Downtown Tucsonan - May 2008 - (Page 8)

Vital Signs Scrubbing Up Downtown: A writer rides along with the Purple Shirts by Jamie Manser n the wee hours of the morning, while most of downtown’s employees are still snug as bugs, the downtown tucson Partnership’s maintenance operatives are swinging shifts. cleaning up the city’s core is not easy work - it’s an endless cycle of trash pick-up, painting over graffiti, painting curbs, and power washing, along with tree trimming, weeding and cleaning up after events. to fully appreciate the crew’s breadth of responsibility, I joined supervisor Harry snow on an april Monday for the day’s first shift. i Harry picks me up from my downtown digs on his way into their Pennington street Garage headquarters. “welcome to my rock ‘n’ roll 3am,” he says, blasting Godsmack. Nothing wrong with a little auditory caffeine, I think. Nothing wrong with a little coffee either and I slug a gulp from my portable coffee mug. Harry hands me the standard issue: a purple shirt, a safety vest, a baseball cap, surgical gloves and the EZ Reach (a trash picker-upper device that will save my hamstrings). 2:50am while I’m donning the uniform, aJ comes in for a spot of hot chocolate. Halfway through his shift, aJ maintains an easy and sweet smile while taking a load off for a few. aJ and Fernando begin their work day at 11pm, starting with the outdoor trash collection. I’m reminded of a conversation aJ and I had in March about some of the dangers of the job. “I don’t push down the garbage before I pull out the bag anymore,” he told me. “some people think it’s funny to put glass or something in there just to hurt someone.” oh, the humanity, I thought, cringing at the possible injuries. Besides trash, the two also water the planters and pressure-wash sidewalks and streets. Harry and I head over to the supplies storage area. I ask him about the snow shovels. “those are for shoveling crap off the sidewalk,” he says. crap is not a euphemism in this case. the golf cart is loaded up with brooms and dust pans, garbage bags, and small rakes. If we find human excrement, I guess we’ll come back for the shovels. as we pull out of the garage, I naïvely say “we’re scouting for trash!” Harry gives me a wry grin. “oh, we don’t have to scout.” we start outside of the Hotel congress and then hit Rialto theatre’s back lot. as we drive south on 5th avenue, Harry comments on dinnerware’s initial effort to have public art on the theatre block’s boarded walls. “within two weeks, it was all graffitied over. You think they’d leave the artwork alone, but not down here.” we move along congress street, sweeping up leaves and cigarette butts. “the planters on congress street are just getting trashed outside of the bars,” he said. “People use them as ashtrays and garbage cans. “when club asylum was open, after a saturday night, you couldn’t see the sidewalk for so many cigarette butts. Grill and sharks aren’t much better.” It fascinates me that people don’t choose to use the garbage cans that line the sidewalk. “the idea is to have everything cleaned up before people start coming downtown to go to work,” Harry explains. “who wants to see all this trash all over the place?” 3:30am 3:15am 3:00am 8 downtown tucsonan.may.08

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Downtown Tucsonan - May 2008

Downtown Tucsonan - May 2008 Contents From the Editor Downtown Lowdown Vital Signs Downtown Live Arts Galleries Performances Vital Signs Continued Events Film Museums Billboard Classifieds

Downtown Tucsonan - May 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.