The Crappiest Footbridge
Our Town downtown
April 9, 2007
10th Street FDR overpass is a dog poop landmine
A big puddle with a McDonald’s cup floating in it defends the entrance to the footbridge at East 10th Street like a moat. If you want to get onto the bridge without soaking your shoes, you have to climb over the railing. So the bridge that leads over the FDR into East River Park is deserted on a rainy weekday morning – but there is ample evidence of recent passers-over.
On the morning of April 4th, there are no fewer than fifteen masses of dog crap dotting the overpass.
I’m going with the word “mass” because some of the piles of crap had softened and separated in the rain, and in other cases puddles of diarrhea had spread out, clinging to grains of the sidewalk and treads of sneakers and bike tires. So neither “pile” nor “mound” would adequately describe every fecal mass.
There is a pile that had somehow been deposited on top of a low railing a foot above the ground. Protected from the rain and elements, it had become desiccated until it was the consistency of a dry crumbly cookie, then it appeared to have petrified. Another mass looked like it might still be warm. And someone had been feeding their pooch corn.
There are four clear garbage bags tied at regular intervals to the link fence that encloses the bridge, but they’re mostly filled with rain water, empty forties, plastic bottles and wrappers, an empty carton of OJ, coffee cups and the like. Ostensibly, the bags are meant to be receptacles whose convenient location would encourage dog owners to actually pick up after their dogs, but for some reason, the majority of dog crap on this particular bridge never makes it into those orphan garbage bags that belong to no garbage can. It ends up right where it lands.
Anyone who uses the park regularly knows not to be eating or thinking about eating while crossing that bridge. “It’s always here, always here,” says a sweaty red-haired man in a knit cap, walking over the bridge with ear buds in his ears as he cools down from his jog. “It’s disgusting.”
The problem is not an unusual one, especially in and around parks. The Department of Sanitation is planning a “spring offensive against those people who don’t pick up after their dogs,” says spokeswoman Kathy Dawkins, that will include an ad blitz to raise public awareness and potentially raising the fine for not picking up behind your dog from $100 to $250.
But it’s unusually bad here. The 1951 footbridge’s long-held casual status as the shittiest of the footbridges leading to East River Park is now semi-official. I did a tally.
On the 6th Street footbridge, there were remnants of a broken glass bottle, one garbage bag, and only four fecal masses, which may seem like a lot when you’re jogging a slalom course around them, but coming from the 10th Street bridge changes your perspective entirely.
I could practically have eaten off of the Delancey Street overpass, on which nary a piece of litter was to be found. One garbage bag containing one water bottle hung on the fence at its western base. The order that reigns here might be attributable to the security shack at the foot of the bridge, where a guard watches over the parking lot adjacent to a housing development. The bridge’s only blight is a misspelled Parks Department sign that proclaims this is the “Delancy St. Foot Bridge.”
All three foot bridges lead from housing projects to the park. They’ve all got signs announcing that they are part of the Greenway system. So why is one so much grosser than the others?
No one in any official capacity seems to know. “I haven’t heard anything about this. I have not,” says Edwin Chan, a community associate for Community Board 3.
“I have no idea about that because the footbridges are not part of the Department of Sanitation. It’s Parks or D.E.C.,” says Dawkins, of the Sanitation Department.
“I’m pretty sure that’s D.O.T., so check with them,” says a Parks Department spokesman.
A D.O.T. spokesman said he’d call right back, then didn’t.
A young woman watching her red-nosed Pit Bull, Dynasty, roam around a grassy space in front of the Riis Houses adjacent to the 10th Street foot bridge had a hypothesis. “A lot of people run their dogs over the bridge,” she says. “And when they’re running, the dogs can’t hold it in.”
But why, I ask, is there more shit on this bridge than, say, on the 6th Street bridge just four blocks south of here?She thinks there might be more dog owners living at the Riis Houses, at 10th Street, than at the Wald Houses, at 6th Street. There certainly are a lot of pit bulls around.
A big puddle with a McDonald’s cup floating in it defends the entrance to the footbridge at East 10th Street like a moat. If you want to get onto the bridge without soaking your shoes, you have to climb over the railing. So the bridge that leads over the FDR into East River Park is deserted on a rainy weekday morning – but there is ample evidence of recent passers-over.
On the morning of April 4th, there are no fewer than fifteen masses of dog crap dotting the overpass.
I’m going with the word “mass” because some of the piles of crap had softened and separated in the rain, and in other cases puddles of diarrhea had spread out, clinging to grains of the sidewalk and treads of sneakers and bike tires. So neither “pile” nor “mound” would adequately describe every fecal mass.
There is a pile that had somehow been deposited on top of a low railing a foot above the ground. Protected from the rain and elements, it had become desiccated until it was the consistency of a dry crumbly cookie, then it appeared to have petrified. Another mass looked like it might still be warm. And someone had been feeding their pooch corn.
There are four clear garbage bags tied at regular intervals to the link fence that encloses the bridge, but they’re mostly filled with rain water, empty forties, plastic bottles and wrappers, an empty carton of OJ, coffee cups and the like. Ostensibly, the bags are meant to be receptacles whose convenient location would encourage dog owners to actually pick up after their dogs, but for some reason, the majority of dog crap on this particular bridge never makes it into those orphan garbage bags that belong to no garbage can. It ends up right where it lands.
Anyone who uses the park regularly knows not to be eating or thinking about eating while crossing that bridge. “It’s always here, always here,” says a sweaty red-haired man in a knit cap, walking over the bridge with ear buds in his ears as he cools down from his jog. “It’s disgusting.”
The problem is not an unusual one, especially in and around parks. The Department of Sanitation is planning a “spring offensive against those people who don’t pick up after their dogs,” says spokeswoman Kathy Dawkins, that will include an ad blitz to raise public awareness and potentially raising the fine for not picking up behind your dog from $100 to $250.
But it’s unusually bad here. The 1951 footbridge’s long-held casual status as the shittiest of the footbridges leading to East River Park is now semi-official. I did a tally.
On the 6th Street footbridge, there were remnants of a broken glass bottle, one garbage bag, and only four fecal masses, which may seem like a lot when you’re jogging a slalom course around them, but coming from the 10th Street bridge changes your perspective entirely.
I could practically have eaten off of the Delancey Street overpass, on which nary a piece of litter was to be found. One garbage bag containing one water bottle hung on the fence at its western base. The order that reigns here might be attributable to the security shack at the foot of the bridge, where a guard watches over the parking lot adjacent to a housing development. The bridge’s only blight is a misspelled Parks Department sign that proclaims this is the “Delancy St. Foot Bridge.”
All three foot bridges lead from housing projects to the park. They’ve all got signs announcing that they are part of the Greenway system. So why is one so much grosser than the others?
No one in any official capacity seems to know. “I haven’t heard anything about this. I have not,” says Edwin Chan, a community associate for Community Board 3.
“I have no idea about that because the footbridges are not part of the Department of Sanitation. It’s Parks or D.E.C.,” says Dawkins, of the Sanitation Department.
“I’m pretty sure that’s D.O.T., so check with them,” says a Parks Department spokesman.
A D.O.T. spokesman said he’d call right back, then didn’t.
A young woman watching her red-nosed Pit Bull, Dynasty, roam around a grassy space in front of the Riis Houses adjacent to the 10th Street foot bridge had a hypothesis. “A lot of people run their dogs over the bridge,” she says. “And when they’re running, the dogs can’t hold it in.”
But why, I ask, is there more shit on this bridge than, say, on the 6th Street bridge just four blocks south of here?She thinks there might be more dog owners living at the Riis Houses, at 10th Street, than at the Wald Houses, at 6th Street. There certainly are a lot of pit bulls around.
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