Photo: Office of Jimmy Van Bramer
May 21, 2012 Staff Report
It was spring-cleaning time on the south side of Queens Blvd. on Saturday.
About 60 people, led by councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, assembled at Thomas P. Noonan Playground (43rd Street and Greenpoint Ave.) at 12 pm to clean up between 40th and 50th Streets on the south side of Queens Blvd. Most were dressed in tatty jeans and T-shirts.
The attendees – many of whom were members of the Sunnyside Woodside Boys & Girls Club, the Grace Fellowship Church to Van Bramer’s entire staff– were split up into teams of about eight. Each group was assigned a territory and cleaned up those streets that cut through Greenpoint, 47th, 48th and 50th Avenues.
Each group was supplied with brooms, gloves and paint (to remove graffiti.). The event ended at 4pm.
“Nothing beats cleaning up your own neighborhood,” Van Bramer said. “We all feel like a million bucks.”
Along the way, some residents pointed out a number of areas they wanted cleaned. This included a wall that was covered with graffiti behind a business on 48th Avenue between 41st Street and 42nd Street.
Van Bramer and members of the Sunnyside Woodside Boys & Girls club painted over the graffiti.
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10 Comments
And let’s not forget the awful dog poop.
Ever notice it is never small dog poop? The people who don’t pick up after their dogs are always people who must have, like, St. Bernard’s in their house. Human sized poop 🙁
PG –
I totally agree. Besides the graffitti, this neighborhood has a big problem of garbage on the streets. The front of my coop building is always immaculate. Our neighboring rental buildings are always awful.
I work in managing rental buildings in Manhattan and we get fined all the time for not sweeping (even when I have people sweeping twice a day!)
Why we can’t do this in Queens is beyond me.
@dctrbob
One way to deter graffiti vandals is to cane them in public like they do in Singapore.
Get rid of street cleaning and make land owners or superintendents clean up with a BROOM… street cleaners just pick up dust and we inhale all that crap…
anyway good job on the graff clean up should be every month
Graffiti isn’t as bad as it use to be but one thing I know is that Jimmy Van Bramer has been all over it. I actually saw him out there on Saturday with a paint brush, single handedly, cleaning our community. Kudos to you Jimmy setting the right example which future youth of this community can look up to.
The only way to deter graffiti is to paint over it as soon as possible. Last year my building on 47/Skillman was ‘tagged’. Within 5 minutes of seeing it I painted over it. Hasn’t happened since. Graffiti is a worldwide problem. Trying to catch perpetrators is like trying to catch the wind bare-handed.
Van Bramer does a great job. But Jimmy, how about putting a paint roller to the graffiti that covers the wall on the side of your office building?
This is great news and a wonderful effort by all involved. But what is being done to apprehend, punish and deter the graffiti vandals and hopefully make clean-up days like this unnecessary?
Very proud of my husband for doing this! I had to work 🙁
I hope more people get involved in the community!
Only a leader who will get into the trenches with the troops is worth following. Thanks JVB!
Great to see the Sunnyside/ Woodside boys and girls club get involved in communtiy civic work in our town…very important to keep our town clean and keep our youth busy with positive activies to do… great job of our councilman to organzie this event and get his hands dirty as well… bravo to all…