The Cleanest Street in North America
David and the Street Sweeper [Brendan Greeley / Flickr]
Lest you think we only talk about serious things in our daily story meeting, we give you this, the story of the Street Sweeper. I think it was David who said it first: “That’s the 7th time that thing’s cleaned that street this morning. It’s been doing that for the last few days.??? This was one morning not long ago when we’d pulled our chairs (or a patch of floor) into a circle around a non-existent table to talk about upcoming shows.
The next day, Chris (who was perfectly positioned in the circle to stare out the window down the very clean street) said, “There it is again.??? It has this way of laboring slowly and spinning its brushes rather ineffectually up the middle of the road. Over and over. It never cleans the gutters.
In which Brendan photographs David talking to the Sweeper [Katherine Bidwell]
After it circled the block a few more times, we began to guess. “It’s a zamboni that’s lost it’s way!??? “It’s the personal vehicle of someone who lives on that street!??? In the end, David leapt up, yellow legal pad still in hand, and ran out to ask the driver why he was doing what he was doing. Turns out trucks are moving dirt around for a construction site nearby, and the street sweeper’s been hired to clean up after them. We think it’s a bit of a scam, but in the meantime that zamboni-thing has become a kind of comforting yellow beacon in our otherwise very teal/turquoise office lives.
Mary just got back from vacation, and it turns out that her all-women’s hockey team is called the Amazambonis. Convergence? We think so.
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March 25th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Is there a name for this? I don’t think it’s “featherbedding”. Make-work??
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.
make-work
Publicly provided employment that is designed primarily to relieve unemployment and only incidentally to accomplish important tasks. If private employers are hiring few people because of a business slump, the government can “make work� for people to do.
March 25th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
busywork
A noun
1 busywork, make-work
active work of little value; “while he was waiting he filled the days with busywork”
(Merriam Webster)
Main Entry: busy·work
Pronunciation: -”w&rk
Function: noun
: work that usually appears productive or of intrinsic value but actually only keeps one occupied
March 25th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Potter, can we think of the project in Iraq in the same way? Is it a government funded make-work effort for people from regions of high unemployment with no other options?
Maybe that, too, is another type of cleansing.
Sorry ROS to turn this bright yellow topic back to the war.
March 25th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
In Japanese Shinto temples crews of little old ladies with brooms would do this task. They would be chatting as they swept, relatively unproductive but happy. Their employers, conscious of how slow the work was going, would console themselves by the thought that these women would otherwise by stuck at home, lonely, isolated, and bored. Instead the ladies had something to look forward to, and (in five times as long as it should have taken) the paths and roadways were cleaned. — Aren’t we lucky to live in America, where one bored man can sit in total isolation going round and round, replacing several people with brooms.
March 25th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
tbrucia, your story reminds me of airport bus service. A few years ago, besides the driver, there would be 3 or 4 young men at the points of departure and arrival to off-load luggage and take tickets in Japan. In the US, the driver is expected to do everything. This year I found there was only one baggage handler. Many gas stations have also moved from full-service to self-service in the past two years. Things are changing quickly here, too.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:35 am
Well the man in the yellow sweeper should be given a non-polluting broom. Give him exercise, save gasoline,
ROS should contact the local TV station with the story too. OR go out there with a microphone. Hey– let’s have a show with this guy as the principal guest. I bet he could tell us a lot.
Second thought, maybe not, nevermind. Pull the shade down,
March 26th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Hmm, can’t we scratch a little beneath the surface here? Maybe the ineffectual brushing of the street is a tip-off of the more significant business being conducted beneath the yellow front. With all the probing analysis that ROS has done in recent months of the NSA and other sensitive government programs, don’t you think it’s only to be expected that the “street cleaning” zamboni might actually just be cover for a highly sophisticated, eavesdropping, electronic nervecenter that just “happens” to be repeatedly encircling your very block? Good thing you have comment threads like this, so your loyal listeners can provide you such valuable counter intelligence!
March 26th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
counter intelligence – ideas arrived at while sitting at the counter of the coffee shop downstairs?
March 26th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Jon, you have a point, it could be the NSA surveillling leftwing radio. Whoa! We need a plan….
March 26th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
And our friends are all aboard,
Many more of them live next door,
And the band begins to play.
We all live in a yellow zamboni-thing,
As we live a life of ease,
Everyone of us has all we need,
Sky of blue and sea of green,
In our yellow zamboini-thing,
We all live in a yellow zamboni-thing,
Yellow zamboni-thing, yellow zamboni-thing,
We all live in a yellow zamboni-thing,
Yellow zamboni-thing, yellow zamboni-thing
March 26th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Make newspaper hats, grab any noisemaker thing you can find and gather ye all, ROS crew, out there in the street to march in parade singing the above……
( more pix please)
once again now……
March 26th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
thanks, nother. Now I’m gonna have to go through the rest of my day with the endlessly repeating brain-worm echoes of ‘Yellow Submarine.’
March 26th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
Zamboni man may just be providing a needed service. I worked in construction and have seen all sorts of problems arise from debris in the streets. It’s amazing how fast your insurance rates can start rising with a few broken windshields caused by flying debris such as rocks and pieces of concrete. What amused me was the fact that you had a camera person and an interviewer on the scene as well as a room full of people looking out the window. The only guy actually working was Zamboni man.
March 27th, 2006 at 7:48 am
h wally… these are creative people who need their space to zone out.
March 27th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
nother: I escaped the Beatles brain-worm by (randomly) hearing the Stones’ version of ‘You Gotta Move’ — which (unintentionally) captured a sense of the weirdness of this thread’s topic!
PS to ROS: is this another ‘undercover’ Community Thread?
Ya’ll are sly, you know that?
March 29th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Have I mentioned you guys are totally teh r0xx0r?
Yeah. You are.
One thing I loved about bloggers going to the 2004 Democratic National Convention is that they would tell me whether the danishes at the Barack Obama breakfast sucked or not.
Because, yes, I *do* want to know.
Gives it all character.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Oh, and my theory is actually driven by Zoning, which for most midsized City Halls is what checks the box beside Sex, Drugs, *and* Rock ‘n Roll.
Cambridge is so densely populated that if someone wants to build a screen porch people act like the Huns are invading. Add that to the fact that the Much Bigger Than a Screen Porch project is undoubtedly being done by Harvard, which is hated by townies for the fact that they buy up all the property, develop it for for-profit purposes — and then pay absolutely nothing in property tax.
Whaddya got? A crowd of angry citizens (Cue the torches and pitchforks) declaring that if that *#*%$ construction project leaves dust and dirt all over their neighborhood they’re gonna riot like it’s 1999, and give money to Other People’s Political Campaigns, besides.
The developer gets back at the residents by sweeping 8 times a day, to annoy the residents with the noise. Hoist, meet your petard.