No Plastic For You

Remember: Today is the first day of the rest of your life. It’s also the first day of the New York State single-use plastic bag ban. Wondering what lie in store for me in this new world order, I ventured out into the chilly early morning air and to a local market. The place was ready with its customized paper shopping bags that cost a nickel each to those who didn’t have or want a reusable one, which were readily available at each checkout.

This sudden break from the recent past reminded me of a more distant past’s garbage and waste situation. Not too long ago, I watched a documentary on YouTube chronicling New York City’s sanitation highs and lows. A historian who specialized in refuse, as it were, noted that the Big Apple was pretty disgusting in the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century. Think about it: Horse-drawn wagons for everything from transportation to freight delivery to construction. The streets weren’t paved with gold in those bygone days but something else entirely. It was rather startling seeing garbage trucks dumping unadulterated trash off piers into the Hudson River.

And so, looking on the bright side, some things have gotten better. When I was young the nearby waterways—the Hudson, Harlem, and East Rivers—were considered dirty jokes. While they were picturesque in the grand scheme of things, one didn’t want to look all that closely or breathe in the brackish air, which didn’t always reek of the sea. My father swam in the Hudson River and remembered—when the tide turned on him—pushing away human excrement.

Since household plastic bags weren’t around in my youth, our garbage—like most people’s—was placed in paper bags, typically souvenirs from grocery shopping. They could get pretty gross, as I recall, and taking out the garbage was an unenviable chore. Oh, and the garbage cans out on the street were made of metal then. It's fair to say that the garbage men of the day did a lot of heavy lifting. Nowadays, we have to pull our cans—which are predominantly plastic—to the curbside or the trash won’t be picked up. So it goes: On March 1, 2020, another new day is dawning.

By the way, the nickel charge for paper bags does not go to the retailer. Three cents go into a state environmental fund and two cents into the city's coffers.

I wonder what this plastic-bags-for-gloves delivery guy—whom I frequently see—is going to do down the road?

Hopefully, with the passage of time, there will be more pleasing views off the Major Deegan Expressway than this.

I fear, though, that it's going to take a long time.

Life is too short to sit in a traffic snarl Monday through Friday. But a lot of people do just that.

And, I might add: Please keep massive amount of tape off tree.

As a little kid, visiting the rocks overlooking this local subway yard—a half-mile away—was an adventure. I can remember packing snacks for the journey—in paper bags, of course. 

The rocks, by the way, are still there, but on the other side of a fence.

I have a memory of an abandoned car down in this brush. It remained there for years. I always wondered whether somebody crashed landed or ditched it down there. As a boy, I was more inclined to believe it was a crash with a body trapped inside in perpetuity.

Here's a morning shopper with her reusable bags on each arm.

March 1, 2020: Day Moon over Van Cortlandt Park.

It was a nice day to kick off plastic-busting March and the remaining three weeks in the Winter-That-Wasn't.

Happily, the Van Cortlandt Park flats have been a constant through it all: still flat.

And so has this water flow from Van Cortlandt Lake into New York City's serpentine sewer system.

Then there's the Van Cortlandt Park stadium and track. The former could use a face-lift; the latter has gotten one.

This is the nearest thing I have to a Yellow Brick Road. No Emerald City at the end of it.

Here's that face-lift, which includes synthetic, all-season turf.

Time and garbage disposal move on. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)