Annual Street Sweep and Some Angels

A toast to a job well done and a very shiny new street.

Every year on the weekend preceding Art in the Park Monmouth Roadies get up real early, head into the street and greet their neighbours with a cache of brooms, shovels and rakes.
The mission:  Spring cleaning of the neighbourhood kind.  It's a pretty good social event as neighbours work side by side to literally scoop up the road goo that has accumulated over the fall and winter months and then take it away to the city yard waste site off of Central Avenue.  Usually about two pick up trucks full. 

There is a second purpose to this as well.  Monmouth Roadies know all too well that there is no other neighbourhood like theirs anywhere in Windsor and they like to show it off.  Next week Art in the Park will draw thousands of tourists and visitors to the area and a great many of them will walk Monmouth on their way to and from the event.  Every year residents get hundreds of compliments from total strangers about how clean and pretty the street is. 

The annual street sweep has become not only an annual tradition but a successful marketing event.    Residents on Monmouth are approached very often by people who are looking to find a home on this unique street.  They drive up and down looking at the homes, some knock on doors and many approach residents out in the street who they think might have some privy real estate information.  On that same note, more homes on Monmouth sell privately every year than through traditional real estate listings.  For a street that only 25 years ago was referred to as the Old Walkerville Moat this branding effort has payed off. 

This year's sweep was a little tricky.  For the first time in the event's history no pick-up trucks were available.   Another big  issue was the  roadwork detour for the Wyandotte and Walker upgrade.  Over the past few weeks Monmouth has been the main detour route bringing a very unnerving amount of traffic and construction equipment up and down the street.  There have been more than a few near accidents.   Residents were concerned about working safely in the middle of it all.  Neighbours quickly worked out a "Plan B".  All road debris was scooped up as usual but packed into yard bags to be diposed over the next few days.  Traffic cones were strategically placed to route traffic across Monmouth and over to Walker Road.  All worked out surprisingly well.

Without Asking the Angels Came

The element of surprise lives on Monmouth.  As the sweep started to ramp up, a coffee cart was delivered to the block courtesy of Taloola Cafe.  A nice, well received  touch.    Soon after that, one of the neighbours handed off some extremely delicious lemon cake to all of the street cleaners.  It was turning out to be a great day in the hood.  And then it got even better.   Around noon, as the sweep was successfully winding down and the street was looking absolutely spotless, a few troops were hoisting martinis and brooms  near the corner of Monmouth and Niagra .   A city yard waste truck making its way back to the depot stopped and the driver asked what was going on.  Within seconds he and his partner rounded the block , picked up  all of the yard waste bags and tossed them into their hopper.   Unbelievable!  What a perfect ending!  Fists and high fives were the order of that event.  The sad part is that these guys will probably be losing their jobs to outsourcing if the current city council and administration get their way.  Hats off to these CUPE members.  This attitude and ethic won't be matched by any outside contractor. 

So, in the end Monmouth Road is once again all spanky, shiny for Art in the Park.  This was our best Street Sweep ever. 

Thanks everyone! 

This Years Pics:  Click on images to enlarge

Friends and neighbours chip in.

New faces in the Hood

Look what fell out of the sky.

All for one.  One for all.

Scoop and Bag.

New Roadie growing in the patch.

Socializing on a fabulous day.