater reliance on chemically complex plastics that are harder to recycle. Technology, through the disposal of things like computers and batteries, Mr. Izeman said, has also made the waste stream far more toxic than it was in the past.

The heart of Dr. Walsh's research, however, is the century timeline — a kind of ticker tape of trash that flickers by, marked by the rise and fall of trends and forces that would seem to have little to do with what people threw away.

World War I and World War II loom as blips, when trash levels fell because of wartime scrap drives. Trash per person surged in the Roaring 20's and continued rising even during the Great Depression of the 1930's, partly perhaps because of construction debris from the huge public works projects undertaken in those years. Trash levels fell in the mid-1970's as the city's fortunes declined.

There are also images of a city long faded from view.

Through the 1930's, for example, New Yorkers lived — or at least ate — in a greater rhythm with the seasons than they do today. Because refrigeration and transportation were still limited, fresh fruits and vegetables, reflected in the record as food waste, peaked with the harvest in late summer and early fall. Food waste reached its low point in January and February, when fresh produce was for most people not to be had.

But the most profound conclusion that emerged from the records, Dr. Walsh said, was not the historical nuggets, but the underlying engine that produced them. The big economic drivers of the 20th century — improved transportation and refrigeration, the transformation of consumer convenience, the pressure on businesses to cut costs — all moved in one direction: toward less waste, not more. He stressed that those findings were a result of independent research at Columbia, not his environmental work for the state.

"Everything relates to two principal factors — one is reducing costs, making things lighter and easier to transport, and the other is making them more convenient to the consumer," Dr. Walsh said. "And that often means making them lighter, also. I see this pattern throughout the century."

Garbage economics does not always help, though. Sometimes it actually adds to the city's trash burden. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said this year, for example, that weak prices had made much of the city's recycling program untenable. The city suspended the recycling of glass and plastic in June, although Mr. Bloomberg said he hoped to restore the program in the next few years.

Sanitation experts say that Dr. Walsh's study proves Mr. Bloomberg right: markets do matter when it comes to trash. Another implication is that the market itself might bring recycling back into vogue.

"Recycling is going to become more cost effective relative to our other alternatives," said Benjamin Miller, a former City Sanitation Department official and author of "Fat of the Land: Garbage in New York, the Last Two Hundred Years" (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000). Mr. Miller said he thought that rising costs of landfill disposal in places like Pennsylvania, where much of the city's trash now goes, would eventually tilt the balance back to the point where recycling is the less expensive choice.

Dr. Walsh said he had also become more optimistic that the trend toward reduction would continue.

"Sometimes these forces happen fast, like the replacement of metal and glass with plastic and aluminum; sometimes they're slow, like the replacement of coal, which took 50 years," he said.

Paper, currently the biggest item in the waste stream, will ultimately be replaced, too, in coming decades, Dr. Walsh said, by more economic digital technologies.

"There's no question that it will happen," he said, "because the forces are consistent through the century, and they will be consistent throughout the next."

[Rich Battista]

Think of it this way, in Manhattan and other busy streets over 1.5 million people walk across it on any given day, not to mention, the maybe 500 or 600 thousand cars that do as well leaving skid marks, and blowing exhaust into the ground. I will tell you, more people and cars walk up and down any Manhattan Avenue than most other cities populations.

[Agglomeration]

Right on Rich. No wonder the street maintenance men have such a hard time cleaning up the sidewalks. They run the risk of getting struck by a car or bus, have to deal with abus from pedestrians who bump into them, and end up going back the next morning to more litter and more papers flying around. Those street sweepers and pothole figters and traffic cops should really be applauded (and given a pay raise) for the draconian work they do.

[Eugenius]

In midtown as well as the upper East and West sides there is this program "Ready Willing Able" where men who were previously homeless are paid to clean the streets and empty the trash cans. *This effectively kills two birds with one stone - deals with the homeless problem and helps keep the streets clean.

[JeffreyNYC]

I agree that Manhattan sidewalks are among the busiest in the world thus making clean up more difficult. One could say also that in Europe the sidewalkes are three times smaller than in NYC. thus making it more difficult for them to clean the streets due to the real lack of space and the people who crowd them. Anyone who has ever witnessed street cleaning abroad virsus NYC. can certainly see our faults here.
I don't buy the fact that the city is dirty because of the numbers of people on the sidewalks...while this can make it difficult to clean, other sidewalks in other boroughs virtually unused are scattered with litter as well. On a street I often walk down you can see the same garbage there for a 6 month period or more. They simply do not clean it enough. This is a street with very little foot traffic.
Also I might add, ironically that Fifth Avenue, one of the cities busiest streets by far is virtually litter free!!!
I guess this shows that when NYC. has to clean it can!
It's just a matter of priority!

[Des]

Oh to hell with this. If you want to see a dirty,smelly city outside of Asia come to London. It stinks.

There are very few Londoners living in London any more so maybe that has something to do with it. Most of us have abandoned our once beautiful capital city and those who are are left are leaving any time now. The description of Detroit on another forum *applies very much to London these days.

I wonder how many ex-Londoners are living in New York these days? Mostly those with loads of dosh. Bitter? Of course I f*ck
ing am!

[JeffreyNYC]

sorry but the streets of NYC. are far dirtier than Detroit's.

[Agglomeration]

Well that's because Detroit has too few pedestrians and too many browfields...LOL

[enzo]

Habit. Littering is habitual here.

Even the garbage men litter.

The corner trash cans are always full.

You almost HAVE to litter sometimes.

Our trash just swirls around us in the wind!

[Rich Battista]

* *Well sinse our trash cans are full, that tells us that we are not a littering people. The deal about Detriot is that the people are too busy making cars to litter. Especially sinse Detroit is more of an industrial city than a corporate one. They may have more problems breathing, and catching 3 headed fish in their waters. We just have a few extra plastic bags floating around, hell we are thinking of reopening our dirtiest river as a beach, what does that tell you.
* * I have the article about it somewhere in my house, if i find it i will paste it on the site. It was last year when they proposed to create beaches on the Manhattan shoreline because the levels of PCP and other toxins are almost non existant here. Most have flowed up towards Weschester and Albany. Anyway, they were thinking of making from 42nd street to 79th public beach on the west side.

* *

[JeffreyNYC]

Rivers may be cleaner but the streets certainly are not.

[Ptarmigan]

Yeah, New York can be dirty in some places. The streets are littered with trash. Where I am, its dirty in some places. How is the air in New York? Houston's air is really dirty and can be bad for you sometimes.

[krulltime]

Our beaches are trashed
Find rats, syringes


BY FRANK LOMRADI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Most city-run beaches are littered with a disgusting array of trash, including food wrappers, cigarette butts - and in one case, a dead rat, a new City Council review found.
Five of the seven public beaches operated by the city Parks Department had stomach-turning "amounts of floatable debris and packaging waste," according to the report being released today.

The investigators, who made two visits last month to each beach, found an abundance of "tires, condoms, syringes, wigs, dead rodents and used sanitary napkins," often within feet of playing children, the report says.

The worst of the lot was South Beach on Staten Island, which offered a menu of repulsive sights on the beach, along with a magnificent view of the Verrazano Bridge and Lower New York Bay.

"The water is gooey!" screamed a young woman as she ran out of the water, one investigator said.

Parks officials had no comment, but one noted that beach conditions can vary depending on the time of day and weather.

And a visit to South Beach on Friday by a Daily News reporter found it clean and with more fans than detractors.

"It seems clean enough to me," said Robert Anderson, 75, a Wagner College history professor who uses the beach three or four times a week. "Where else can you go to see this vista? It's very peaceful."

Lydia Galicia, 24, who lives in the South Beach section, was surprised at the Council's findings.

"It can't be!" she insisted. "I come here all the time, and South Beach is the most beautiful part of Staten Island I've been to. I met my fiancé here."

But Steven Gard, 15, also of South Beach, disagreed, saying: "It's not even real sand, and the beach is dirty. Every couple of days things float in. I would not go in the water at all."

Other dirty beaches included Coney Island Beach in Brooklyn, Orchard Beach in the Bronx, Midland Beach on Staten Island and sections of Rockaway Beach in Queens.

Manhattan Beach in southeastern Brooklyn was found to be "very well-maintained and clean." And the only litter found at the Wolfe's Pond Park beach on Staten Island was seaweed and kelp.

Dirtiest

South Beach, S.I.

Investigators saw:

-A young woman dash out of the water, screaming, “The water is gooey!”
-A child emerge from the water with cigarette butts and a potato chip bag stuck to him.
-A dead rat.
-Several large, white chunks of an unidentified substance floating in the water.
-Not 1 square foot that was free of litter.


Cleanest

Wolfe’s Pond Park, S.I.

Investigators say:

-Beach was quite clean, other than large amounts of seaweed and rocks.
-There were no large items of garbage on the sand or in the water.
-Only a few straws, food wrappers and a shoe. The beach was clean, although kelp was found all along the beach.


Source: City Council Oversight and Investigations Committee
Originally published on August 8, 2004


All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P.


HITTING OUR SPLASHY, TRASHY BEACHES


By Stefan C. Friedman
August 8, 2004

City beaches more closely resemble garbage dumps than waterfront retreats, a City Council investigation has found.

Condoms, tampon applicators and motor-oil containers were among the refuse discovered at five of the city's seven beaches, the investigators contend in their report entitled "Swimming in Trash?" Even a dead rat was found on South Beach in Staten Island.

"Most New Yorkers can't afford to go to the Hamptons or the Caribbean for sun, surf and sand," said Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens), who chairs the council's Investigations Division.

They found South Beach to be "by far the worst beach surveyed," adding that on their second visit, "there was not a foot radius where the surface of the water and sand had no trash or debris covering the surface."

Gioia did concede two of the seven beaches — Wolfe's Pond Park in Staten Island and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn — were "spotless."

Parks spokeswoman Megan Sheekey said, "The quality of our city's beaches far exceeds the scientific quality of this report."


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[krulltime]

GERM CITY


By SAM SMITH
August 8, 2004

Welcome to Germ City - better wash your hands on the way out.

Living on the surfaces of New York and the hands of its residents are a batch of nasties - from flesh-eating bacteria lurking on pay phones to diarrhea-inducing organisms crawling on MetroCard machines, a Post investigation has found.

Working under the direction of Dr. Phillip Tierno, director of the Department of Microbiology and Pathology at the NYU School of Medicine, Post journalists armed themselves with swabs and took to the streets last week to track down the invisible menaces.

Ironically, of the nearly 30 specimens collected, the greatest accumulation of E.coli - a fecal organism spread by people's failure to wash their hands - was found on the door handle at 125 Worth St., the headquarters of the City Department of Health.

"It was off the charts," Tierno said.

The culture showed a variety of germs, including E.coli and the highly pathogenic Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause antibiotic-resistant infections.

"You know what I'm thinking? Disgusting!" said Kathleen Bethel, 65, who was picking up her birth certificate at the DOH.

"These are the people who are supposed to take care of all these problems. Next time I need to pick up anything from here, I'm just going to call."

The only other sample that rivaled the Department of Heath for pure grubbiness was a MetroCard touch screen at Grand Central Station, which was covered in E.coli and also showed Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause diarrhea.

The Times Square payphone at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 47th Street should only be used in an emergency. Tests showed it was home to E.coli as well as the frightening Beta Streptococcus Group A, which can cause strep throat in some strains and flesh-eating infections in others.

The tests did not show which strains of the various bacteria were present. The tests also did not show the presence of viruses, but Tierno says E.coli is an indicator of much more dangerous elements like salmonella or hepatitis A.

"That's scary," said Coalter Pollock, 32, of Summit, N.J. "When you pick up the phone, you know, you do the two-finger thing."

E.coli was also found on the water fountain just inside Central Park on the west side of Heckscher Ballfields.

If you're into keeping fit - and healthy - be sure to shower after visiting the gym.

At the Crunch gym on Lafayette Street, germs were found running wild on the hand grips of exercise machines.

E.coli, Enterococci (another fecal germ) and the harmless Sarcinia was detected on the sit-up machine.

On the gym's ballet bar was Staphylococcus aureus and Group B Strep, a vaginal germ that can cause problems for pregnant mothers.

"I always take a shower when I'm done working out," said Lawton Tootle, 62, of Manhattan. "And I make sure not to lick the ballet bar!"

Getting a quick wad of cash also proved to be a dirty business.

At the Chase ATM in Madison Square Garden lurked un-laundered germs.

As expected, our rivals at The Daily News weren't totally clean either. Tests found the door to their offices contained a variety of germs, including the dreaded Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

It seems one of few germ-free zones was atop the Empire State Building, where swabs of the viewers only showed the presence of only harmless organisms.

"The constant wind probably keeps germs from staying on," said Tierno, the author of "The Secret Life of Germs."

Tierno also had an explanation why the seat of taxi 6A36 showed no germ growth at all.

"Someone may have just wiped it all off when they slid out of the seat," he said.

New Yorkers should be taking a leaf out of tycoon Donald Trump's book if they want to stay clean he tries to avoid shaking hands.

One of the biggest contributors to the spread of germs and people getting sick is a lack of hand washing, says Tierno.

"You should wash your hands for 15 to 20 seconds, getting under your nails, rinse and repeat," said Tierno.

Additional reporting by Lindsay Powers and Marianne Garvey


Nasties

Alcaligenes: usually harmless environmental germ

Bacillus: some strains can cause diarrhea

Beta Streptococcus Group A: some strains are flesh-eating organisms

E.coli: fecal organism, can cause respiratory, urinary-tract and bloodstream infections, is an indicator of salmonella and hepatitis A

Eikenella: usually harmless organism that lives in crevice of teeth, cause an infection of the heart lining and, in rare cases, death

Enterobacter: possible virulent fecal organism, can cause respiratory or urinary-tract infections

Enterococci: fecal organism, can cause infections

Group B Strep: vaginal bacteria, not present in all women, can cause meningitis in neonatal infants

Pseudomonas aeruginosa: can cause highly antibiotic-resistant infections

Sarcinia: usually harmless environmental germ

Serratia: fecal and environmental organism, can cause infections

Staphylococcus aureus: highly pathogenic organism, can cause diarrhea and skin infections


Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[krulltime]

Giff sandbags beaches
Calls surf dirty & irks mayor


http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/61-beach_filth.JPG
Diamond Lara, 3, picks up her flip-flop sandal,
which is inches away from discarded latex glove on beach
at Coney Island yesterday.

BY VERONIKA BELENKAYA
DAILY NEWS WRITER

MAYOR BLOOMBERG and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller kicked up some sand yesterday as they squabbled over the state of city beaches.

Miller said a Council investigation found beaches littered with syringes, tires, condoms, a wig and even a dead rat.

"Things like that have no business being on the beach," Miller (D-Manhattan) said during a news conference at Coney Island.

But Bloomberg blasted the Council study as grandstanding and unscientific.

"Going out just to get your names in the paper is fine," Bloomberg said. "Why you guys [the press] bother to publish it, I don't know. The fact of the matter is, attendance at the beaches this year - and the weather hasn't been great - is up a million people over what it was before."

Miller, who is eying a mayoral run against Bloomberg next year, said the Council study deemed Coney Island and South Beach on Staten Island the dirtiest of the city's seven beaches.

"Our city's beaches are a treasure for the millions of families who visit them every summer and they need to be protected," he said.

Parks Department spokeswoman Megan Sheekey fired back, "The intense use of our beaches is the best proof that the report has no basis in reality."

"You go and interview people on the beaches; they'll tell you the beaches are as good as they've been in memory," Bloomberg told reporters.

Visits to Coney Island and South Beach by the Daily News found them relatively clean and filled with beachgoers.

"The water is warm and clean," said Coney Island beachgoer Lucy Buzenskaya, 50, emerging from the waves. "They clean very often and I love it here!"

But Jasmine Filomeno, 19, was not as thrilled. "It's filthy here," said Filomeno, digging up three pieces of glass from under her towel. "There's mad glass in this sand. You can cut yourself!"

With Lisa L. Colangelo
Originally published on August 9, 2004


All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P.

[BrooklynRider]

I think part of it (at least in comparison to other cities) is the fact that the volume of people in this city, walking around, creates a need for street trash bins to be emptied, at the very least, daily and often twice daily. That just doesn't happen. Certainly some BID areas are doing this, but the city as a whole does not.

[STT757]

The Lower East Side, East Village are probably the filthiest parts of Manhattan.

Chinatown is the filthiest, smelliest neighborhood.

The cleanest, Battery Park City.

[Kris]

August 11, 2004

ABOUT NEW YORK

On City's Dirtiest Beach, Not So Much Filth

By DAN BARRY

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/08/11/nyregion/20040810_about.jpg
A South Beach sign kept people away from a pier Tuesday, but the sand was accessible and enjoyable.

HANGING over the city yesterday was a haze created by current weather patterns and continuing reports of imminent terrorist attack. Hazy, crazy, but hardly lazy; that is the summer of '04.

A perfect day, then, to forget these worries and head for the beach. Not just any beach, but the dirtiest beach in all of New York City, at least in the estimation of the City Council: South Beach, on Staten Island.

Beach towel, check. Suntan lotion, check. Hydrogen peroxide, check.

The Council certainly captured the public's interest, on a Sunday free of terror chatter, by issuing a report called "Swimming in Trash?" The cover photographs, including those of what looked like a dead rat and a syringe, seemed to suggest that the answer was an emphatic yes, unless the photos were actually of poorly conceived beach toys.

You pull into South Beach's parking lot, imagining how you will ease your terrorist-related concerns by strolling along the shoreline, collecting medical waste for a possible mobile. But two problems immediately arise:

1. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, as likely a target as any structure in New York, looms to your left, and buzzing above is a helicopter, which brings to mind recent intelligence that terrorists might hijack a few. Truth is, no matter where you are, you find reminders of the troubled days in which you live.

2. South Beach is fairly clean. No medical waste; no mobile.

The relative tidiness of the beach prompted a rereading of the City Council report, whose intellectual rigor summoned memories of grade school reports on Earth Day field trips.

On three days in July, between the hours of 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., investigators - interns, basically - walked the shorelines of the city's seven beaches, searching for what the report called "floatable debris and garbage wash-ups." They returned once more last week to collect some trophies to brandish at a news conference.

According to a chart in the report, investigators found plastic bottles and food wrappers at all seven beaches (100 percent); straws or stirrers at six beaches (86 percent); cigarette butts at five beaches (71 percent); syringes at two beaches (29 percent); and condoms at one beach (14 percent).

A note accompanying the chart added that a dead rodent was found at South Beach; a wig and a used sanitary napkin were found at Coney Island; and a potted plant container was found at Midland Beach, also on Staten Island.

Beyond the veneer of gravitas provided by percentage figures and the solemn accounting of a discovered wig, the report raised more questions than it answers. It does not indicate whether one straw was found on each of six beaches, or whether the beaches were overrun with juice-box straws. It also included the incredible finding that two city beaches had no cigarette butts adorning their sands.

By the way. A wig?

Eric N. Gioia, chairman of the Council's Committee on Oversight and Investigations, defended the report as a "snapshot." He agreed that New York has pretty clean beaches; medical waste no longer clogs the shoreline, as it did in 1988. But he emphasized that the city should increase trash pickups and seek greater involvement from private entities.

"After we released this report," he said, "every beach is cleaner this week than last week."

Perhaps. By late yesterday morning, the sands at South Beach - "by far the worst beach surveyed," according to investigators - had been sifted relatively clean by a machine called the Beach King, and maintenance workers were picking up trash. But Thomas Paolo, the Parks Department's commissioner for Staten Island, said these are part of the daily drill.

A parks employee for nearly a quarter-century, Mr. Paolo remembers the South Beach of the early 1990's: "A dump!" The beach was closed, he said, lifeguards were a memory, and vandals were blowing up cars beneath the boardwalk.

NOW, the lifeguard chairs are full, the bathrooms are maintained and construction workers are building a boardwalk restaurant. As for the rat and the syringe, he said that storm drains overflow in heavy rains, and occasionally the debris of eight million winds up in the ocean, which gradually returns it to Gotham's sands.

Sitting under a gazebo on the boardwalk, Mr. Paolo looked around and said that the South Beach of his childhood was back: a beach of lazy, hazy, crazy days.

A walk along the seashore found no syringes for collection. Bottle caps, cigarette butts and the occasional can studded the sand, but the shells and stones of the sea outnumbered them by the thousands. Flashing blue and silver, peach and azure, they all but begged to be picked up and examined.

For a little while, at least, they provided distraction from another hazy day.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Jeffreyny]

Interstingly enough after having initially posted this thread, I have seen no improvement of the amount of litter on New York City streets. Does anyone think the city is any cleaner or is it about the same?

[kmistic]

The Lower East Side, East Village are probably the filthiest parts of Manhattan.

Chinatown is the filthiest, smelliest neighborhood.

The cleanest, Battery Park City.

Chinatown is the nastiest place i have ever been. At some spots the smell of rotten fish was so bad i almost had to vomit.

[Ninjahedge]

That is the way of doing buisness down there, between the live, almost garage-like fishmarkets to the grocery stores piling all their refuse on the all-too-narrow sidewalks it is horrible.

I think the only thing that would solve something like that would be to limit the streets there to only commercial traffic only at certain hours of the day.

Let the store owners take over the entire sidewalk, if they want, so long as you still have a street to walk on.


As for the mess in the streets? That will never change. There are too many people in NYC, and too many with a poor attitude about cleanliness (I have seen SO many people just drop whatever they had in hand instead of walking TWO STEPS away to the trash can.).

Until the PEOPLE change, no amount of cleaning will KEEP NYC clean.

[wildan]

I notice that NOT ONE of the postings suggests that any of the posters think it is their role to take part in helping keep the city clean.

Pick up a piece of paper! The next time some mom tells her brat to toss the wrapper on the ground, ask her whether that's what she does at home.

[Ninjahedge]

Um, no.

You are going to go around picking up a sopping wet piece of paper that has been lying in the grey-colored water on the side of the road? How about cigarette buts? How about the gum a kid just spit out?

It is one thing to grab a newspaper and throw it in the trash, it is another to take someone's garbage from KFC and try to position it on top of a heaping trash can that someone used to dispose of their houshold garbage because they did not want to wait until trash day....

[OjoRojo]

In the last month we (our building) got two tickets (from NYC Sanitation) in the last month for something like "I observed a tissue, a paper cup, and broken glass 12 inches from curb". One ticket was on a saturday afternoon and the other on a wednesday afternoon.

This is not a busy block (compared to other blocks in Harlem) But all day people walk by or kids from the school (across the street) run by... at all hours and just drop tissue, cups, cans and bottles on the street. The other thing is where people go shopping on 125th street and park on our block (122 st), when they come back, before they drive off they open their car doors and leave their car garbage on the curb and drive off. You see this everyday. An empty parking spot with some trash (coffee cup or fast food containers) right on the curb.

We try to keep our block clean, and pick each other's garbage as we walk in and out of our homes everyday. But if we are at work (weekday) or out visiting family (weekends) and someone is just drove off and left their garbage on the curb... then 3 seconds later SANITATION drives by and gives us a $100 ticket. Not fair! Why don't they go after the people dropping garbage?

We can't be on the lookout every 15 minutes 24 hrs a day. It would make a little more sense if the garbage was there for 24 hrs... but it looks like the city created a new law to create more revenue for themselves.

Why don't they (NYPD or NYSD) enforce the no littering laws anymore? Go after the people littering? Do it for a few weeks straight... or days at random.

Why make the home owners pay for other people's sins?

What's next? Are they going to come after us for illegally parked cars in front of our property? If a crime is committed in front of our home (drug deal, theft,etc) will we be arrested and held responsible for that (and let the actual perps walk away)?

Everyday I see people littering like if teh world is their toilet. I see them on teh street, I see them on teh subway (throwing into teh track - or in the subway cars). Why do they do that? I think a whole generation has grown up with out the fear of littering laws.

And us older folks can do anything, we don't have guns and badges... it would be hard for us to confront violators.

You want cleaner streets? Start giving tickets for littering.

[Ninjahedge]

Get a camera and start taking pictures. Remember to get them leaving the trash and their license plate number.

You don't have to be the police in this, but it may help things.

Also, be careful when typing "the". I make the same mistake, but:

Everyday I see people littering like if teh world is their toilet. I see them on teh street, I see them on teh subway (throwing into teh track - or in the subway cars)...

I think this happens when I am trying to type fast and I am not paying attension to what I am writing.......

[JeffreyNYC]

In the last month we (our building) got two tickets (from NYC Sanitation) ...


I couldn't agree with you more! I've been known to say things to people when I see them litter. I'll probably be shot one of these days in our gun obsessed country. That being said, NYC's dirty streets is my pet peeve!
The amount of garbage on the streets is dispicable. Travel abroad, look at other cites of our size and you see that all this mess is avoidable!
We can send people into space but we can't clean our streets. Hmmm?
While I agree that giving tickets is a great way to stop the littering the Department of Sanitation does a terrible job of street sweeping and street cleaning. Have you seen them fly by on their street cleaners? They go so fast they'd be lucky to pick up a cigarette butt.

[robster]

NYC is super clean, cleaners all over sweeping the streets. I think Guiliani introduced this. Citys in Scotland have much more litter than in NY.

[robster]

Even the south bronx is clean. Buildings boarded up with quality wood and sorrounded by spotless pavements.

[czsz]

NYC is super clean, cleaners all over sweeping the streets.

Take a walk to 28th and Broadway around 7pm. Or have a gander at a puke puddle lapping against a Midtown kerb on a weekend night. Walk the streets on a steamy late August night after the garbage along the sidewalks has been baked by the sun all day.

I've no idea the general condition of Scotland's cleanliness, but other parts of the UK and Europe I've visited have been spotless by comparison. Actually, one only has to take the PATH to Hoboken or Jersey City (dull by comparison though they are) to see what a place which takes greater care over its cleanliness looks like.

[ablarc]

I remember it when it was really dirty. Whenever I visit these days I'm amazed at how immaculate it is. I can take pictures free of litter just about everywhere. Amazing!

[ryan]

Take a walk around Paris, the world's biggest tourist attraction, and then tell me you think NYC is clean.

[bkmonkey]

There are certain parts of NYC, that are dirty, and certain parts that are clean. For example, the garment district from 34th street south to Worth Square, and you will see one of the dirtiest parts of broadway, take a walk on the upper east side, or Downtown Brooklyn, or even Times Square.

[JeffreyNYC]

I don't think anyone disputes that many areas of the city are immaculate! Central Park being one, Midtown, Upper Eastside, Upper Westside, etc. but take a walk in virtually any area of Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Lower Eastside, etc..the less touristy areas, although equally expensive, if not more, are filthy, not to mention the subways.
The smells and garbage that litter the streets are literally beyond belief of ANY western civlized city!

Thumbs down to New York and it's sanitation department!

[stache]

Chelsea seems pretty clean to me -

[ryan]

You all have very different ideas of clean than I have. Lots of superlatives come to mind when I think of NYC. Sanitation is on the complaint list. Clean is a place I would walk barefoot, or would sit on the sidewalk. No cesspools along the curb, no fermenting garbage odors, no sandstorm of grit in the air... no rat sightings(!)

What do you all consider dirty?

[sfenn1117]

In the end it comes down to people. It's unreal to me how much people litter in NYC. I hate it and wish people would stop.....we need harsher penalties. If a cop sees someone littering, give them a ticket on the spot. It'll catch on pretty damn quick.

It's NY's biggest problem. Even my quiet side street in Bay Ridge is dirty. I used to clean up before I left for school, then I would have to do it again when I got home, and do it again before bed. I shouldn't have to.

[robster.]

You should praise your sanitation dept. When I was in NY in feb there were loads of cleaners walking about.

[Jeffreyny]

You all have very different ideas of clean than I have. Lots of superlatives come to mind when I think of NYC. Sanitation is on the complaint list. Clean is a place I would walk barefoot, or would sit on the sidewalk. No cesspools along the curb, no fermenting garbage odors, no sandstorm of grit in the air... no rat sightings(!)

What do you all consider dirty?


Dirty is just what you described. You described NYC...dirty.

[Jeffreyny]

Chelsea seems pretty clean to me -


When was the last time you walked around 7th and 23rd? I saw a cesspool with garbage in it today that looked like it had some nuclear waste in it as well.
If that's clean to you then you're oblivious to the filth of this city just like many New Yorkers are.

[stache]

Are you talking about that puddle on the corner? There's some kind of construction going on. If you want things to be perfect all the time try a gated community.

[Ninjahedge]

Take a walk to 28th and Broadway around 7pm.

You mean right by the quaint "outdoor mall" after they all close up? The people shopping there have not been known to be the most conscientious of litter-minders. That and the store owners are not too great about it either.

But saying 7pm is not fair. It is like saying go to giants stadium an hour after a concert and complain about the mess and the traffic...

Or have a gander at a puke puddle lapping against a Midtown kerb on a weekend night.

You think NYC has a monopoly on that? Try areas of Hoboken at about 3AM before the night-sweepers have had a go at Washington Street...

I agree it is not nice, but I do not see it everywhere...

Walk the streets on a steamy late August night after the garbage along the sidewalks has been baked by the sun all day.

Where is this? It is not in the village, it isn't in Tribecca. Maybe Chinatown, but I don't think they get much sun down there... ;)

I've no idea the general condition of Scotland's cleanliness, but other parts of the UK and Europe I've visited have been spotless by comparison. Actually, one only has to take the PATH to Hoboken or Jersey City (dull by comparison though they are) to see what a place which takes greater care over its cleanliness looks like.

Liek I said, Hoboken is not the greatest when it comes to cleanliness. I think it is just cleaner in general because less people come through here. Take a close look at some of the streets and do some mental math. It only takes one section of a newspaper to blow around a streetcorner to make it look like a sty.

How many people walk through that corner with newspapers every day? It only takes one to be an arse and mess it up until the cleaning crew gets in...


I do think that there are areas that are disgusting (chinatown near the fishmarkets, the OLD meatpacking district, and some other areas) but NYC is a lot cleaner than it used to be.

At this point I would not call it filthy, but I would not call it neat either. Just somewhere in between.... Tolerable in 90% by modern standards.

[Ninjahedge]

You all have very different ideas of clean than I have. Lots of superlatives come to mind when I think of NYC. Sanitation is on the complaint list. Clean is a place I would walk barefoot, or would sit on the sidewalk. No cesspools along the curb, no fermenting garbage odors, no sandstorm of grit in the air... no rat sightings(!)

What do you all consider dirty?

Dirty or filthy?

Filthy would not be justthe cesspools, although I do see some of those in some areas.

It would be broken sidewalks with grass and dog poo all over them. It would be broken glass all over the city parks. It would be basketball courts with rusted hoops and bags of trash. It would be dumpsters and garbage cans overflowing (you do get a bit of that).

It would be similar to what we had with the garbage strike about 5-6 years ago. In August.

[Ninjahedge]

Are you talking about that puddle on the corner? There's some kind of construction going on. If you want things to be perfect all the time try a gated community.

He just wants to walk barefoot down 9th avenue on his way to work.... ;)

[NYatKNIGHT]

Filthy is the more correct term, in my opinion, for a large portion od the city - and yes it certainly is in the Village and in Tribeca especially. My street in Soho is filthy - pools of greasy garbage juice, high mountains of open trash bags that get strewn across the sidewalk and kicked to the sides. Days can go by before anything is swept up. The general litter is constantly scattered about. It smells and it's gross to look at. The side of the street that allows parking for commercial vehicals only from 8am to 6pm rarely, if ever, gets swept - I've called 311 about it to no avail.

You must not notice it as much if you don't live with it, as the arbitrary "90% tolerable by modern standards" implies. We can place the blame on the sanitation department or the lack of trash cans, but to claim that it isn't so filthy dirty shows how high of a tolerance people around here have for litter and that they themselves are partially to blame. And we certainly shouldn't be satisfied that it's cleaner than it used to be, that's not saying much.

[Ninjahedge]

Nah, I have the same, as I have said, living in Hoboken.

Seeing someone vomit on your front steps in the middle of the afternoon (resident wino. And it was real wine too!!!!) is not what I would call immaculate.

But the thing is, it depends on a lot. The city is MUCH cleaner than it was 20-30 years ago. Cleaner compared to what? Compared to itself and similar HUGE urban areas of high density, mixed use and mixed demographic composition.


If you compare it to Colorado City or some other smaller place that was built with things like roads that can accomodate vehicles being taken into account in the original design, it is not a fair comparison.....

Do I think it can be improved? Yes. (Try blading through some of that crap). Do I think it is filty? Nope.

If you want to be really picky, you can go and measure square footage of "filthy" portions of the city compared to square footage of relatively clean and you will not get a very high number.....


I think the reason you have a problem near you is just as you said it. It is commercial parking/loading/whatever for most of the day. They can't send sweepers around.

That, combined with the budget for NYC and everyone screaming about taxes every election, there is not much more they CAN do. Maybe NYC should think of going the way of NJ and privatising garbage pickup and have people pay for it out of pocket. That would also not be popular, but at least it would relieve them the responsibility of having to deal with them as much....

[czsz]

Tokyo seems spotless, and it hardly has a lower density of pedestrians on the sidewalks. What is its strategy?

[ablarc]

^ Clean people.

[Jeffreyny]

Are you talking about that puddle on the corner? There's some kind of construction going on. If you want things to be perfect all the time try a gated community.



No, I wasn't talking about "that" puddle. There are many puddles like the one I described. Your comment on the gated community might appeal to many but not to me. I only wish to see a city like New York in an apparently civilized country like the US. try to resemble other international cities just as big or bigger when it comes to cleanliness. If you've ever spent anytime in Europe or Asias capitals you'll know that New York is by far the dirtiest!
If you accept this then that makes you a typical New Yorker. The problem is it could be alot better if anyone really cared.

[stache]

IMO Bangkok is dirtier but in a different way.

[NYatKNIGHT]

The city is MUCH cleaner than it was 20-30 years ago. Cleaner compared to what? Compared to itself and similar HUGE urban areas of high density, mixed use and mixed demographic composition
Again, so what if it's cleaner than it was in the past? It was abysmal before, it's only better than abysmal now. And, cleaner compared to other cities? No, it's certainly not. I'd take that bet.
If you want to be really picky, you can go and measure square footage of "filthy" portions of the city compared to square footage of relatively clean and you will not get a very high number.....
Clearly you made that up and I'd bet you're wrong. Then again, it depends on what you consider "relatively clean". From what I've seen, east coast metropolis residents have a very different standard of what that is compared to the rest of the country. Besides, I don't want "relatively" clean. I want clean, not sanitized, just pick up the damn garbage - it's everywhere.
They can't send sweepers around.It's not that they can't, they don't, although they claim that they do. Even if they can't then what's their solution? To NEVER clean that side of the street? That's not acceptable.

Every once in a while I'll see a guy with a broom pushing a garbage can around. He's supposed to be sweeping up the litter, but he passes most of it, only ceremonially picking up an occasional scrap to look busy.

The point is, he doesn't really care, nor does his supervisor, nor do enough residents. I lived away from the city for over ten years and got used to being more aware of litter. People in Denver will pick up random trash off the street and bring it to the nearest garbage can. Hell, I started doing that too. It has nothing to do with population. It's a different attitude or tolerance for litter than we have here, and it was the biggest REadjustment that I had to make moving back here - by far.

And yes, Hoboken is gross too. Litter everywhere. For those who don't see it, look closer. The little stuff counts too.

[Ninjahedge]

Well, it is difficult to get down to the schnibbles (especially cigarette butts).

But I am in a very nice area that is, except for the area near the la-la bar by the Christopher Path station, very neat. Namely, Hudson street above Houston. The whole area in there is very clean (for the most part)...

One area I will say is one of the worst that gets me pissed when i walk it is that section of Broadway with all the vendors/stores open. That has got to be one of the worst areas I have seen (outside of slop).

But again, as for the % of area and comparing it to other cities, it is not the size that matters, but the density. It has been a while since I was up in Boston, but how is it there? Also, how is Chicago?

The main problem is that there really is not a city that can be fairly compared to NYC in the terms of BOTH size and density with the added blessing/curse of having a bunch of americans and tourists from EVERYWHERE (including american tourists).


So, regardless of how messy you think it is, how can they realistically fix it?

[ryan]

the area near the la-la bar by the Christopher Path station

which bar?

[Ninjahedge]

The one right next to it with the rainbow awning.

There is usually a nice puddle due to poorly designed drainaga, and being a bar, they put garbage out that sometimes gets rifled through by drunks or the homless (sometimes both) and leaves nice streams of various goo on the sidewalk.

I am aware of this because I blade to the PATH station there from work, and you have to be careful what you run your wheels through... :P

[Jeffreyny]

Well, it is difficult to get down to the schnibbles (especially cigarette butts).

But I am in a very nice area that is, except for the area near the la-la bar by the Christopher Path station, very neat. Namely, Hudson street above Houston. The whole area in there is very clean (for the most part)...

One area I will say is one of the worst that gets me pissed when i walk it is that section of Broadway with all the vendors/stores open. That has got to be one of the worst areas I have seen (outside of slop).

But again, as for the % of area and comparing it to other cities, it is not the size that matters, but the density. It has been a while since I was up in Boston, but how is it there? Also, how is Chicago?

The main problem is that there really is not a city that can be fairly compared to NYC in the terms of BOTH size and density with the added blessing/curse of having a bunch of americans and tourists from EVERYWHERE (including american tourists).


So, regardless of how messy you think it is, how can they realistically fix it?



Chicago is spotless for the most part. You could eat off it's streets and alley ways.
Concerning your comments on size, density and tourists in NY., one would assume you've not traveled much out of the US. to make a statement like that.
New York's size, density and population have nothing to do with it's filthyness, it's the residents oblivion and tolerance of it.
No matter what the size and density, the filth in NY. would not be tollerated in ANY other western civilized city!

[Ninjahedge]

Chicago is spotless for the most part. You could eat off it's streets and alley ways.
Concerning your comments on size, density and tourists in NY., one would assume you've not traveled much out of the US. to make a statement like that.
New York's size, density and population have nothing to do with it's filthyness, it's the residents oblivion and tolerance of it.
No matter what the size and density, the filth in NY. would not be tollerated in ANY other western civilized city!


I will ask you again.

WHAT IS YOUR SOLUTION oh all-knowing one.


Get off your dang high horse, stop insulting everyone that disagrees with you and offer a solution instead of complaining about how everyone else in the town makes it horrible for you.


;)

:P

[ZippyTheChimp]

^ Clean people.
The lack of trash storage areas and the infrequency of pick-ups are problems that are more easily corrected than the major cause of dirty streets - the behavior of people.

People who wouldn't just toss a water bottle or coffee cup into the street think it's ok to just leave it on any flat surface.

When West St was being rebuilt, the sidewalks were lined with precast concrete utility vaults waiting to be buried. They quickly became garbage receptacles.

Last Sunday morning while driving on a deserted West End Ave in the W50s, I saw a cab sitting in the left-turn lane, the rear door was open, and a passenger (or family member) was dumping garbage onto the street.

My grandmother used to wash the sidewalk in front of her Brooklyn home every morning.

[Ninjahedge]

Zip, what do you think these people are thinking when they are doing this?

-It isn't my neighborhood.
-I pay taxes to have this done for me
-Street cleaners come by and pick this up anyway
-There is someone lower than me that will pick up MY trash.


I see combinations of this, and I have been sorely tempted to call people out on it. All I know is that will earn me their hatred and they will simply find another corner to dump on.......

[czsz]

I think there's a certain multiplier effect, in that, observing a street covered in trash, one assumes that adding to the mess is no big deal, and never has further qualms about depositing that empty bottle or besotted napkin wheresoever one pleases.

The city should at least replace the tiny wire garbage cans positioned at every corner. They contribute to this problem by making even properly disposed garbage visible (not to mention more smellable), by inadequately providing for the amount of refuse an average corner can accumulate, and by being often inconducive to those who prefer to make 3-point shots into the can, only to move on if their attempt is unsuccessful.

[NY_Yankees_1979]

sorry but the streets of NYC. are far dirtier than Detroit's. New York City is also 8-10 times bigger than Detroit.

[BrooklynRider]

I think the biggest problem is frequency of trash collection (i.e. public street trash receptacles, residential trash pickups, commercial pick ups).

It is compounded by issues I see as health hazards such as restaurats throwing away fetid, rotting meat without any standard, sanitary disposal method beyond a plastic bag on the street.

Poor street and sidewalk cleaning - the rate of cleaning (i.e. street sweepers) seems sufficient, but going at 35 miles an hour - they're just tossing the garbage around - not picking it up.

People who are filthy slobs. And, THAT is a socio-economic issue.

[ryan]

People who are filthy slobs. And, THAT is a socio-economic issue.

You mean like the slobery is a class thing? I don't know about that. I see a variety of people littering... not just the less affluent. If I were to call a group on littering, it seems like I usually see garbage thrown out of big expensive SUV's...

[stache]

Honest to God what always gets me is walking by a SRO or project and see someone casually tossing trash out of their window, plus people on the street tossing things when a container is a half a block away. WTF?

[Ninjahedge]

Ryan, there is more of a bent to litter the less appreciation you have for things.

And nowadays driving an SUV does not mean you are affluent...


*cough*bling lease*cough*

[BrooklynRider]

You mean like the slobery is a class thing? I don't know about that. I see a variety of people littering... not just the less affluent. If I were to call a group on littering, it seems like I usually see garbage thrown out of big expensive SUV's...

People who don't value things don't take care of things. It is not just about being poor. A person can be very wealthy and come from a place or country where littering is fine - as long as it isn't on their own property. I said "socio-economc" - you said "class".

I walk down my street and will pick up trash and throw it away. My neighborhood, I guess, could be considered affluent. Menus and Pennysaver newspapers will sit in my building foyer or on the stoop - unless I pick them up. I keep the yard clean and bushes trim in my yard. The other tenants in my building believe that it is "not their job" because they are just renting. They would probably be considered middle and upper-middle class - they are all white and one is asian. I just have different values and don't want to live in a litter / graffiti infested area. So, again, it is not "class" it is "value systems" - "socio-economic" sets the circumstances - not the class. There are some very classy poor folk I know and some wealthy filthy pigs.

[TLOZ Link5]

New York City is also 8-10 times bigger than Detroit.

Not to mention that bustling pedestrian traffic in Detroit is rare, given that so much of the city is so empty.

[czsz]

Yes, but look, this "New York is larger and denser than x cleaner city and is therefore naturally more dirty" argument is completely fallacious. Tokyo is larger than New York, and has quite a few pedestrian precincts with a higher degree of foot traffic, and is cleaner than even most small American cities. The same is true for numerous large cities in Europe, Asia, and South America, which are not lacking for busy sidewalks.

[TLOZ Link5]

Tokyo seems spotless, and it hardly has a lower density of pedestrians on the sidewalks. What is its strategy?


Possibly a layover of ancient Japanese culture. Cleanliness and neatness of appearance were practically sacred as they were part of a preparation for death, in the hopes of leaving the best corpse possible. In the feudal era, samurai would bathe before they went to battle. Anything less would reflect poorly on the individual, in life and in death.

We have to face facts that we non-Japanese devils are just dirty by comparison. :D

[NY_Yankees_1979]

Not to mention that bustling pedestrian traffic in Detroit is rare, given that so much of the city is so empty. yeah that is true, Detroit's total city probably equals the Bronx as an area and population.

[Ninjahedge]

Yes, but look, this "New York is larger and denser than x cleaner city and is therefore naturally more dirty" argument is completely fallacious. Tokyo is larger than New York, and has quite a few pedestrian precincts with a higher degree of foot traffic, and is cleaner than even most small American cities. The same is true for numerous large cities in Europe, Asia, and South America, which are not lacking for busy sidewalks.

Tokyo is a place where it is considered bad to eat, drink or do just about ANYTHING at the same time as walking, so....


Also, Tokyo and some areas sell womens dirty underwear in vending machines. (active public behavior repression has a tendency to come out in some weird ways)

I guess it all depends on your definition of "dirty"... ;)

Oh, BTW, you can also debate the european thing there. I hear you have to be careful where you step in Paris. Damn poodles.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Clean is overrated.

[JeffreyNYC]

I will ask you again.

WHAT IS YOUR SOLUTION oh all-knowing one.


Get off your dang high horse, stop insulting everyone that disagrees with you and offer a solution instead of complaining about how everyone else in the town makes it horrible for you.


;)

:P

I think I have stated what I think might be reasons why New York is so dirty.
Those same reasons can be revearsed to make it reasonably clean.
To reiterate just a few rather than making you go back and read the entire thread again:
1. Monitor the job the street cleaners do. You need to go slower than 40mph. to be successful at collecting garbage from the curb.
2. Have street sweepers sweep garbage from the side walk into the street cleaners path.
3. Empty garbage cans more often.
4. Ticket litterers. (This would pay for the cost of more efficient street cleaning and emptying of garbage cans.)
5. Propose a design for some sort of dumpster for collecting garbage on garbage collection days instead of pilling mounds of garbage bags on all NYC. sidewalks.
6. Educate people! The city could simply implement some sort of "Clean Streets NYC" campaign!

Bottom line is that it is NOT a priority in New York and it should be!
Have you seen street cleaners in action in Europe in cities like Paris or Milan?
Truly amazing. You'll see why their cities are far cleaner than New York.

[JeffreyNYC]

Oh, BTW, you can also debate the european thing there. I hear you have to be careful where you step in Paris. Damn poodles.[/QUOTE]



Very true! It's funny how the streets are clean but there's dog s**t all over the streets.
Certainly nothing is perfect!

[Troc]

I always wanted to live in NYC but it is a truly disgusting city. I have lived in 2 European cities and 3 American ones and visited NY numerous times and its filth bewilders me considering the money that is there. I have seen cleaner subways in 3rd world countries. The streets reek all the time - either of trash because it always seems to be trash day everywhere, or of nasty unclean sidewalks or hot restaurant stenches. It seems like everyone's apartment I've been to is infested with bugs, mice, rats, or all of the above. I can't believe the sidewalks and streets are such a slimy, bumpy mess with such an incredible tax base - can't they power wash and sweep them at night? Sadly, this horrendous filth is one of the reasons I haven't moved there. It just seems like such a dump in comparison to anywhere. I truly admire the Europeans for their civic pride - tiled, clean sidewalks; clean, attractive subways; immaculate streets, parks, and other places; regulated, attractive advertising (like storefront signs), even landscaping and flowers! There's no reason NY has to look like such a ghetto with all that money and a wealth of intellectual resources that could help solve this problem.

[Troc]

for the cleanliness of the sidewalk that their property fronts. If NYC can hire people to ticket cars, they can find people to ticket building owners. If the building owner can not get out and hose down a small bit of sidewalk each day, then they can hire someone to, or make their tenants who have storefronts there do it. In the burbs you can't just allow junk to pile up on the lawn or sidewalk because there are city ordinances. Just like when it snows, you are responsible for snow removal! There must be similar ordinances in NYC, but no enforcement.

[lofter1]

There must be similar ordinances in NYC, but no enforcement.
Ya hit the nail on the head ...

Budget for enforcement in many sectors (buildings, housing, sanitation, plus more) have been systematically cut over the years.

[Strattonport]

I often find myself in Flushing for various reasons (errands, going to to lunch, whatever) and it's probably the dirtiest community I've been to in Queens.

[MrSpice]

New York City very clean in those places where rich people live. If you walk down Park Avenue in 60s, 70s and 80s - it's spotless. I guess the sheer number of people and eating establishements makes keeping the sidewalks clean a difficult task. But it really depends on the neighborhood and the people that live there. All the neighborhoods where clean, educated and wealthy people live are pertty clean - Soho, Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Midtown East, etc. And many other neighborhoods are dirty because people living there don't really care about cleanliness and throw stuff on the sidewalks.

[czsz]

Yes, didn't you know it's oh so bourgeois to care about cleanliness and health standards and whatnot. All the cool kids in the East Village and Lower East Side and Williamsburg throw their shit on the sidewalk...on the way to the global warming protest. And don't you dare complain a bit about it to them...how could anyone who "cares about art" not appreciate the "poetic chaos" of the city?

And then there's what I call the "circle of spite;" i.e., people who take the subway rationalise their littering as a means to get revenge upon the MTA's lazy, inconsiderate workforce; the MTA's employees fail to adequately clean the stations out of lack of concern for the subway's rude, inconsiderate ridership. Add to this the fact that most of Manhattan is cleaned by poor workers from the outer boroughs who probably feel a pang of pride upon leaving crap to fester outside the Man's cathedrals, parks, and restaurants.

[Schadenfrau]

I'm clean, educated, and don't litter. Does this mean I can move to one of these spotless neighborhoods? Please tell me where I can find the application. I'm compiling my references as I type.

[ZippyTheChimp]

SoHo is dirty.

[stache]

Not a single trash can at Journal Sq. - Probably some bogus security issue -

[ryan]

Not a single trash can at Journal Sq. - Probably some bogus security issue -

Why don't you carry your trash to the next station - or outside to a garbage can?

[stache]

I refuse (bad pun) to carry trash off one train, hang on to it while waiting for the next train, then shephard it to my destination.

[ryan]

I refuse (bad pun) to carry trash off one train, hang on to it while waiting for the next train, then shephard it to my destination.

What kind of trash are you generating on a train that it's such a burden? I don't even remember the last time I had to throw something away on the subway.

[lofter1]

Sometimes I'll leave a section of the NY Times for another rider to read. Other than that I can't see any reason to leave your stuff behind you in a car.

[Jeffreyny]

Why don't you carry your trash to the next station - or outside to a garbage can?



Good idea. I just moved to Williamsburg and there is literally not a garbage can on all of Broadway.
I carry my trash all the way to midtown where I get off the train and deposit it in it's proper receptical.
Now if all New Yorkers would just carry their garbage for miles until they find a garbage can New York would be a very clean city...?!

[antinimby]

Sometimes I'll leave a section of the NY Times for another rider to read. Other than that I can't see any reason to leave your stuff behind you in a car.LOL, the least desirable section I'd bet. House & Garden or something like that. :)

[lofter1]

^ Nope ... usually Metro, Sports or Business.

[stache]

I tend to first sift through the paper and eliminate what I don't want to read.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I find one littering habit both annoying and perplexing:

Jersey-barriers have notches in the ends that allow them to be linked together. These pockets seem to be convenient receptacles for small refuse, like fast-food wrappers, cigarette packs, banana peels.

What's the mind-set here? As long as it doesn't hit the ground, it's not litter?

Yes, better to cram it into a spot where no one is going to clean it out, and let it fester for a few months.

[ryan]

Good idea. I just moved to Williamsburg and there is literally not a garbage can on all of Broadway.

Funny, when I walk around Williamsburg I see a garbage can in front of nearly every building.

[czsz]

At 96th St. recently, I saw a man throw an empty liquor bottle out of the train while it was stopped and onto the platform.

[TLOZ Link5]

People don't do these things in their own homes. Why on earth would they do them in public?

In any case, I've seen many parts of London, Naples and Athens that were pretty grungy.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Budget for enforcement in many sectors (buildings, housing, sanitation, plus more) have been systematically cut over the years.
You would think there would be enough potential fines out there to pay for itself.

[Ninjahedge]

New York City very clean in those places where rich people live. If you walk down Park Avenue in 60s, 70s and 80s - it's spotless. I guess the sheer number of people and eating establishements makes keeping the sidewalks clean a difficult task. But it really depends on the neighborhood and the people that live there. All the neighborhoods where clean, educated and wealthy people live are pertty clean - Soho, Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Midtown East, etc. And many other neighborhoods are dirty because people living there don't really care about cleanliness and throw stuff on the sidewalks.

It is everywhere near the city.

In Hoboken I confronted this one guy that simply dumped the trash from his car onto the street. It was only a plastic bag, but just teh way he stood there and did it really irked me.

I really felt like picking him up and throwing HIM in the trash.

Confronting him, the only reaction I got was "Mind your own buisness".

WTH? Him littering in the town I live in is not my buisness? The attitude was astounding.


So I did what any civic minded person would do. I reported to the police. Unfortunately, they would need my name and addy on a complaint. The last thing I would need would be him coming and chucking a rock through my window.

I understand that my name is needed in filing a complaint, but why are we so lax with enforcement, and why are so many people so careless about keeping things clean?

Why do they not care?

[Ninjahedge]

You would think there would be enough potential fines out there to pay for itself.

You would have to pull a Bloomberg with that and up the price of the tickets like he did with parking tickets.

Although I see the problem of double and triple parking in NYC has all but dissapeared... :rolleyes:

[ZippyTheChimp]

Early one Sunday...

West End Ave in the W60s. No traffic.

A cab was stopped in the center zone, but not in the left-turn lane. There were passengers in the cab, but I'm not sure if they were fares. The driver's door was open, and the driver leaned out and placed a bag of fast-food containers right oin the middle of the street.

Couldn't even pull over to the curb.

Utlimate littering

[Nocturnalsku]

Of course NYC is dirty, it's one of the dirtiest cities in the world. It's mpt right with so many people saying nothing can be done about it because there are so many people here and it is expected. I've been to similar sized cites or larger that are 100X cleaner than NYC like Tokyo, London, and Sao Paulo just to mention a few. I think more than anything else it's the character of the people who live in NYC that contributes to this. Many of NYC residents are poor immigrants and many have serious problems, the least of their concerns being the cleanliness of the city. People simply don't care about throwing garbage around or even seeing mounds of garbage on the streets.

[lofter1]

Two main problems in my area (SoHo) regarding garbage on the streets sidewalks:

1) Far too few garbage cans. By the end of each day the cans on the streets are brimming full, with garbage spilling over the top and onto the sidewalk into the gutters all around. People just pile it on as there is no place else to put it.

2) Street vendors -- who are everywhere on the sidewalks down here -- just fold up their tables at the end of the day and take off. They do nothing to clean the area around where they have been selling. Vendors should be required to sweep up garbage on the sidewalks and in the gutters at the end of the day within 10 feet of where they have been selling.

Property owners must clean the sidewalks in front of their buildings each morning. However this does nothing to take care of the garbage from the day before.

Therefore garbage and trash abounds from 6PM until 9AM each and everyday.

Disgusting.

This is easily remedied but no one does anything about it.

[Schadenfrau]

I'd blame the DOS before I started pointing fingers at supposedly careless immigrants. In places like Tokyo, garbage is picked up on something close to an hourly basis. In NYC, I've seen the same garbage sitting in a can or on the ground for a week.

[Coleridge]

I was walking along a residential sidewalk in the low 20's, and two big rats suddenly scurried out of a pile of garbage bags on the sidewalk, and ran in my direction. I thought they were chasing me, so I quickly ran.

fortunately they were chasing each other. but boy was I freaked out!

[ablarc]

Hourly garbage pickup in Tokyo?

[Schadenfrau]

That's what it looked like when I was there. The streets were filled with people sweeping and collecting garbage, which is something you almost never see in NYC.

[ablarc]

We could have that if we raised taxes.

[Strattonport]

Like that would ever happen...

[ablarc]

^ Suum quique.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Would something like this (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6699&highlight=pigs) ever happen in Tokyo?

[Strattonport]

^ Suum quique.

Oh, I agree with what's necessary to curtail a problem as big as this. I'm just iterating what the majority of people would say if they even heard the phrase "tax increase." A lot of people are like that - they complain about everything, but bring a solution they don't like and they shoot it down.

[ablarc]

^ That's what I meant too: to each his own.

[pianoman11686]

That's what it looked like when I was there. The streets were filled with people sweeping and collecting garbage, which is something you almost never see in NYC.


The Times Square Alliance has several people sweeping the streets in that area all day long. I always see them in their red outfits, picking up the trash, but they can never keep it clean. Just too many tourists, and the number of restaurants doesn't help either.

I've never been to Tokyo, but I can't imagine places like Shibuya being continuously spotless.

[Schadenfrau]

From what I saw, Shibuya was actually very clean. Roppongi seemed to be the most garbage-filled neighborhood, but it still had nothing on most neighborhoods here.

Garbage clean-up in the outer boroughs is shameful here. Cans will fill up days before they're emptied.

[krulltime]

Interesting observations there. Ok I have a question. Which neighborhoods in NYC do you guys think are the cleanest and which are the dirties?

[krulltime]

Interesting observations there. Ok I have a question. Which neighborhoods in NYC do you guys think are the cleanest and which are the dirties?


For me, from the neighborhoods I have seen so far... these ones come to mind...

Cleanest:

Midtown
Upper East Side
Battery Park City
Upper West Side

Dirties:

China Town
Hunters Point
Times Square
Lower East Side

[krulltime]

DUMP SLUMP
VACANT LOTS DISAPPEARING


By RICH CALDER

August 14, 2006 -- The city's residential building boom is so unprecedented that it's helped shine up the Big Apple.

City trash inspectors last year issued 167 illegal dumping summonses - a 17 percent drop from the 202 handed out in 2004 and a 44 percent decline over the 301 issued in 2003, a Post investigation found.

Robert D'Angelo, who heads the Sanitation Department's illegal-dumping task force, said the rise in housing construction was leading to a massive decline in vacant lots - easy targets for illegal dumpers.

"We've definitely seen many vacant lots in places where we'd catch people dumping become new housing or get boarded up because a developer is planning to build there," he said.

The city last year issued building permits for 31,599 new residential units, up 49 percent from 2003 and 515 percent from 1995, census data shows.

Despite seeing the improvement, Brooklyn still gets trashed like no other borough.

An analysis of Sanitation databases found that 80 - or 47.6 percent - of the 167 individuals or businesses issued illegal dumping summonses last year were nabbed in Brooklyn.

Queens was second, with 47 incidents, and The Bronx third, with 28.

Brooklyn's East Flatbush led all neighborhoods with 23 cases, including 19 that occurred along a two-block stretch of junkyards and garbage-strewn lots near Ralph Avenue.

In comparison, there were just 11 cases in Staten Island and one in Manhattan.


Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[nochealerts]

Wow, this is an old topic...but I'll bite!

It's not so much the dirt, garbage and litter that I notice. It's filthy with ads more than litter, I think. It's the nasty STENCH that gets to me. In the subways, the streets, etc. Maybe it's me, I've recently moved back to the city after being in the country for 2 years. But the odor has been particularly strong for me lately. In the dirty wet moldy socks kinda way. :eek:

[Jeffreyny]

Wow, this is an old topic...but I'll bite!

It's not so much the dirt, garbage and litter that I notice. It's filthy with ads more than litter, I think. It's the nasty STENCH that gets to me. In the subways, the streets, etc. Maybe it's me, I've recently moved back to the city after being in the country for 2 years. But the odor has been particularly strong for me lately. In the dirty wet moldy socks kinda way. :eek:

The stench of New York streets is famous....in a bad way.
I've never clearly understood just why the streets smell so bad compared to other cities with the same density levels.
There is a massive issue here though of where to put the trash which without doubt creates "some" of the odor. New York is the only city in the world I've seen where mounds of trash bags litter the curbs on trash pick up days.
I don't think I'll ever get used to the filth of the city!

[Schadenfrau]

Which other cities are you talking about, JeffreyNY? A Tokyo rose by any other name smells just about as sweet.

[czsz]

Having lived in New York four years it now seems that once-fresh Boston smells to me, and New York doesn't. Can one's nose be trained that way?

[undertoes]

Um, has anyone been to Jamaica down by Parsons? That crap is dirty as hell, In the morning alot of the trash cans are flipped over and the garbage is all over the streets, Absolutely filthy

[Archit_K]

Having lived in New York four years it now seems that once-fresh Boston smells to me, and New York doesn't. Can one's nose be trained that way?

New York stinks literally. I remember passing through all sorts of odors most of them were indescribable and yet I observe ppl not complaining or doing anything. So I guess one's nose can be trained that way.

[Laura KC]

Having lived in New York four years it now seems that once-fresh Boston smells to me, and New York doesn't. Can one's nose be trained that way?

I think the intensity of a city's smell just depends on whether or not it's garbage day :)

[Ninjahedge]

It was bad gong through Midtown today (near that "We eat like pigs BBQ YEEEHAH!" place).

There was the smell of aged organic refuse for a good 2-3 blocks. Really bad (I had to keep myself from wincing while walking).

NY is BAD.

And odd that you should mention Tokyo. Tokyo is IMMACULATE! People don't even toss their cigarette butts!

New York, in many of its areas, is horrible. There has to be a better way to collect and remove rubbish from the city than what we have now.

Want to see the worst? Go to Chinatown. Hang out near the Fish Markets. Look at the stacks of crates and refuse on the curb of the narrow street with people parked all up and down it with slime on the sidewalk, curb and flowing into the milky oil-topped off white streams and puddles that line the roadway.

August near the corner by the entrance to the S (fish market) has to be one of the stinkiest places you can be in the city.

[Jeffreyny]

Which other cities are you talking about, JeffreyNY? A Tokyo rose by any other name smells just about as sweet.

Tokyo..? I've spent a good deal of time there and find the city spotless and certainly not smelly.

[Jeffreyny]

It was bad gong through Midtown today (near that "We eat like pigs BBQ YEEEHAH!" place).

There was the smell of aged organic refuse for a good 2-3 blocks. Really bad (I had to keep myself from wincing while walking).

NY is BAD.

And odd that you should mention Tokyo. Tokyo is IMMACULATE! People don't even toss their cigarette butts!

New York, in many of its areas, is horrible. There has to be a better way to collect and remove rubbish from the city than what we have now.

Want to see the worst? Go to Chinatown. Hang out near the Fish Markets. Look at the stacks of crates and refuse on the curb of the narrow street with people parked all up and down it with slime on the sidewalk, curb and flowing into the milky oil-topped off white streams and puddles that line the roadway.

August near the corner by the entrance to the S (fish market) has to be one of the stinkiest places you can be in the city.

Your description is brilliant. While Chinatown is undoubtedly one of the worst smelling areas of the city you need not venture down there to experience much of the filth and stench you describe. I was walking around 12th and 1st last night and I can assure you that the slime, litter and smells were worse than any other western city I've encountered. In a civilized society in the world's wealthiest country that kind of filth is inexcusable.

[Schadenfrau]

Maybe I walked in different areas of Tokyo than you're mentioning, but the city was certainly not scentless. And Ninja, I know we've gone over this before, but Tokyo has public ashtrays. New York does not.

I saw plenty of people piling up garbage on the streets in Tokyo- made far worse by the lack of public garbage cans. I certainly wouldn't say that it's a "dirtier" city than New York, but it's not the mystic utopia so frequently described on these boards, either.

[alonzo-ny]

Cant say ive ever noticed a bad smell, not a constant underlying stench anyway, and i come from a reasonably clean aired place. Of course everywhere smells if you standing next to a pile of garbage and its 100 degrees.

[Ninjahedge]

Maybe I walked in different areas of Tokyo than you're mentioning, but the city was certainly not scentless. And Ninja, I know we've gone over this before, but Tokyo has public ashtrays. New York does not.

Your point being? I have seen people in Tokyo extinguishing and POCKETING their butts, while in NYC I see someone flik their but while standing next to an ashtray.

I saw plenty of people piling up garbage on the streets in Tokyo- made far worse by the lack of public garbage cans. I certainly wouldn't say that it's a "dirtier" city than New York, but it's not the mystic utopia so frequently described on these boards, either.

You want me to show you pictures?

You want to see the workers whose job it is to scrub the drainage channels in the subway?

Come on Schade. If yuo look hard enough I am sure you can find rubbish, but you do not have to look in NYC.

It is not as bad as some other areas, but with the qualifier of being one of the biggest and most successful cities in the world, it has a hell of a lot of refuse and people that just do not give enough of a damn to walk that extra 5 feet to throw it away.

[Schadenfrau]

My point is that I'm tired of seeing people blather on about some idealized stereotype of Tokyo whenever this subject comes up.

[lofter1]

Not sure of the figures for NYC < > Tokyo but it looks like, per capita nationwide, the USA generates nearly 2 X the garbage as does Japan ...
Typical USA resident (http://www.eng.utah.edu/~ch5153/Lecture_Notes/MSW.htm) creates 2 kg solid waste per day
4.6 lbs / day (1999) up from 2.7 lbs / day in 1960 ...

Japan’s 130 million people (http://www.columban.org/magazine/05-05_mccartin.html) produce about 52 million tons of garbage each year, which
equates to a very high per capita rate of nearly 2.5 pounds of garbage per person each day.

[Ninjahedge]

No problem Schade.

I do not consider it a Utopia, by any means. The architecture is crowded and haphazard, everything feels so smushed together. There is this cleanliness which is unquestionable, but it may come from the fact that if they did not have it they would not be able to function properly (not enough space for clutter!!! At least, in public...).

Sometimes though, in our comparisons, we take the best example of a particular trait and use that as what we wish our own neighborhood to follow.

I enjoyed our vacation to Japan, but I was not struck with any sense of wanting to live there. Between the expense, crowded communities, attachment to techno-bling (you should see the cell-phone cadre over there! They spend more on it than almost anything else!) it is just not what I would consider to be a match for me. NYC and its surrounding areas are much more suited to me.

But that still does not mean I would not want to have more attension paid to keeping the streets clean.

A great example? Look at the hotels in the area, ESPECIALLY the hotels and living quarters around the park. I was walking down there last night. Although nearly deserted, there was not a SPECK of anything to be found on the ground.

I think if we were to change peoples attitudes towards things like litter, cigarette butts, gum and generally keeping things clean it will go a long way. The second thing is to change our means and methods of garbage handling and collection. Third? Finding ways to get people the products and services they need with less waste generated in the process (packaging, etc).

Improvement on any of them will make a difference, but all three together will be night and day.

[Eugenious]

I think it's the type of waste that's encountered in NYC vs. Japan that matters. You will be hard pressed to find urine and feces in Japanese subways while in NY it's a pretty common due to the thousands of homeless living in the subways and the systems 24hr nature.

[Jeffreyny]

My point is that I'm tired of seeing people blather on about some idealized stereotype of Tokyo whenever this subject comes up.

You're the one who brought of Tokyo in the first place.

I can give examples of many other cities with comparable density that are much cleaner than New York....infact come to think of it every city I've ever been to is cleaner than New York!

[Meerkat]

The stench of New York streets is famous....in a bad way.
I've never clearly understood just why the streets smell so bad compared to other cities with the same density levels.
There is a massive issue here though of where to put the trash which without doubt creates "some" of the odor. New York is the only city in the world I've seen where mounds of trash bags litter the curbs on trash pick up days.
I don't think I'll ever get used to the filth of the city!

I can't say that i found NY any more dirty than any other large city. Litter is piled up on rubbish collection day everywhere i've been, in any country. If you want to see dirt go to Bombay - it's the most filthy city i've been to, and it really stinks.

By the way, Eugenious, are there really thousands of people living in the subway system?

[Ninjahedge]

It is an exaggeration. And the Japanese have their homeless too, but they usually take over parks with little blue-tarped tents and th elike. Oddly enough, even their homeless are neater about where they live than we are!! ;)


BTW, Japan (Tokyo and even Kyoto) has cleaner subways because the people actually give a crap. They do not chuck stuff on the tracks, piss on them when they are coming home from a bar, and the people that work in them also care. They get on their hands and knees to scrub the drain troughs regularly. It is really something.

It is a two front issue. First being the people NOT LITTERING. Second is the people working there feeling some responsibility for their job and not trying to get away with as litle as possible.

Attitude.


But, that is just cleanliness. Merit in one characteristic does not mean they do not lack in others.

Despite the cleanliness, I do not think I could ever live in Tokyo... The place gave me the feeling of "fasion week" meets Wall Street meets 5th Avenue. VERY concious of appearance, style, and various forms of Bling.

A strong sense of materialism, but in a slightly different bent than our own. It kind of jangled me a bit.

To each their own!

[undertoes]

The Canal St train station, where you take the Q/R use to stink like hell, It probably still does

[Jeffreyny]

I can't say that i found NY any more dirty than any other large city. Litter is piled up on rubbish collection day everywhere i've been, in any country. If you want to see dirt go to Bombay - it's the most filthy city i've been to, and it really stinks.

By the way, Eugenious, are there really thousands of people living in the subway system?


I've never been to a city in Europe that has mountains of garbage piled up on rubbish day nor the amount of litter as on the New York streets. I lived in Milan for 10 years and garbage is collected from inner courtyards, street sweepers sweep the litter from the sidewalk into the on coming street cleaner and overall litter removal and street sweeping is more efficient. The difference with New York is night and day. Quite honestly I believe the difference is that people who do that kind of work elsewhere as opposed to the people that do it here actually give a damn.

As for Bombay, well I've been there...it is filthy but I took for granted that the comparisons made between New York and other cities did not include those of the third world.

If we can only compare Bombay as being dirtier than New York we are in serious trouble although I must say that we're not far off.

[alonzo-ny]

If we can only compare Bombay as being dirtier than New York we are in serious trouble although I must say that we're not far off.

Another exaggeration

[Schadenfrau]

Seriously, how disgusting is your neighborhood, JeffreyNY? The longer you go on, the less I have any idea where you could even be complaining about.

[Jeffreyny]

Seriously, how disgusting is your neighborhood, JeffreyNY? The longer you go on, the less I have any idea where you could even be complaining about.


I'm not talking about midtown but I am talking about the East and West Village, Chelsea sections of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. Have you walked down Steinway Street lately?

I won't even get into the filth of the subway system and stench.

If you've travelled you simply cannot dispute that New York is one of the dirtiest cities on the planet. While Beijing has horrendous air pollution it's streets are undisputedly cleaner...even in the hutoungs!

The below is an article which discusses the reputation, solutions and some polls of New York filth.
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/issueoftheweek/20040813/200/1086

Trying to Clean Up New York
by Gail Robinson
August 16, 2004


Albert Ridley, a worker in the Doe Fund's Ready, Willing and Able street cleaning program, at 2nd Avenue and 86th Street.



Five days a week, Albert Ridley and Jesus Negron appear on the Upper East Side at 7 a.m. to sweep streets, empty litter baskets and scrape illegal leaflets off lampposts. It isn't easy: The two men must cope with illegally parked cars that block their brooms, bags of dog poop that have not been sealed, and news vendors who dump piles of heavy newspapers into litter baskets instead of bundling them. But, they say, their work is appreciated. "People stop you and thank you for keeping the area clean," Ridley says.

Ridley and Negron, who both served time in jail, participate in the Doe Fund's Ready, Willing and Able for