Explorations

I live in Mill Basin. That is around Kings Plaza in Brooklyn. There are brick houses, trees, and a few buildings. However there aren’t any buildings over three floors other than the local elementary school.

My neighborhood has to leave their Garbage with or without pales. It comes every Tuesday and Thursday. You can see the pictures how people have left their garbage outside their houses. About a mile away from my house is a garbage dump. I’m not sure if my garbage is taken there or not. Another location could possible be the lake. It literally smells like garbage. Everyone also tells me that they city likes to dump their garbage into it. Therefore, in my area, there are only two waste sources.

I have had problems with squirrels for the past 4 years. In my living room, there is an Air conditioner. It was a lovely one. It’s underneath my window so I don’t have to take it out and put it in every summer. That is when the squirrels attacked. They ravished through my Air conditioner, breaking it down enough that it could be their home. Because I live on the 3rd floor of a sharing family house, I can’t go outside and close the Air conditioner without a latter of some sort, nor can I take it out because it’s too heavy. So, I had to deal with the treacherous squirrels until I had finally gotten a latter. I plugged the Air conditioner with a piece of wood. After that, the Squirrels got restless. They banged on windows in the middle of the night, and randomly at day. I wish I was making this up. It got to the point where we had to put up electric wires around all the windows. We tried to call the city if they could do something about it. However, they said they couldn’t do anything. The wires slowed them down, but sometimes they still would come by the windows. They simply stopped after a few months. The difference in the Borough Hall Park and my house was that I wasn’t supplying them with food. After pulling up my Air conditioner they should have left. Instead they stayed with some type of ruthless spiteful agenda. Both are similar, the reading from the first and second assignment because they’re both in New York. New York City is notorious for it’s Rat problem. However in the first story, all they were going to do was put traps and baits. In the second one, they put poison. Apparently, the poison is the one that actually worked. This shows that more can and should be done pertaining to New York Subways.

I live in Brooklyn, but my neighborhood is filled with White and Asian people. My block is pretty clean but if you walk a block down there are many fish markets and grocery stores. Theres also a subways station and a bus stop but even with all this stuff around there aren’t any rodents and its a pretty clean area. People liter but not so much and in front of the stores and supermarkets the workers broom and wash away the mess. I never seen rodents around my area because everyone around keep there part of the block clean. (sorry Professor I’m not sure how to upload the pictures I took but I will definitly do it soon).
 

The local environment i chose was 1860 grand concourse; its very far from city tech but overall its practically clean in each side, except for that random box i found . the community is made of of blacks and Latinos and if your lucky other ethnicity’s. I don’t know much because i recently moved, just that they like too play really loud music at 10 at night that prevents me from sleeping ( why usually fall asleep in class) . There are no trash on the floor and if there was people clean after themselves. there no trash cans in my block only two blocks away from where i live. their are no rodents roaming around the building as far i can tell.

Five of these images were taken around my neighborhood, Washington Heights in Manhattan, while one of the images was taken in the Bronx, where I work at. Around my neighborhood, there’s an Ecuadorian restaurant next to my building, Subways, two bakery shops, six grocery stores, Burger King, McDonald’s, three pizza shops, two chinese restaurants, and around five other restaurants. Around where I work, there’s also a McDonald’s and around four to five other restaurants. I’ve noticed that inside the trash cans, there are lots of bottles, bags of chips. pizza boxes, chicken bones, and other food item wrappers. On the piles of trash that are left on the sidewalk were storage boxes where food would arrive to restaurants and other food locations. I’ve noticed that restaurants around my building dispose old oil in the garbage bags. As seen in one of the pictures, as the garbage bags were carried to a location on the sidewalk, the oil was spilling from the bottom of the garbage bags and left a path of oil leading to where the garbage bags are placed.

Honestly, this really doesn’t concern me, but the fact that I’ve seen rats around one of the bakeries around my neighborhood and rats coming out of the 1 Train Station at night recently, I am a bit concern that the amount of rats will spread around the neighborhood and will even get inside buildings. I actually do compare this situation to the first assignment because rats love food and they do appear in food locations to feed themselves. Of course they are smart enough to appear at night where there are less people, therefore possibly no one will see them sneaking around looking for food. They are actually opportunities for interventions that would curb the rodent population, and that is that garbage trucks shouldn’t just be around in the morning picking up the garbage cans. Garbage trucks should be around the neighborhood twice or three times a day so the amount of rats can decrease around garbage bags and cans. The restaurants should be left clean and tidy as well before closing, as well.

My Local environment in my own words would be quiet and clean compared to other parts of Manhattan.That rat picture doesn’t happen where i live. I don’t work yet so i don’t know. And the borough i live is in Manhattan.

It seems like we produce a lot of waste everyday. Instead of having this much garbage we should recycle more so we will reduce the garbage we throw away. There are a couple of environment waste sources like out on the streets and subways. Also it seems like there are more normal garbage bags instead of recycling garbage bags. This shows that our city likes to use or waste a lot of things.

The rodent activity does concern me because it’s disgusting and it is harmful if any of the poison spreads, including the army of rats. One thing is to keep your home clean and throw away trash that will attract rats and etc. Also another thing is that the sanitation workers need to do a better job cleaning up because lately from what I’ve seen they aren’t cleaning our city well enough. I can not compare the environment with the article from the first assignment because the environment I live around is pretty clean, but i know places not too far away that is.

The midwood/kings highway area of Brooklyn is quite a populated environment. I live in the midwood neighborhood, near Ave P, and near a busy street Kings Highway. Due to the busy activity on kings highway and many places to take out/buy coffee, people tend to litter since the garbage cans are overflowing with waste (as seen in pictures).

Garbage cans are the only environmental waste source in my area, and they don’t even exist on every block, which may be a cause for the problem. Being that Brooklyn is a mini-city, the population is high and garbage piles up. Luckily in my neighborhood, the busy, main streets get cleaned up every night. But unfortunately a big problem is my street. I have many large families living on my block, and garbage piles up quickly. Maybe if garbage would be cleaned up more than twice a week on my block, people wont have to leave garbage on the floor. This is a main cause for rodents in the area. There are signs of squirrels and rats in the neighborhoods occasionally, especially found in garbage bins and garbage laying on the floor. Even raccoons have been seen to flee the streets. Maybe more environmental waste sources, such as garbage bins and recycling bins on each block (for paper, cans, plastic). Compares to the environment with the first article, living in NYC brings a fear that rats may migrate to other boroughs and take over garbage areas. If the city would make more of an effort with taking care of garbage, maybe people would too… And maybe spending millions on citi-biking can come after spending millions on waste sources and recycling…

open lab assignment 2

The place where I live is Jamaica queens and it is where I lived most of my life and I can say that it was kind of bad when I first moved here but now it really clean and there is not that much trash you see laying on the floor and if there is people always clean it even if its not on their side. I would have love to get a picture of this open lot a block away from my house it use to be really bad every one would just dump all their trash there and not care and there were some rats but not a lot.

The place where I got most of these picture were from lefferts its the first stop on the A train. I though this would be a good place because there is always piles of trash on the side walks and some of the business that are around there are subway, food stores,  and Guyanese food places. Sometimes there is so my trash there that it starts to stink and the bad thing about it its right next to a bus stop. I don’t think you can go a week without see a pile anywhere around there.

The good thing is all the times I have seen this I never seen any kind of rat around there it not like the trash is open and all over the place it just inn one really big pile.

no I cant compare the article to my neighborhood because mines is pretty clean and there is really no rats the most you would ever see a rat is during the winter time when its getting cold.

I live in Williamsburg Brooklyn and behind my apartment is where you can find The Williamsburg Bridge. Williamsburg is known for their unique restaurants, bars, thrift stores, expensive complex condos and for their common hipsters. I used to volunteer in a leadership Center tutoring kids from ages five through ten in my neighborhood. The apartment I am living in now has had a recent fire about a couple weeks ago which explains why there’s So much garbage Piled outside the building. Which seems to be the only waste sourced that the build has. Most of the old apartments in Williamsburg do have problems with rodents such as rats. Many buildings do have a warning sign for rat poison. The Rodent activity in my neighborhood does concern me because rats are one the most dirtiest animals in the world. The poison can be very dangerous to many children and pets but rats are know for spreading diseases. I can definitely relate to the article “rats mob the right upper Eastside” by Andrew Grossman because my neighborhood has a high percentage of rat infestation compared to a lot of parts in Brooklyn. Williamsburg has many train lines like the G,  the L,  the J and the M train which seems to be a huge factor for why the percentage is so high.

The local environment I chose is the neighborhood I have lived in my entire life, which is Woodhaven , Queens. I personally believe this neighborhood is very clean and safe overall. There are trash cans in almost all corners, especially near businesses and of course restaurants and they never seem to be filled excessively most of the time. The part of Woodhaven that I live in is very close to Brooklyn, practically only a few blocks away. Once you reach that point, I have seen a dramatic change in the street maintenance. The trash cans are filled to the top and in some cases with garbage around them, that have fallen due to the overfilling. In Woodhaven, Queens the trash is picked up right on schedule, however I will admit that you can except to find sometimes the occasional coffee cup or candy wrapper on the ground. But never all around the streets! I am unable to compare this assignment with the previous due to the fact, till this day I have not seen any rodent roaming around the streets in my neighborhood. Nor have i seen them in any train stations, which is mainly because they are above ground, opposed to the underground train stations.