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N: The Eurasia café is located at Brighton Sixth Street and Brighton Beach Avenue. It's the heart of Little Russia. Marina Kozlikina has worked at the Eurasia for the past two years. Everyday, before she opens the café, she does something she says many other business owners don't: she sweeps the sidewalk.
Sound of sweeping the sidewalk
AX Marina Kozlikina
Chyorti chto. Brighton Beach samaya gryaznaya ulica ne tolko v New Yorke, no i vo vsej Amerike, Esli kazhdoe zavaedenie, kotoroe naxoditsya na etoj ulice budut delat tozhe samoe - ona budet chishe.
Translation: It's terrible. I think that Brighton Beach is the dirtiest street not only in New York, but in all of America. If every business on the street swept their own sidewalk, the neighborhood would be cleaner.
N: Unswept sidewalks are just part of the problem Brighton Beach has with garbage removal and the resulting stink. New York City requires that businesses hire private sanitation companies to take the garbage away. Business owners say the two companies that service Brighton Beach don't do a good job and, at just under five hundred dollars a week it's expensive. District Manager of the local Community Board, Chuck Reichenthal, says the private sanitation companies even add to the problem.
AX Chuck Reichenthal
The private sanitation tracks when they do come, when garbage is placed in it, and it is pushed down to make more room, the sides of the van are constructed differently and literally liquid garbage is pushed down the side of the track which creates a stench (18 sec)
N: The Brighton Beach Improvement District, known as BID, is trying to get rid of that stench. Executive director Yelena Makhnin, tries to educate local merchants about how to get rid of their garbage.She sends them fliers with sanitation information, which are often helpful for new immigrants. The BID which is funded by a tax on local businesses, has also purchased extra large trash containers for the sidewalks and it has hired two men to sweep the sidewalks.
AX Yelena Makhnin
It's very expensive project. We pay 4000 dollars a month. From one side, 7 days a week, 7 hours a day seems like enough time but it's not enough time, especially after weekends (14 sec.)
N: Business owners also say the police do not issue enough fines for business that don't get rid of their garbage. Meanwhile, the smell scares away customers. John Bass works at a flower stand on Brighton Beach Avenue, but he says he never does his shopping in the area.
AX John Bass
I wouldn't go to a restaurant or a store if there is odor. If I go to meat market, and there is a bad odor around it, I won't buy meat there. (7 sec)
N: Local business owners say if it weren't for the smell, business would be better. And, for now, all businesses in the neighborhood suffer. Even the ones who sweep the sidewalk out front.
Olya Kuznetsova, Columbia Radio News.