Thursday, February 13, 2014

Unsung Heros of the New York Streets

I woke up today to a white-out outside my window.  So, the first thing I did was give thanks that I no longer need to shovel or drive in snow, and that I work from home.  I went downstairs to do my laundry and ran into Robert, our personable and dedicated building custodian.  While I put my laundry in the dryer, I watched through the window while he shoveled (again) the exit and the sidewalks in front of the building.  Not for the first time, I was thankful for him and for Hector our superintendent.

When we moved to New York, we quickly began to see a pattern. As far as I can tell New York runs quite a bit on the efforts of building supers and custodians.  The state of your street is directly linked to how dedicated (or not) these people are.   Every day, Hector and Robert clean up trash on the street, carefully bag recycling and trash into thick, non-breakable bags, shovel off the snow in winter and hose down the mess in summer.  One of the reasons we were so happy we ended up in an apartment in this building is because it is so carefully and diligently maintained.

Others are not so lucky.  A building on the corner of 104th and Broadway is a  mess.  The sidewalk is crumbling, trash is littered about, and it is never shoveled which leads to icy conditions.  I rate this a 1 on a scale from one to ten, our building being a 10.  We live just up from a school.  They get about a 5.  Most of the time they are pretty quick to shovel and salt the sidewalk, but they are very messy with their trash.  It frequently breaks open, trash spills out and we get rats in there from time to time.  And because they don't have the watchful eye of a building super, folks who walk dogs seem to feel free to not pick up after their pets along that stretch. (At least, that's what Robert, who gives me the d.l. on the neighborhood, tells me.)

Anyway, today I'm not only thankful for the police, paramedics, firefighters, plough drivers and other city personnel who are keeping New York running, but for my own close-to-home heroes who make my street more safe and pleasant.