Look trash in the eye
It's time for Boston to own up to the ugly reality: We are a city of pigs.
Drive around town and see for yourself. Up and down Dorchester Avenue yesterday, the gutters were clogged with every kind of debris imaginable: men's shoes, fruit, beer bottles, losing lottery tickets, Dunkin' Donuts cups, cigarette butts.
But it's not just a Dorchester problem. Charles Street on Beacon Hill, the bastion of upper-crust boutiques, low-key restaurants, and gaslit street lamps, looked as if it had just been attacked. A half-eaten take-out meal spilled from a plastic bag in a snowbank outside the
Along Newbury Street, the city's premier shopping thoroughfare in Back Bay, garbage was spilling from virtually every one of the city-owned barrels, tumbling into gutters and sewer drains or simply stepped on by the steady stream of passersby. A
One block away, banners hanging from light poles proudly proclaimed Boylston Street to be ''Boston's Grand Boulevard." Try Boston's rubbish bin, from the amount of rain-soaked, sun-baked litter that had accumulated virtually everywhere.
Beyond even the piles of blackened snow, the city is an absolute mess, every street, every neighborhood. And there doesn't appear to be a soul around who cares, not the people who keep haphazardly tossing their trash in the street, not the storekeepers and residents who don't bother picking up after the slobs, and not the city government, which allows trash bins to overflow and fails to cite businesses for not doing their part.
In law enforcement, there's what's known as the ''broken windows" theory, in which a broken window that goes unrepaired in a neighborhood fuels a feeling of disorder that leads to more violent crime. In the city as a whole, we are suffering from the ''broken bottle" syndrome, in which people believe it's just fine to trash streets already strewn with litter. If you don't notice it anymore, it's because you're too used to it.
The maddening part is that the city should be in a full-throttle renaissance, looking better, and acting prouder than it ever has before. We're at the tail end of the $14.6 billion Central Artery depression that has pulled the ugly green gash from our skyline. Now, when you stand on Hanover Street, you can see straight across to the antique buildings of Haymarket Square, the bright red sign of the Union Oyster House, and City Hall beyond. You also see heaps of windblown litter.
At North Station, it's as if a dark canopy has been lifted with the demolition of the elevated MBTA line. Who knew there was sky above Causeway Street? Yet, at your feet, it's still packed with garbage.
The city has new courthouses. It has elegant new street furniture. Luxury condominium developments are springing up in all quarters of downtown.
Doesn't matter. People keep throwing their garbage into the streets, a finger in the eye to everyone else who shares the public space. Back Bay sidewalks are smeared in dog feces left behind by animal owners who didn't want to get their Cole Haans wet stepping in the snow. On Beacon Hill, some moron was careful enough to leave discarded coffee cups sitting upright on a Mount Vernon Street curb, but not so careful as to find a barrel.
I asked the mayor about the worsening condition of the city. ''It's terrible," he said. ''We have a lot of people who don't respect barrels. I need a partnership."
He also needs to empty city barrels more often. He needs city codes to be enforced against business owners who don't seem to give a damn. And he needs a public relations campaign to change the behavior of the slobbering masses.
Look around you. Right now, Boston is getting trashed.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.
