A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/when-new-yorkers-lived-knee-deep-in-trash/

by danso • 13 years ago

94 30 13 years ago

danso2• 13 years ago

I don't know why I feel inclined to preemptively defend this submission from the "How does this relate to hackerism?" comments...but if you've ever had to maintain an ongoing software service, I think you'll find plenty of insights in an article about the hidden costs and infrastructure of garbage management (and the politics/schemeing it takes to build it) :)

davidw• 13 years ago

This to me looks like an in-depth look at something most of us don't consider from day to day, making it more of the 'intellectually stimulating' sort of article rather than "OMG, the TSA did something outrageous!!!".

gee_totes2• 13 years ago

I also found another relation to "hacker""ism" in the story of how George Warring put his sanitation workers in white (to associate them with hygiene) and helmets (to give them authority). Think of it as User Experience design for the city dwellers in the late 19th century.

peterwwillis2• 13 years ago

For those who haven't traveled to the big apple recently: the trash is still piled waist or chest-high on the street, albeit in trash bags. Every time I go back it seems to be trash day, but maybe that's a coincidence. Either way, DC smells like cherry blossoms and NYC smells like hot garbage.

rayiner• 13 years ago

NYC's street grid was made with no space for alleys. As a result, the vast majority of the city has no place to put their trash out for pickup except on the sidewalk. The commercial areas are a bit better because the high-rises have trash storage and direct pickup.

Trash pickup days are two-three times per week, but are staggered by address (blocks or something bigger). So there is always some garbage somewhere except the weekends.

As an aside, DC smells like armpits and cherry blossoms.

peterwwillis2• 13 years ago

If the street is the semi-permanent resting place for trash between pickups, they should build some kind of storage container... some kind of a large box that trash goes into with a lid that contains it until it's picked up. It could help contain the garbage so it doesn't leak all over the street and smell up the place, and keep it more compact. But i'm probably over-engineering again!

weinzierl• 13 years ago

This is a good explanation. At the Upper East Side you have this beautiful buildings with carpets on the sidewalk and a porter and right next to him a pile of black trash bags. A very contrasting picture.

danso2• 13 years ago

To be fair, trash removal happens at a surprisingly efficient and varied pace. For example, I typically try to fill the trash cans outside of my apartment but when they're full, I'll just drop a bag - or a stack of cardboard boxes, or a grocery bag full of trash if I've run out of normal bags - and can expect that it'll be picked up all just the same.

Here's a photo I took while I worked in the Financial District (http://www.flickr.com/photos/32451477@N02/8025537821/)...not sure why trash seemed to really pile up there...

gee_totes2• 13 years ago

Trash? With those clear bags and all that cardboard, looks like recycling to me.

saalweachter• 13 years ago

For one thing, every day is trash day. Each street might only be weekly, but chances are at least one street you're walking down will be collected each day.

For another, there are a lot of people in NYC. Manhattan's population density is somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000 per square mile -- over 7 times as dense as DC, and 10 times as dense as Baltimore. More people, more trash. Barring some massive trash-centric infrastructure (I personally favor the Disney-style tunnel system), the trash bags are going to rise proportional to the buildings around them.

RHSeeger• 13 years ago

Walk the streets in New Orleans in the morning sometime. New York will seem like a cleanroom.

columbo• 13 years ago

Off Topic: Having just browsed over this website I have to say it has a great layout for depth-heavy articles. Better than any news site that I can think of. Great images, uncluttered, and a wide variety of topics. Very nice!

cfesta9• 13 years ago

Strike "When" Drop d on "Lived"

fywacro• 13 years ago

"For street cleaning, he first reached out to Teddy Roosevelt, who basically said, ‘What, are you nuts? Nobody should do that. That’s an impossible job. I’m not going to do that.’ So Roosevelt took over the police department, which was also in dire need of reform."

Back in college, a history-buff friend told me this story, but I thought she was telling me a joke. Who'da thunk it?

shanev2• 13 years ago

There's a flip side to this story. While it's true that rates of certain acute diseases have gone down since NYC has gotten cleaner, rates of chronic diseases such as asthma have gone up. There's a school of thought that thinks our modern city existence is too clean, and we're no longer exposed to "old friends" that keep asthma and other chronic illnesses at bay. Check out the book "An Epidemic of Absence" for more details: http://amzn.to/12Blhij. In ten years from now, we may be taking pills for "beneficial parasites" as we do now for beneficial bacteria.

nooneelse• 13 years ago

Instead of pills, what about little wet-wipe like rags bearing germs in packaging labeled with the age at which one should have one's child play with the rag (or wipe it on their favorite toy) in order to safely, effectively expose them and work-out/teach their immune system.

shanev2• 13 years ago

Even better. Doesn't necessarily have to be in pill form. Alternatively you can have your kids visit a farm every weekend, although that might be leaving too much to chance.

lostlogin• 13 years ago

Daycare. These hotbeds of disease are to be avoided by adults however. I'm fit and healthy are rarely get sick. This year, thanks to my daughters daycare, I have had chickenpox (god awful, getting it as a child doesn't prevent an adult dose I now know), some kind of deathly vomit bug (first time I've had such a thing), about three colds, and sinusitis. The little girl has a minor sickness and I nearly die.

tomkarlo3• 13 years ago

There's some debate about this: asthma rates in cities tend to be worse in poorer neighborhoods where there's greater exposure to pollution and toxins. Some studies have also suggested there are particular allergens in inner-city neighborhoods that trigger it, from vermin, etc.

Also: it's not clear that there's more asthma, or we're just diagnosing it more often, especially in poorer neighborhoods where folks might not have had much health care a hundred years ago.

gergles• 13 years ago

If you want a good trash collection system in NYC, move to Roosevelt Island. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/trash-sucking-island/...

healthenclave• 13 years ago

Awesome!! On a realted note everyone should read / hear to the book "Ragged Dick" from early 19 hundreds (1920 I suppose) about a story (fiction)of a orphan boy who lived in the streets of NYC , used to polish shoes and who grew up to be the one of the most richest and prominent individuals.

Very inspirational stuff and remind about the early not so charming history of NY http://librivox.org/ragged-dick-by-horatio-alger-jr/

A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash

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