five six

Dear 56th Street,

I greatly appreciate your efforts to clean up the stench and grime that bakes in the sun and turns to a fetid soup in the rain, up and down the block. The thousands of people who walk your street daily have had to endure for far too long, the pools of green, radio-active-looking waste from thousands of cups and plates of god knows what.

My favorite memory is of having one of said pools splash onto my feet as I walked to get lunch on an especially hot and humid day. The puddle even made it over the natural garbage bag barrier, which is generally between two and four feet high, which means the pothole was especially deep and well-formed. Makes one feel so fresh.

I am not alone in this. It is a frequent topic among my co-workers and random people you see holding their noses as they pass certain points on our block. 56th Street is the worst street in the city, with regard to scent and welcoming odors.

So I thank you, dear 56th Street, for taking the time to tear up the road and repave, removing the potholes and putrid stink. O wait, the putrid stink got to stay, I forgot. Yeah so that whole repaving thing was an excellent idea and it desperately needed to be done, but now the odiforousness has moved to the gutters, which lack the proper drainage to move the river of rotted lettuce and leftover wine to the sewers and out to our lovely New York harbor. No instead, the river becomes a lake in the gutter and we begin the cycle of baking and turning to putrid slush all over, just in a different location in the roadway. Way to shuffle your vegetables on the plate.

Improvement. Your tax dollars at work.