Wow! What a mess McGolrick Park has become since the warmer weather arrived. Whatever happened to Graham? He disappeared one day and has not been replaced. It seems that there is no longer any one person solely responsible for cleaning up the trash in the park, and boy, does it show.  It seems that there are fewer trash cans (again, an annually recurring theme) as well. What is going on?!!

I know there are people who will sit and eat and drink and make a mess fifteen feet from a trash can and never once get up to toss anything into it. I know there are moms and grandmas that hold their children’s rears over the shrubbery and let them unload without cleaning it up. Do you really have to exacerbate this problem? How were you brought up? It is one thing when our resident band of roving adolescents destroy benches and trees and start fires in the middle of the plaza. They are kids, and they’re just gonna do stuff like that. But really, adults ought to know better.

And that brings us to the bums. They are back, with a vengeance. NYPD seems to have stopped harassing them. They are once again boldly inhabiting the park, unchallenged. They are defecating, urinating, drinking, smoking, exposing themselves to children and adults alike, brawling, sleeping, making messes and generally being a pain in the ass. This past Saturday I cut my right foot open, rather severely, on the shards of a broken margarita glass lurking in the still tall grass behind a bench (one of those outside the park fence, facing Nassau, where they often hang out). It required irrigation and stitches. I was in the process of picking up a crapload of vodka bottles and beer cans that had been there for a couple of days already when it happened. My bad for wearing flip-flops (never again!), but still…

I don’t know what to do about it. 311 doesn’t help. There is way too much tolerance for them in the nabe, and, especially lately, by local police. Short of becoming a vigilante, what is one to do?

Let me preface this post with the usual disclaimer: I cannot substantiate any of this. At this point, it is third-hand hearsay…

However, a little bird tells me that there has been a community meeting, which apparently resulted from a series of not-so-happy letters to NYC Park Department administrators and City and State officials (all from one person, I believe), about McGolrick park and it’s rapidly deteriorating plant life. Now, it’s winter, and personally, although I had noted some degradation before everything went seasonally barren, I had not thought it to be that much of a disaster. But some people think it is bad enough to make a fuss, and they are probably better botanists than I (admittedly, not a difficult task). So, at this meeting, from what I have heard, David’s name was tossed around quite a bit, and there has apparently been talk of McGolrick Park’s former guardian angel assuming a hands on managerial/administrative role in North Brooklyn, which would place control of the fate of McGolrick’s flora directly into his formerly calloused hands, potentially good news for our nabe’s garden spot.

The folks that have assumed responsibility for keeping the park clean and tidy, and (although not a part of their job description) for keeping the indigent at bay and the kids somewhat in check, have been doing a fine job, particularly in the latter. Graham is awesome and he works very hard and does a fantastic job. But the park is understaffed, and no one that works in McGolrick Park on a daily basis is a professional gardener. It would be a wonderful benefit to perhaps add one or two more people under Graham’s supervision, and to have more frequent visits from a caring gardening staff, guided by David, who knows the park and it’s plants, and their secret lives, so well.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed and see what develops!

I did say I was relaying third hand info. My sincere apologies to anyone offended!