Park Slope Seems to Have a Christmas Tree Problem
The mountains of snow and garbage have finally started to clear from the streets as our interminable winter winds down, but according to DNAinfo, Park Slope (and we’d have to assume a lot of other neighborhoods, too?) is still beset by one highly specific form of sidewalk trash: three-month-old Christmas trees.
The site reports “at least two dozen” dead trees littering sidewalks in the neighborhood, which are supposedly so frozen to the curb as to render them un-collectable:
“In some cases, it will take a major thaw for the tree trash to be removed, a Department of Sanitation spokeswoman said. The agency intends to pick up the trees, but not while they’re still frozen to the sidewalk.
That means a brown and brittle 6-foot plus tree near the corner of Sixth Avenue and Garfield Place isn’t going anywhere this week. It’s been melded to the sidewalk by ice since shortly after Santa left town, a woman who lives in a nearby building said.”
Locals have contacted 311 to little avail, and one man noted that even his dog was sick enough of the trees to have stopped peeing on them. Not necessarily the most gut-level shock we’ve gotten from a news story in recent memory, but sort of an interesting counterpoint to all the fussing about de Blasio’s supposedly preferential treatment of Park Slope during post-storm cleanup. So maybe we can put that trope to bed now? This winter, everyone gets a curb full of rotting trash!
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
