Bostonia Rantida

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Barbecue Trash Water

I'm no longer a meat eater (well, fish, occasionally), but I still like the smell of barbecue. I mean, an occasional sniff, or the smell of sitting at RedBones, but apparently in Washington Square, it's all smoked pig, all the time.

This reminded me of my Parks & Forestry days ... here's why:

Back in college, I used to do city parks work in the summers, and those outdoor park BBQs were my hated nemesis. When combined with a day of rain and then high heat and humidity, they stench was just lethal. The trash water (aka trash juice) would be mixed with barbecue sauce and tossed-out meat, and then getting baked for a couple days in the sun? Oh my God, I've never smelled anything so gross. So, if the smell of the smoker on a muggy day is anything even near to that cloying, overwhelming barbecue smell (which I haven't sniffed in about 7 years, but is still causing my nose to wrinkle just thinking about it) of the trash water, then I don't blame anyone for complaining about the smell.

As an aside, trash juice often makes those plastic bags in the barrel too heavy to get out of the trash can ... so you'd have to stick something down there and let it drain out, or maybe tie it up and lay the can on its side, drag it out, and then poke holes in the bottom with your trash-picker (ours were shaped like big aluminum tweezers ... very handy for many Parks situations) and let it drain. Ugh. Sometimes I think all people should be involved in trash pickup at some point in their lives. Maybe you think twice about the state your trash is in, huh? Thank God for dumpsters in the city, man.

Then again, I have to imagine that any really pungent odor, initially yummy or not, would get pretty old after awhile, and after it had seeped into your clothes.

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