New York City has always been trash, if you ask a sour-grapes city like Boston or Chicago. If you ask New Yorkers, they may well tell you the same thing. But it’s not necessarily an insult.
The fact is, the city has a rich history when it comes to things thrown away. From the 17th to 19th centuries, there were laws, which New Yorkers frequently ignored, about when to dump “night soil” (the contents of chamber pots) into nearby rivers. The corrupt Tammany Hall politicians in the late 19th century pocketed street cleaning funds, which severely hampered any efforts to clean up the city. But when Colonel George Edwin Waring Jr. was elected the commissioner of New York’s Department of Street Cleaning in the 1890s, he was so efficient at his job that after he left office no politician was ever able to claim that the city’s trash problem was unsolvable. His street sweepers—whom he outfitted in all-white uniforms—were nicknamed “White Wings.” Charlie Chaplin even played one in the 1931 film “City Lights.”
