Bushwick Urban Archaeology: Roof Tar
Under a good portion of my yard, just a few inches down, are several large expanses of roofing. Plants seem to have no problems thriving around them, but they have to be removed to get to the knotweed roots lurking underneath. When you bend them in half, you get a strong whiff of tar as fresh as the day it was slathered on. Because the trash men don’t take bags that weigh more than 60lbs (especially on days when the trash men are trash women, *grumble*), we have to break these up into 2-foot sections and place each one in its own bag. It’s basically a mini environmental disaster in every way. The only debate is whether the roofing is an older roof from the current house, or from the house that burned down which occupied most of what is now the yard. That will take more research.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I’ve come to the conclusion that you never actually had any ‘authentic’ dirt in your backyard. Just decomposed layers of tossed away stuff that pretends to be dirt :p
June 24th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Oh I came to that conclusion long ago — the “dirt” in the yard is just several years of decomposed knotweed that grew up through the trash.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Found Jimmy Hoffa yet?
June 25th, 2008 at 10:41 am
hey is that true about the 60lb limit on trash?
June 25th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Yep. They’ll take a thousand bags of trash under that, plus up to 6 bulk items every trash day (which is awesome). But any bags over 60lbs, if you have a jerk or a weak-ass for a trash man that day, they will leave them.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
You know, they have to lift those bags, they don’t just float into the garbage truck, a 60 lb limit per bag does not seem very outrageous to me.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:22 am
I know they have to lift the bags, but *I* carry each bag from the back yard like 100 feet through the house to the curb. You’d think a big burly garbage man could toss it 3 feet max into the back of a truck. Plus, they get paid. Plus, they take 1000lb bulk items.