335. CBF 2019

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Cherry Blossom Festival 2019

This past weekend [I am months out of sync. I blame Genji.] was my first greening event of the new season, Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown. We’ve worked it for years now and I have it down to a science. Last year was thrown off by my getting a bad cold and by rain, but even so it worked out. 

I tend to dominate any food area, but this event is large enough -- an entire block of Webster street with seating areas at each end and the center divide lined with vendor booths facing each side of the street -- that I do need a couple other people to help keep it under control mid-day. Unfortunately, I can’t shut down most of our eco-stations at the end of the day because I switch to riding herd on the vendors. On Saturday they got the jump on us by starting to breakdown earlier than we were anticipating. They trashed the numerous stations we put out for them, by tossing in black bags full of unsorted trash (into any of the three bins) and then filling the others with boxes that hadn’t been flattened. And they dragged more black bags to our HQ and even threw a couple on top of the compost dumpster. I caught that guy in the act and made him climb up and retrieve them before taking them back to his area -- with him in tow -- to sort the bags. 

Sunday we (Jonny and I) nailed it. We started shutting down some peripheral stations as soon as the crowd started thinning and quickly shut down all the vendor stations except the one where I was working. I steadily sorted all the black bags as they came in and processed them into a neat pile of sorted bags for Jonny to haul away. Meanwhile our other people were taking down the other stations. I ended up leaving a half hour early as there were plenty of young’uns around to do the final packing up of the truck.

And for one more event, I didn’t kill a vendor or recycling thief -- this is probably the most important thing. There was one “canner,” as the others started calling them last year, infesting the vendor area -- which is literally an island, the landscaped island in the middle of Webster street. I did lose my temper with her when I caught her attempting to tear open the bottom of one of my bags to get to a can or bottle. Dog is not strong enough in me perhaps, or perhaps I’m slipping over to the Dark Side of Dog. Anyway, something I need to work on as it isn’t going to get any better. It doesn’t help that she was always laughing and thanking me for letting her steal our CRV items. I’m thinking of having one of our Cantonese speakers teach me how to say, “I’d have you arrested if I could.” I wonder if that’s in a Cantonese guide for travelers I could find. And I need to “let it go” with the vendors as well. And the idiot event goers who put things in the wrong bins. Giving everyone the stink-eye just doesn’t help. 

Many many years ago, possibly the first year we worked this event, the event organizers took advantage of us to clear out all the junk in their offices. After we had cleaned up all the trash from the event we suddenly discovered a pile of office junk on the sidewalk -- virtually none of it anything but landfill -- that we had to haul back to the dumpsters. But this year we actually got a surprise gift in one of the dumpsters left on the street -- a bunch of wood frames covered with chicken wire. This would be just an annoying addition to the landfill except that the boss now has chickens. We hauled it back to Santa Rosa for it’s new life... no idea what it was being used for before it was dumped on us.

While I haven’t worked since October -- trying to rehab my shoulder -- Green Mary the company has managed to stay busy the entire “off” season. This means we have more of the good people from last season still working. There were only a few unfamiliar faces at CBF. So it was easier to figure who was tossing the wrong bags into the compost dumpster. (These weren’t the vendor’s black bags.) This is just one of the reasons I’m so sensitive to the social problems of seriously intellectually limited people. There’s plenty about what we do that is complicated, but when you have a dumpster full of green bags filled with food and paper, and then think your clear bag filled with recycling or landfill might belong with those green bags, I have my doubts that more training will help. 

There are still plenty of hauling and other tasks that this person could probably handle, but there’s a cost of increased supervision. It was actually worse in the old days when we did table sorting. Sorting requires a fair amount of knowledge and some judgment. Some of us still disagree about certain things, like how dirty a can or aluminum tray can be to go into recycling, or when a cup might be better in compost. I’ve worked with people who couldn’t master the basics. Where I spent too much of my time fishing plastic out of the compost. 

The main reason I’m writing all this is to remind myself how far we’ve come. CBF 2019 was a typical event for us. We were all done within two hours of the event being over. And most of that two hours was spent moving around equipment and packing the truck. In the old days, we would have just been getting busy as the event ended, and would still be at the table sorting for hours -- while still having to move around the equipment. 

The worst event we ever worked -- and the event that would later inspire our new method -- was a Pink Saturday street party where we sorted until almost dawn. Granted, this was an event that ended late and most of the crew was either ill or too stoned to stand, but still... As far as I know, I was the only one to do actual sorting this weekend (slight exaggeration) and that was only for those hours at the end of each day when I dealt with the vendors. Yes, I was roving-sorting all day, but that’s easy -- you just pull out the easy stuff and never have to mess with the worst part of any bag sort, which is the bottom of the bag. 

2nd weekend
Saturday went about the same but Sunday was different. Sunday is both the parade and the final day of the event. We have more staff and the final shutdown involves even more vendor black bags. How, exactly, is a mystery.

Because there was an abundance of staff, after lunch Jonny and I agreed I would stick with the vendors and try to get ahead of the closing-down trash dump. This seemed to be working well as I was collecting bags and even sorting trash at some vendor areas -- something I do at other events but that I haven’t done here before. I foolishly thought the ending was going to be easy. I really don’t know where all the black bags came from but, with a little help right at the end, I got through them. Both Jeffry and Ryan, who have assisted me at HSB were working so I should have tried to get one of them assigned to me sooner, but as I say, the pile of bags was a surprise. Jeffry finally did show up and helped with the last three or four bags and some other people helped haul everything to the dumpsters and close down my sorting station. I still left half an hour early.

Sunday probably was the best weather of the event. The gale force winds of the previous day had calmed down but were still cooling as it was a warm and sunny day. I didn’t manage to see any of the parade, but I’ve seen it before. 

Today is Earth Day, but we -- or at least I -- don’t have an event. Though I do have a dentist appointment. Saving the earth, one dental cleaning at a time.