'It’s a sloppy, nasty, dirty job'

This is a story of one of those jobs that no one ever thinks about. Who get the city clean again after we trash it. One thinkg that is not mentioned in the article is if the city gets dirtier during a win or a loss. My personal guess is that it is a bigger mess if the Bengals win. What do you think?

---

When the Bengals game began Monday night, so did the cleanup.

As the players gathered on the field, four workers took to the parking lots surrounding Paul Brown Stadium and began a thankless task that would leave them worn out and reeking of stale beer and grilled meat: Picking up after tailgaters.

“It’s a sloppy, nasty, dirty job,” said Rodney Perry, a maintenance supervisor for Central Parking Systems.

Behind him was a truck dragging a trailer – the “garbage barge,” they call it – loaded with some of the broken bottles and crushed cans and the hot dogs, hamburgers and potato salad left over by thousands of football fans. Bags dripped unknown liquids as another worker, John Dickins, tossed them into a giant collection bin.

Tailgaters can produce as much as 8,000 pounds of garbage in a night, said Tim Downey, project manager for Central, which operates the lots for Hamilton County.

Some bag their trash and leave it for the cleanup crew; others have less tidy methods of disposal. As Downey drove through the largest riverfront parking lot Monday night, bottles popped beneath his tires.

Among the leftover debris were smoldering coals, thick bricks of ice and a shrimp ring scattered across a parking space, cocktail sauce included. There were plastic cups and candy wrappers and, under one car, a mountain of potato chips. But most of the trash was beer-related: beer cans, beer bottles, beer cartons, beer rivers flowing into beer puddles.

Workers clear most of the garbage by hand -- a third-party sweeper comes in to finish the job -- and face an unforgiving deadline: the morning.

Downtown employees start filling the lots at 6 a.m.

“It’s a challenge,” Perry said. “I’m glad there are only so many games a year.”