Forty people, 40 trash grabbers, 40- plus large trash bags: That’s what it took on Saturday morning to clean up one side of Mission Street, from 16th to 26th Street.
“We have a dire trash situation in the Mission,” said Naz Khorram, the owner of Arcana, a plant nursery and bar at 2512 Mission St.
Khorram, who also co-organized the cleanup, offered dos and don’ts to the enthusiasts who wore bright orange vests and had registered earlier for the Mission Street Cleanup event on Refuse Refuse SF, a website that aims to clean the city through motivating citizens.
After a brief gathering, every volunteer was provided with a simple set of supplies: A pair of plastic gloves, a large trash bag, and a trash picker with the San Francisco Public Works logo on it. Soon, the crowd broke into groups and began picking up litter along the Mission Street corridor.
“The city does their share, and the community does their share,” said Rafael Picazo, 57, who was born and raised in the Mission. Accompanied by his brother, who traveled all the way from Daly City, the two had heeded the Mission Merchants Association’s call to make a difference in a neighborhood that is awash in trash.
The job was more difficult than expected.
Picazo spent 15 minutes emptying out a hollowed-out, broken street lamp, trying to retrieve all sorts of rubbish that had been hidden in its pedestal over the years. The garbage in the lamp alone filled his large garbage bag.
“It’s crazy. Why did they throw the trash here, when there’s a rubbish bin 20 feet away?” Khorram said as she watched Picazo’s bag fill up.
More rubbish was found outside empty storefronts. “These empty businesses are targets for garbage and graffiti,” said Eleazar Ferrusquia, 63, who joined the proceedings midway through with his wife. As the co-owner of Latin Bridal, at 2644 Mission St., he is all too familiar with how much trash can pile up outside after a single night.
Also a merchant, Khorram feels she shares a part of the responsibility, especially when the government has failed to provide the services everyone expected. “Somebody had to do this,” she said. “Every business should be responsible at least for their storefront.”
When Mission Local spoke with Recology last year, a spokesperson said they picked up trash at least twice a day on Mission St., Caesar Chavez and 24th Street. Clearly, twice a day is not enough.
More than half of the volunteers were Mission Street business owners who understood well the impact of street litter on Mission’s reputation. With so many businesses still struggling to recover from the pandemic, they don’t want the next generation to inherit a district full of garbage.
“With the citywide focus on the Tenderloin, I can feel the Mission getting worse,” said District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen, whose office co-organized the event. “And so I was like, ‘Well, we’re gonna make our own plan, and we’re gonna fix it ourselves.’”
Later on Saturday morning, Ronen and her group took a little detour from Arcana, on 21st Street, to 16th Street, and spent time cleaning the sidewalk between Mission and Valencia.
“It’s such a great way to start the day, by waking up with a group of neighbors and cleaning the streets,” she said.
Over the two-hour cleanup, Ronen noticed a lot of cigarette butts, countless city-owned trash cans overflowing with trash, “an elderly gentleman who was half-naked and lying on the ground,” and a healthy amount of appreciation. “A lot of people noticed the work and said ‘Thank you’ to us,” she said.
So far, she said, she’s been working in cooperation with “all of the city departments,” including the Department of Public Works and Department of the Environment, to create a new plan for trash that will be unveiled this week. It will, she said, address everything that most irritates residents: trash, unlicensed street vendors, fires, homeless encampments, and street drug use.
The Mission Street event is far from the only cleanup in the Mission. After the Saturday morning clean-up, the equipment, mainly the trash pickers, were sent to Dog Eared Books at 900 Valencia St. for the Valencia-Guerrero cleanup on Sunday.
Saturday morning marked the first of what will begin as a monthly cleanup of Mission Street. According to Khorram, in time, it will hopefully become bi-weekly or even weekly. Still, Khorram seemed a bit anxious after seeing her team had only managed to clean five blocks in two hours and, even then, just one side of the street.
“Are you tired?” Mission Local asked her.
“Not at all,” Khorram said, pointing at the trash picker. “This thing is almost like playing tennis.”
My quiet Lower Bernal Mission Street corner is a regular dumping ground for large items, and smaller trash is pushed into my mail slot or the hole for the electric meter. Garbage bags have been thrown over the fence. And yeah, Ruby, it sure ain’t the homeless!
Thanks to the DPW for free pickup when called, so we don’t have to haul it to the dump and than pay for it.
They took alot of trash cans away in the mission. Actually everywhere in SF. There was some report which I think was vull that said more trash cans meant more trash. No it just means it’s on our streets. If you walk down 22nd you will have to go 2 to 3 blocks after Mission to find a can. It’s really horrible. We need more trash cans and people need to stop littering. Thanks for the clean up! The people I see who litter are not homeless. They need to be educated.
Report? It was San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom who took half the number of trash bins off the streets ten years ago. The GGNRA is considering similar things down at the beach. That said, that’s only a small part of the problem, which includes (not limited to): We have 37000 “city family” employees, yet the trash bins that remained are flowing over regularly. Cheapskate neighbors who don’t want to pay for pickup and stick their trash into the bins in the dark of night. Lowlifes who toss their empty bubble tea cups and McDonald’s wrappers on the ground for others to pick up. And biggest polluters of them all: Methheads.
Yes, we wrote about that experiment here. https://missionlocal.org/2021/03/newsoms-experiment-to-get-rid-of-public-trash-bins-in-san-francisco-seems-to-have-failed/
Thank you very much to everybody who participated.
Awesome stuff.
“create a (white-space? future electioneering blurb?) for trash”
Appropriate.
I hope this – whatever it is – works out better than the boastful “Hilary strongly negotiated with the Mayor to create Mental Health SF to guarantee homeless people medication and services”. Perhaps the thousands of folks who are in desperate need of these services never read the election mailer and don’t realize they are guaranteed medication and services courtesy of our esteemed supervisor. Let ’em know where to go and how to collect on the guarantee.