Detritus

Temperatures have struggled above 40 the last couple of days and, while it still covers the parks and other green spaces, the snow along the streets is pretty much gone. Alternate side parking regulations began to be enforced a few days ago and on the first day the merciless ticket writers did something like four times the average amount for a winter day.

Gone too are most of the trash and recycling bags that hugged the curbs, buried under or sitting on top of the piles of snow. What's left is the odd detritus. Many Christmas trees still along the curbs, particularly on W.79th, most of them with needles remaining green from being buried in the snow. And what kind of mentality is it that makes people less inclined to pick up after their dogs when there is snow on the ground? Makes for a huge yuck factor when the snow goes away; makes many more people checking their shoes as well. Also you have the hundreds of cigarette butts outside Manhattan School of Music (students there have to be the largest subgroup of smokers left in the city); single mittens and gloves in the middle of sidewalks, in the middle of streets, amidst the melting snow (if I had started counting when I saw the first one, I'd be up to several dozen by now. Citywide the number has to be in the thousands), bottle caps, old coffee cups, and -- in at least one case this afternoon as I was walking home from the B/D stop on 125th -- prom pictures. Some kind of story there, surely.

The groundhog may not have condemned us to six more weeks of winter, but it already feels interminable on the spirit of the city.