Tag Archives: garbage

There Must Be Some Magic in That Old Trash Can They Found

30 Apr

April 30, 2010

So what could be so important that you’d go diving into a funky, rancid garbage can? Retrieve a lost mortgage payment? Rescue an abandoned baby? Japanese game show contest? Or maybe you’re just weird.

I was at the gas station today. Gas is back up to about $3 so I was wondering if I should fill it up or just stuff my wallet in the tank and see what happens. Well, I finally decided to gas up the car the traditional way, but I must be stupid because here I was, pumping gas like you regular schnooks, when I should have been rummaging around in the squalid garbage cans. (“Squalid.” Nice word, huh? I thank Douglas Adams for that word.)

There is a garbage can at either end of the gas island where I pulled up, and as I got out of the car I saw an old woman poking one of them with a long stick. (BTW- I once saw an old man poking an umbrella into a sewer during a flood, and I never found out why, though he eventually walked away and left the umbrella sticking out of the grate. ah, childhood memories. I was a strange kid.)

This woman was Chinese, anywhere from 65 to 165 years old and well dressed, with a fancy purple and gold sweater with some sort of lilies and chickens pattern, gold earrings, and think black motorcycle gloves like The Undertaker used to wear. Really, she over-accessorized. The gloves were just gauche. She was hunched over a short, thin garbage can and was furiously poking a tree branch up and down in the can, like she was trying to kill a possum.

I didn’t know what was going on. She was too well dressed to be looking for deposit cans, I thought, and anyway, these garbage cans are usually just full of empty bottles of STP or motor oil, maybe some greasy rags. (They are a fire waiting to spontaneously happen, just inches from the gas pumps. Feel safe now? Think about that when you gas up in the summer heat.) She was also carrying some plastic bags which seemed to hold nothing but square sheets of wax paper.

Eventually she gave up on the left-side can and went to the right-side can.

She hunched down over it.

I watched in extreme anticipation.

She peeked in.

Poke poke poke poke poke poke poke with the stick.

Peek.

Poke poke poke.

Peek.

I was still fueling up but I couldn’t stop watching. What was this mental case doing?

Ever ride on the highway and see a car accident on the other side? If you ride the Belt Parkway you see it every ten minutes. And what is with all the construction from Marine Park to Starrett anyway? Ugh. But as I was saying, there is an accident on the other side of the road and everyone slows down and rubbernecks (Frank Rizzo!) and soon the traffic is backed up on the SI Expressway and you’re late for an appointment and your boss is going to ream you out and you just know that – but I digress. Anyway, watching that crazy old trash-diving woman was like that. I had to watch. I was entranced. (I had time on my hands.)

 Good thing too, as soon she reached inside her sweater, around the breastical area, rummaged around, (it was oddly disgusting) and pulled out……

-just what you’d think; a large, glistening, stainless steel two-pronged steak fork, like from a barbeque set. It was about 18 inches long and beautifully clean. To see it you’d never know it spent all its life inside garbage cans and between the woman’s floppy bazooms.

She started using the fork to pierce various things out of the can (this can held more coffee cups than I would have guessed) and put them back in the can. Whatever she was on the hunt for, she was very specific about it. For example, she’d pick up and put back a sheet of snotty newspaper, yet put a seemingly identical piece of snotty newspaper between two pieces of wax paper in one of her plastic bags. It seemed to be one trash treasure per plastic bag.

By now my tank was full and I was just standing there, blatantly staring at her with an expression equal parts disgust and wonderment.

Eventually she straightened up, wiped the fork clean with a wet-nap she took out of her, er, let me just describe it and leave it to you: She reached inside her pants and pulled it out of her crotch.

Then she left the station, crossed against the light, and almost got hit by a bread truck.

I tossed some trash from my backseat (including, but not limited to, a Snapple bottle and an old Marketeer) and drove off.

What the Hell was she doing????

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The Brighton Beach Rats

18 Nov

from January 21, 2009

According to this week’s New York Daily News, Brighton Beach is being overrun by rats. “They’re even in the cars. My husband has to check under the hood every morning. They’re eating the wiring.” This is a surprise? Has the Daily News ever been to Brighton Beach? Brighton Beach is bordered, more or less, by Coney Island on one side, Sheepshead Bay on the other side, and the B train on top. It has many landmarks, like the place where Mrs. Stahl’s Knishes used to be, as well as the guy who fixed my Dad’s Toyota back in the 1980’s. Nowadays, Brighton Beach is best known for being the USA home of the Russian Mafia and is second only to Chinatown as The Home Of The Amazing Huge Pile Of Garbage That Has Not Been Picked Up Since The Last Time You Were There, When The Pile Was Already Two Stories High.A long time ago, maybe 10 years or so (OK, so in the grand scheme of things 10 years isn’t that long. Just ask the forces that shaped the glaciers and moved them over most of Greenland. On the other hand, it is the life span of about 10,000,000 cicadas, so go figure.) I went to Brighton Beach to see a free concert in the park. It starred “Gladys Knight and her Pips.” (Would you like to go through life as someone’s Pip? Unless you’re a character in a Dickens novel, probably not.) I didn’t stay for her. I think I left just before The Midnight Train to Georgia pulled out of Newark. I was there for the MC.

Remember Welcome Back Kotter? It was a popular PBS documentary about the life of the students and faculty in a typical Brooklyn high school. Filmed over the course of a semester, Ken Burns Sr. followed an average group of students, called “Sweathogs,” and their average teacher, Gabe Kaplan, playing himself.

Gabe Kaplan was the MC of this concert. He took to the stage to no applause whatsoever. In the three decades since the show aired, Kaplan had shaved his moustache and trimmed his curly hair so that he looked more like the man who was about to introduce Gabe Kaplan than actually looking like Gabe Kaplan. His first joke was about how he didn’t look like Gabe Kaplan. Clearly, the decades had not been kind to his stand up routine but they were great for his bank account- he had become a very successful professional Las Vegas poker player.

Anyway, Kaplan, or Gabe, as his friends call him, didn’t do much standup, though he did make an oblique Sweathog reference and quickly introduced Gladys Knight, who introduced the Pips herself.

What does all this have to do with rats?

I drove to Brighton Beach for the concert, which was a mistake. At the best of times (and there are no best of times) the parking situation can best be described as, shall we say, poor, mainly because I don’t want to curse in this blog. Under the train, Brighton Beach has about 108 stores on every block, and still manages to cram about 108 apartments on every block. These 108 stores and 108 apartments each have, about, 108 cars. Factor in the approximately 108 bus stops along the street and you begin to see the problem- there are only 14 parking spots, and 12 of them are reserved for the Russian Mafia. (Check the signs- “No Parking Except for Sergei.”)

During the summer the parking situation is actually even worse

So here I come, driving down the block and lo and behold I saw someone pull out of a spot. I was stuck at a red light and prayed and prayed to my Lord that no one would come and grab it. “Please Superman, if you can hear me, please let me get that spot!” He must have heard me because the light changed and I got the spot. I sat there and basked. I had beaten the odds. I had gotten a spot in Brighton Beach. Should I play the lottery? Would this be a good time to invest in the stock market? Should I call Christine Fajen, who I totally had a thing for back then, and brag about the spot?

Well, as I was debating, a beat up sedan backed alongside of me, the window went down, and the driver started motioning with his hand in a way that seemed like a cross between American Sign Language and Crips signals.

I rolled down the window and he started yelling at me in a combination of Russian and English that I could almost, but not quite, almost barely not understand. Don’t worry, I’ll translate.

HIM: Didn’t you see me? I was waiting for the spot.
ME: You were just sitting there for five minutes. What were you waiting for?
HIM: I wanted the spot.
ME: You were four cars away, you weren’t even near the spot.

However, I was going to pull out and let him have the spot. Not so much that he was right, because he wasn’t, but because I was sure that as soon as I walked away he’d come back and slash my tires. But before I could pull out…

HIM: You think you are better than me?
ME: What?
HIM: Because you are American you think you are better than me?

Well yes, but that was beside the point. I was ready to pull out but now I wasn’t giving him the satisfaction. I shut the engine, leaned the seat back and twirled my keys. I sat there with a serene smile until he got mad and drove off, but not before giving me a final hand gesture. It wasn’t a wave goodbye.

I saw him drive down the block, turn the corner, and then I started my engine and pulled out. I’m not stupid. The last thing I needed was to come back and find a pile of pierogies where my car used to be. As soon as I pulled out four cars started jockeying for the spot until a fifth car came along and the driver pointed to the sign and pulled in. It must have been Sergei.

Again, what does this have to do with rats?

The parking spot was next to the tallest and longest pile of trash I have ever seen. It was as long as five cars and taller than me. Honestly, it was a good thing I didn’t stay because if it fell over my car would have been buried forever, like the auto industry in Detroit is today.

No wonder they have rats in Brighton Beach. I just can’t believe anyone is surprised.

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