Editorial: New York discovers Chicago-style trash

On Monday, seemingly oblivious to the inherent hilarity, a serious-faced New York Mayor Eric Adams rolled out a wheelie bin before the cameras, picked up a tied bag of demonstrative trash, opened the lid of said wheelie and, wait for it, wait for it, placed his trash in the can and then closed up the container. He did so with all the mayoral gravitas he could muster.

This, in New York, counts as radical progress led by a can-do leader. Here in the Second City, the news conference looked like one of the sketches at our famed comedy theater, as was born of New York condescension.

For eons, Manhattanites have put their trash in plastic bags and shoved them (or had their supers shove them) out on the sidewalk. Walk down 45th Street at midnight and you’ll have to pick your way through growing mountain ranges of heaped-up garbage.

This has only persisted because the Gotham equivalent of Chicago’s famed “Streets and San” comes by daily, in theory anyway. But it’s still absurd. And unsanitary. And undesirable, unless you happen to an entrepreneurial scavenger.

Adams’ news conference was an attempt to humanize the wheelie in a city that does not know them and thus mistrusts their presence.

They might block a bagel shop doorway, diverting pedestrians into the street. They might take away a precious parking space or occupy a loading zone. They might, well, get in the way.

Why does New York face this absurdity? Simple. Hardly any alleys.

So as property tax bills arrive in many Chicago mailboxes and we collectively whine about one problem or another, it’s worth also noting our good fortune that 18-foot-wide alleys have been part of this city’s physical infrastructure since its beginnings. Sure, there are a few exceptions, especially on the Near North Side, but thanks to the forward thinking and careful platting and research of Daniel Burnham, Edward H. Bennett and others, you will still find alleys behind more than 90% of Chicago’s residential streets. Therein, kids play, home mechanics tinker, dogs pee, CTA trains clatter, well-fed rats scurry.

Few put their trash out in Chicago; it stays out. Hidden away in the back. And there may it rest until reaching its final place of repose.

So, sure, we’re impressed that Mayor Adams stands tough against the oppositional forces he clearly worries are girding for battle with the wheelie.

But he could just have suggested that everyone move to Chicago, where we solved this problem more than 100 years ago.

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