What You See in Sunset Park: Holiday Carts

These three shopping carts have been chained to a street sign for almost a week. Could it be street art?

Or just a sad, deserted form of transportation for a couple of stuffed animals?

The teddy bear looks more forlorn than the snowman despite his more comfortable placement.

There's a nice shiny chain holding them onto the sign.

What's your guess? Deserted? Lost? Stolen? Waiting for a pick-up?

Kudos to Park Staff: Trash Bags are Full Early

I know I complain a lot. Well, I don't think it's so often, but since those posts are usually the only ones that get feedback, it seems like I am more Harpy and less Freya (to mix my mythologies). So, here's an attempt to balance that out. On Monday (after a violent storm the night before), I walked through the park around 8 AM and noticed that the back half of the park was exceptionally cleaned up. Almost every trashcan had neatly tied bags next to it, and there was little garbage on the grass/walkways.

The trucks can't come by too often, of course, so the bags sat for a bit, but they were organized and neat and well-filled. Maybe we've all been conditioned to get warm fuzzies when what is supposed to be the norm actually occurs, but I was quite pleased.

So, well done Sunset Park Staff! We do appreciate a job well done, even if we don't thank you personally often enough.

Super Trashy Park, Trashier Playground

I've often complained about park-goers garbage habits, and after seeing this morning's showing of corn cobs, stink bombs, plastic uzis, confetti poppers, silly string, rum bottles, whole wheat bread wrappers, and other general trash items in the playground this morning, who could blame me? (Sorry about the lack of photographic evidence; my camera has finally and completely died. I did manage to salvage one trash can photo.) Not to mention that the one, lonely Parks worker was provided with an old school metallic rake to clean up the mess. The one trash receptacle was piled high, and its sides showed ample evidence of the "Can't fit it into the trash bin, so I'll just throw it near the trash bin" attitude. Most of the trash was food related despite vending or eating being discouraged in the playground area.

My first response was something along the lines of "People can be so disgusting and irresponsible and lazy and rude and inconsiderate." While I still think all those things, I also have to give some responsibility to the Parks Department. My understanding is that there aren't any clean-up crews over the weekends, but there are (minimal) workers for the park in general.

Considering that Sunset Park is well-utilized every day of the week, but especially on the weekends, and considering that it houses one of the two public outdoor swimming pools in Brooklyn, the Parks Department needs to provide much more than the current inadequate maintenance and hygiene within the park.

What can we, as residents of Sunset Park, do?

One area that I am guilty of neglecting is being pro-active about refuse around the park. While I will pick up broken glass on the sidewalk, razors in the dirt, and large bottles of Dominican Ron, I haven't confronted litterbugs (except under my breath) unless it's been an egregious example in the playground. I don't usually close the gates to the playground when I enter or exit. I haven't called 311 to report the repulsive condition of the playground (and I wasn't alone in thinking so, really! In fact, it was a caregiver to one of my son's friends who started the conversation). And I know there are other things I could do - I just can't think of them right now. Feel free to chime in.

Now, I know, confronting other human beings about their behavior is such a troubling topic for many adults. You never know what you're going to get back. Since becoming a parent, I've become decidedly more careful about speaking up. When my mouth doesn't get ahead of me, that is. Any suggestions on successfully recruiting stewards of the park from any readers out there? (You don't have to admit if you gave or received the words of encouragement.)

It basically comes down to culture, not ethnicity or race or country of origin culture. The culture of not getting involved and not feeling ownership of the park. When parents don't take responsibility for their children's actions (whether it's silly string all over the slides or squirting complete strangers with a water gun), and when park goers don't respect other people's right to use the park safely and cleanly as well, we end up with destruction and trash and other unenviable results.

Basically, I want to feel comfortable using my park. Today's trashy-showing was probably the worst I've seen in many years. (Again, I'm not alone in this observation. Another neighbor said this before I did. Really!) I know that one of the factors is numbers; the playground already had at least 30 kids (plus another 30 adults in various poses) by 8:30 this morning. The park was also jumping with activity at that early hour. However, close quarters does not excuse dirty and dangerous behavior; it should encourage us to be even more careful about our waste.

I'm going to try and be more pro-active. Hopefully I won't feel like a complete dufus all alone. I mean, more so than I usually do.

Keep Our Block Clean

"Lets keep "our" block CLEAN throw "all" garbage in garbage can on corner"

Despite the bizarre punctuation (or lack thereof), I have to "heartily" agree with the sentiments on this sign on 4th Avenue and 44th Street.

Year of the Ox After-Party Pics

This is looking north on 8th Avenue from 59th Street.

What can I say? I have an almost two year old who naps during all the best events. We got to 8th Avenue at about 2:15 PM or so, and we missed all the wild and crazy antics. If you have great photos or anecdotes about the parade/demonstrations, send them to bestviewinbrooklyn@yahoo.com so I can post them and make it look like I had more to do with the party.

Sunset-Park.com is back from a too long hiatus, and he got some fantastic shots of the actual event. On flickr, mishmonger on flickr has a few really close and personal shots of people and this flickr set by Aonghais MacInnes has five fantastic photos. I especially love the first black and white one. All of these people have much better cameras than I, so I strongly recommend stopping by these links.

We walked down to 59th on 7th and then walked back to the Park on 8th. It was still incredibly active right through 50th Street. Tons of silly string, trash, cute kids in fun outfits, and there were a few post parade lion/dragon dances. Considering we were navigating the street with an infant and a toddler, it was probably just as well that we missed the main events.
We bought one of those popping sticks that release confetti later to become trash on the street. I still have residual guild about littering on the street. As with many things in life, the anticipation of the event was more exciting than the reality. I still backed away and shielded my eyes. I do that when anyone opens a sparkling beverage, too. We probably should have splurged for the $5 popping stick.

Even though there were many tweens and teens having fun with the silly string (let's hope it's CFCless), some of the young people were doing what young people do best: standing around and looking as bored and apathetic as they could. By the by, they were looking cool and apathetic in front of the house that recently sold for some insane amount.

This guy, hanging out of the window, was tying red envelopes to string and dangling it into the crowd. I think he is co-author of How to Make Friends and Influence People.

We did get to see one of the left-over dragon dances up close. It delighted the toddler, and there was quite a crowd gathered to check them out. They spent a bit of time in the pharmacy before coming back out to dance to the drums and cymbals.

The photo below shows one of the very solemn gentlemen who accompanied the two dragons. He stayed very quiet and still during all the dancing and cheering.

This next photo is of a very friendly balloon salesman. He had little balloon dogs on sticks for a dollar. I bought a blue one. It untwisted after about two minutes of toddler-handling; it looked more like a Chinese character after that. Still fun to wave around, however.
There was a lot of colorful, shiny, kind of pretty trash, but I hate to make it look attractive. Two photos below show the leftovers of the celebration. The first is silly string, confetti, a bomb bag, various plastic covers, and popper shells. The bottom photo is the remains of fireworks on 50th Street.

If you squint, it looks kind of like a beach with dried up seaweed. Kind of.

Post-It's My Park! Day Observation

Some people take the whole concept of "It's My Park!" differently than the original intention. According to the City Parks Foundation, the intent is "to help restore and preserve their community's local green space and recreation areas, all while having fun and building neighborhood connections." Some residents and visitors took it as a chance to claim the park as their own, personal playground and trash-heap.

Due to our son's very early waking hour lately, we were out in the park just before 7:30 AM this morning (Sunday). This is what we saw:




Thankfully, the trash was consistently food-wrapper oriented. There was no evidence of dirty diapers and used clothing/bedding this morning. However, the wrapper trash was quite carpet-like in its presence. What I truly don't understand (and I know this is an age-old question from those who feel a sense of responsibility to their neighborhoods) is why don't people just put their trash in the baskets? They were less than half-full up near the playground and around the "bench walk." Granted, at the back end (7th Ave) section of the park, several baskets were full...of household bags of trash. However, that back area was practically devoid of trash. Now, it could be that the Sunset Park Staff had already cleaned up the back, but they usually start on the front of the park. And they do a great job cleaning up after the selfish, lazy, immature people who can't hang onto their wrappers and tissues and plastic and bottles and bags and cobs and other disposable objects. Take a look at the same space (but from the opposite side) just an hour later.







Pretty solid work, I'd say.

The downside of doing good work is that it's positive reinforcement for people to continue being selfish. The argument I get from my high school students is: "He gets paid to clean it up." Listen, maintenance of a space is different from cleaning up after your lazy butt! Yes, the staff will pick it up, but they shouldn't have to pick-up after you. That should have ended around the age of four. Carry trash to the basket. It's not going to hurt. Really.

Detritus is the fancy word. Crap is the reality.

Today, my poetic inspiration comes from my morning walk down 5th Avenue along Green-Wood Cemetery. I guess the construction has brought out the litter-hooligans. The walkway has always been a slalom course of broken bottles and various leftovers from a passionate night. However, now there is a whole world of new trash to explore. Poo bags in clusters, pee bottles in pairs, lots of unidentifiable paper products and personal items. If I looked closely, I'm sure I could figure them out, but I'll leave that to someone with a stronger stomach.

So I chose this poem because it talks about trash. Country trash. We have different trash here. We might not get bears who tear up our garbage bags, but we have feral cats, the occasional raccoon, and yes, even the elusive homo sapiens sometimes opens up bags in an artistic attempt to share what we feel is worthy to be thrown away. From watching Law & Order, I've learned that once you toss garbage out - onto the street for pick-up - it's fair game. So, there you go. Since this is all about trash, just be warned...there is a naughty word in this excerpt!

So here is an excerpt from William Matthews' "The Bear at the Dump."

from "The Bear at the Dump"

Amidst the too much that we buy and throw

away and the far too much we wrap it in,

the bear found a few items of special

interest--a honeydew rind, a used tampon,

the bone from a leg of lamb. He'd rock back

lightly onto his rear paws and slash

open a plastic bag, and then his nose--

jammed almost with a surfeit of rank

and likely information, for he would pause--

and then his whole dowsing snout would

insinuate itself a little way

inside...

...The guardian of the dump was used

to this and not amused. "He'll drag that shit

every which damn way," he grumbled

who'd dozed and scraped a pit to keep that shit

where the town paid to contain it.

The others of us looked and looked. "City

folks like you don't get to see this often,"

one year-round resident accused me.

Some winter I'll bring him down to learn

to love a rat working a length of subway

track.