Alexandra Larger loves Bedford-Stuyvesant for its tree-lined streets, grand brownstones, friendly neighbors and community gardens.
There are just two things she would change: the chicken bones and rubber gloves.
Larger, a user-experience researcher, started a blog called “Streets of Brooklyn” to catalog the trash she’s come across in Bed-Stuy.
“I was really struck by the amount of trash that existed in the neighborhood in really random areas, and I was encountering very bizarre types of it,” Larger said.
Specifically, the 27-year-old would most often come across chicken bones and single rubber gloves — finds that remain a mystery to her.
“A pack of cigarettes makes sense. But you never see people eating chicken in the street, and bones are everywhere,” she said. “And the gloves? I don’t even want to know.”
“It was like a pattern,” she added. “But I don’t see these items in neighborhoods with different demographics like Clinton Hill or Fort Greene. I don’t see them in Brooklyn Heights or even Williamsburg.”
While walking her dog through Bed-Stuy, Larger decided to start snapping pictures of the garbage she’s seen scattered throughout her neighborhood.
There’s the “de facto landfill” at the abandoned G train stairwell on Bedford and Nostrand avenues, the lonely rubber glove spotted during a late-night walk on DeKalb Avenue and the untouched drumstick left on a sidewalk.
“I think there is a race and class issue at the heart of it, in terms of the way the city of New York prioritizes which communities get better treatment in terms of trash pick up,” Larger said.
She said her goal is to bring awareness to the overlooked problems in the area that affect the neighborhood’s quality of life.
“This is a big issue and there’s an environmental message as well,” she added. “There’s a kind of line of segregation in terms of trash and where it exists.”
In the future, Larger said she hopes for community members to contribute their own experiences with junk in their area.
