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Street sweepers
Here's a funny thing that I see on the way to work every Sunday morning: employees of the Caroline Street bars outside sweeping up mounds of cigarette butts, scraping up wads of discarded gum, and hauling barrels full of empty beer cans out of their establishments. Usually, but the time I'm coming through, it's around 10 in the morning, about six hours after last call, and the employees cleaning up look tired, and sleep deprived, unhappy to be out of bed while all the patrons are still comfortably asleep.
I never stick around to watch this professional version of the hung-over college morning clean up, but I wonder if the bar backs and other cleaners "lucky" enough to be assigned to clean up duty form a little post-coital camaraderie. Look at all the beer we sold last night... how'd you do?
On the flip side, perhaps they remain strictly competitive, and don't get into the nity-gritty of a Saturday nights' reverie and spoils. Who knows. What I do know is the number of calls to the Saratogian's "Sound Off" line on the topic of drunk bar flies carousing up into the residential quarters of Caroline Street is staggering.
Caroline Street and the nightlife that centers there is arguably one of the things that makes Saratoga most unique in the capital region, but one can only wonder how sustainable the late-night/early morning last call is in Saratoga Springs. While a hallmark of our community, it only benefits a handful of businesses, while irking, apparently, most of the city.
In all of this, you've got to feel bad for the employees of D'Andrea's and Esperanto's, which have arguably the longest hours of any businesses around: cleaning up at 4 a.m. to the hang-over crowd not yet ready for eggs at Comptons, and then open in time for lunch the next day, while the surrounding bars are still putting out their trash. Gaffney's, with it's lunch business, comes close, but you don't see the same staff there at 4 a.m. as you do the next day at noon, as happens occasionally at the other two restaurants.
But of course, I wouldn't know anything about any of this.
I never stick around to watch this professional version of the hung-over college morning clean up, but I wonder if the bar backs and other cleaners "lucky" enough to be assigned to clean up duty form a little post-coital camaraderie. Look at all the beer we sold last night... how'd you do?
On the flip side, perhaps they remain strictly competitive, and don't get into the nity-gritty of a Saturday nights' reverie and spoils. Who knows. What I do know is the number of calls to the Saratogian's "Sound Off" line on the topic of drunk bar flies carousing up into the residential quarters of Caroline Street is staggering.
Caroline Street and the nightlife that centers there is arguably one of the things that makes Saratoga most unique in the capital region, but one can only wonder how sustainable the late-night/early morning last call is in Saratoga Springs. While a hallmark of our community, it only benefits a handful of businesses, while irking, apparently, most of the city.
In all of this, you've got to feel bad for the employees of D'Andrea's and Esperanto's, which have arguably the longest hours of any businesses around: cleaning up at 4 a.m. to the hang-over crowd not yet ready for eggs at Comptons, and then open in time for lunch the next day, while the surrounding bars are still putting out their trash. Gaffney's, with it's lunch business, comes close, but you don't see the same staff there at 4 a.m. as you do the next day at noon, as happens occasionally at the other two restaurants.
But of course, I wouldn't know anything about any of this.
posted by The Saratogian City Desk at
9:37 PM
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