Philadelphia’s Trash Problem Just Literally Made Me Puke
Plus, why are we putting a garbage drop-off site right next to a playground?
Piles and piles of trash sit next to a playground at 60th and Columbia in West Philadelphia amid the strike. (Photos by Victor Fiorillo)
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Philadelphia’s Trash Problem During the Strike Just Literally Made Me Puke
I’m not a person prone to puking. In fact, I think the last time I threw up was in 2018, when Philly Mag sent me to a Burger King in Delco to try BK’s just-released “Philly Cheesesteak Burger.” (No, I did not get hazard pay.) But puke is exactly what I did this morning when I visited one of the city’s temporary trash drop-off sites.
There are something like 60 such trash drop-off sites across Philadelphia. The city set them up right after the strike started. Residents are supposed to bring their rotting trash to the sites. Then non-union workers or private companies will eventually pick up the trash from the drop-off sites and dispose of it. The trash drop-off site I went to on Tuesday morning was at the corner of 60th Street and Columbia Avenue in West Philadelphia. This is a normally well-kept area.
As soon as I got out of my car, the stench of garbage overwhelmed me. It was like an olfactory tidal wave of a most unpleasant nature. I tried to resist the urge to vomit, but then I realized my efforts were futile. And so I leaned over. First, I retched. Then, I vomited.
After collecting myself, I surveyed the corner, at first trying to come up with some estimate of how many bags might be piled along and in 60th Street and along and in Columbia Avenue, the way that officials try to estimate crowd size at a protest. But then I realized I wasn’t going to be able to stick around for long enough to do that, lest I puke again. So I took these quick videos so that you could get a feel for what this all looks like:
A complete embarrassment.
I felt a little bit better when I saw a guy in an orange vest picking up trash bags, thinking he was going to remove them from the area. Except… he had nothing to stick them in. His job was simply to take trash bags that were in the street next to the huge piles and throw those bags into those huge piles.
If you watched the above video, you probably noticed that a kid was in the background of this mountain of trash playing basketball. Yes, the trash drop-off site at 60th and Columbia is next to a playground.
As I was about to leave the area, I saw another kid walking to the playground. I asked him how he can play amid all that stench. “I got used to it,” he said. I’m sorry you had to, kid. Meanwhile, there’s no end in sight for the Philadelphia strike.
By the Numbers
0: Once we get through Tuesday, that’s the number of days in the forecast with highs in the 90s. Yes, it looks like we are getting a little break from this disgustingness.
$1.1 million: What a Dunkin’ (née Dunkin’ Donuts) franchisee just paid for the old Shirt Corner building in Old City, within one block of five other places to get coffee. I’m sure that Fork is so happy to have Dunkin’ as its neighbor.
2nd: Where SEPTA falls in this ranking of ridership growth among the 10 largest transit agencies in the country, comparing January through May of this year with the same time period last year. No word on whether those rides include all the people who evade paying.
Local Talent
Right now, hometown heroes the Hooters are on a big tour of Germany. They are big in Germany, as they say. But 40 years ago this week, they were prepping for one of the biggest gigs of their lives: playing Live Aid. They were the first band to play that day at JFK Stadium. You’d think that the band members would want to stick around all day so they could rub shoulders with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Madonna, members of Led Zeppelin, and other music industry titans who were playing at JFK that day. But Hooters lead singer Eric Bazilian, then an Old City resident, had other ideas.
