Turtle Bay - Newsletter

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Into the category of "some things never change" falls the ever-present scourge of graffiti. What can be done about it? There's no such thing as a permanent solution, but once a year Bill Huxley solicits volunteers interested in making a dual contribution: helping out the post office and making our neighborhood more attractive. Every spring he and a group of volunteers paint over the graffiti on some of the favorite targets of Turtle Bay's "artists": the green storage mail boxes. The U.S. Postal Service is happy to provide the paint if someone else provides the manpower.

Getting a group together to do the job is tricky, however. If Bill calls the volunteers too far in advance, by the time the designated day arrives it is often too wet, too hot - too wrong for painting. And if he waits until the forecast is likely to be accurate (insert your own time frame here!), then chances are that, in typical New York style, many of the volunteers will already have their calendars filled. Such was the case this year, which is how the project came to be done over Memorial Day weekend. On what turned out to be a perfect weather day for painting, an ambitious crew of volunteers painted defaced boxes from 48th to 53rd Streets, from Lexington to First Avenue.

The Doe Fund, which assists in various neighborhood clean-up projects, did the same type of work on the standard blue mailboxes as well as the traffic signal boxes located on the avenues, from First to Lexington.

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The Turtle Bay Association is a nonprofit (501c3) community organization.

224 East 47th Street, New York City 10017
(212) 751-5465
Fax (212) 751-4941