Reykjavík Grapevine - 31.07.2015, Blaðsíða 40

rauða húsið
r e s t a u r a n tEyrarbakka
“Very good food,
excellent service
and a very friendly
restaurant.”
“Amazing seafood in
this little town...”
“Not to be missed. Food fabulous and
staff wonderful ... This spot is worth the
trip to the small village alone.”
raudahusid.is
Búðarstígur 4, 820 Eyrarbakki • tel. 483-3330
open for lunch & dinner 7 days a week
1
1
Selfoss
Hveragerði
Eyrarbakki
to Blue Lagoon
ca. 50 min.
to Reykjavík
ca. 45 min.
to Þingvellir,
Gullfoss, Geysir
ca. 45-60 min.
39
“One of the best
restaurants in Iceland.
Fresh lobster, amazing
cod fi sh!!”
Hreinsitækni, the city's street clean-
ing contractor, has the onerous task of
transforming downtown Reykjavík from
a Dionysian ground zero of puke, shit,
and glass into a saccharine city centre of
stuffed puffins, affable trolls, and Scan-
dinavian charm. This Sunday morning
they've allowed me to take a front row
seat to the cleaning routine. “There's nev-
er any peace on the weekends,” Hrein-
sitækni employee Davíð Stefán Vigfússon
tells me when I meet him in Lækjartorg as
the late night munchies trucks are closing
shop. On several occasions, he tells me,
drunk people have tried to climb into the
sweeper. Tourists, by comparison, are far
more docile, if not somewhat heedless of
the heavy machinery crawling indiscrimi-
nately over the sidewalk.
Don't forget to
brush your streets
Davíð drives a small street sweeper—a
bright orange vehicle, about as wide as a
golf cart and twice as long. It has three
circular brushes: two under the cab, and
one on a mechanical arm controlled from
within the cab by a device that resembles
a joystick. The brushes work in tandem to
steer flotsam and jetsam under the vehi-
cle, where the greedy maws of a powerful
vacuum inhale anything that comes their
way. With a windshield that extends to our
feet and doors comprised entirely of win-
dows, the cab is specifically designed to
maximize visibility.
As he begins to sweep, he outlines
the cleaning process for me. In the off-
season, two mornings of cleaning (Satur-
day and Sunday) are enough; but in the
summer, a crew of six people, operat-
ing five vehicles, works four-hour shifts
seven days a week to keep downtown
squeaky clean. If this operation seems
small, the final haul is nothing to scoff at:
each weekend, Hreinsitækni removes as
much as fifteen tonnes of garbage from
Reykjavík's streets. On weeknights, since
bars and clubs close at 1am, the cleaning
crew can sweep through, unseen, in the
morning's earliest hours without having to
weave through sloshed throngs or tourist
mobs. On the weekends, however, when
partying can (and does)
continue into sensible
waking hours, the pro-
cess can't begin until
six, when Reykjavík's
most resolute bacchants
have begun to retreat
into private homes. As
I discover, this timing is
hardly ideal: by seven, a
steady stream of tourists
is already pouring out of
hotels and Flybuses onto
the streets Hreinsitækni
is tasked with scouring.
Purging parade
The operation proceeds through Reykja-
vík's main streets like a lonely, unhailed
parade. A large water truck lumbers
down Laugavegur, Bankastræti, and Aus-
turstræti towards Ingólfstorg as a worker
walks alongside, spraying trash into the
middle of the street with a high-power
hose. A big street sweeper follows, slurp-
ing up the trail of trash collected by the
water. Two small sweepers prowl the
pavements and public squares, getting
into the nooks and crannies inaccessible
to the larger junk-sucking juggernauts.
One covers the upper area, comprising
Laugavegur and its environs; the other
cleans the lower regions—Lækjartorg,
Austurvöllur, and Ingólfstorg. (This latter
area is Davíð's domain today.) Meanwhile,
a man driving a tiny cart clears grassy
patches and hard-to-reach spots with
a suction tube resembling an elephant's
trunk.
Five minutes into the ride, I feel like
we're in an immersive, bumpy video game.
I imagine a point value for the individual
items of rubbish: five points for a pint
glass, three for a plastic cup, one for each
cigarette butt. I ask Davíð if he tries to get
each cigarette butt; no,
he says, that would be
absurd, but it certainly
doesn't hurt to try. We
sweep along the curbs,
hopping onto the side-
walk and back, jolting
me out of my seat each
time. When we squeeze
through tight gaps be-
tween streetlights and
buildings, I'm certain
we'll scrape up against
something, but Davíð
manoeuvres the vehicle
deftly.
Number two
As we turn towards Austurvöllur, I probe
Davíð about absurd things he's seen on
the job. "Sometimes I see young people
passed out on the benches who've done
number two on themselves," he says. I ask
if the vehicle wakes them up as it sweeps
along the benches, or if he's watched the
kids come to realize their messy predica-
ments. "No," he says, "which is surpris-
ing because the sweeper operates at 102
decibels." (For reference, that's about as
loud as a motorcycle.) There's no such
scene today. A woman stands outside Ho-
tel Borg, smoking a cigarette. As we draw
near, she makes no indication that she'll
step out of the way until we make no indi-
cation that we'll go around her. So it goes.
By eight, a half-cleaned downtown
feels half-alive. Judging by the foot traffic,
it is unambiguously Sunday at this point,
though the spectre of Saturday lingers
in its litter. We've cleared Austurvöllur
and the alleyway to Ingólfstorg; we take
a couple spins in Ingólfstorg, the daytime
haven of skater teens, then do a once-
over on the sidewalks of the surrounding
small streets. Davíð points out that there's
no reason to bother with the trash in the
street—the hose truck and large sweeper
can deal with that. Other items, out of
reach of the sweeper's mechanical arm,
or too big for the vacuum, aren't worth
manually removing. Pizza boxes seem to
be an exception. At least four times, Davíð
hops out of the sweeper to break down a
pizza box and toss it into a garbage bin—if
they're not soggy enough, they're hard on
the vacuum. I ask if broken glass is also
bad for the vacuum. On the contrary, he
explains, it's better than intact glass. Af-
ter he says this, I notice him deliberately
knocking over Víking pint glasses with the
arm and sweeping up the vitreous debris,
instilling in me a certain vicarious satis-
faction.
Trash cycle
Two years into his job at Hreinsitækni,
Davíð has the routine down pat—he'd be
listening to talk radio or music if I weren't
there—but he doesn't seem completely
desensitized to the volume of garbage.
Sure, tourism is a factor in the quantity of
trash, but the primary offenders are locals,
he guesses. Seeing how Icelanders treat
their garbage enables travelers to follow
suit. Still, his tone is far from moralizing.
Trash is a fact of life, profligate litter shit-
shows a fact of a healthy nightlife. Hrein-
sitækni isn't contracted to eradicate the
causes of the weekend morning mess, but
to treat the symptoms.
It's almost nine when I part ways with
Davíð. Within the next hour, the street
cleaning will be done and the trash will
make its way to an indoor collection facil-
ity out of downtown, out of sight, and out
of mind. Sunday will cake a new layer of
gunk onto 101's streets, erased again in
Monday morning's wee hours and again
tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...
Seagulls bicker over a pile of soggy vomit. House mu-
sic and drunk banter pour out an open window. Smashed
glass, cigarette butts, and pizza crusts pepper Laugavegur's
cheery, pastel-painted asphalt. Yesterday's lingering carous-
ers tumble home, ceding the streets to the waterproof tour-
ists of today, fresh off red-eyes and just as disoriented as the
straggling partiers. It's a quarter after six on a Sunday morn-
ing in 101 Reykjavík and the night's accumulation of detri-
tus remains untouched, like a meticulously preserved crime
scene—that is, until Hreinsitækni ehf. arrives on the scene.
Words and Photos
Eli Petzold
I Woke Up
Like This
Making 101 flawless
with Reykjavík's
morning cleaning crew
Reykjavík
Street
Cleaning In
Numbers
15
tonnes of trash picked up
each weekend
87 million
kronur spent on Reykjavík street
cleaning annually
1991
year first cleanup contract
was signed
5,928
hours spent on street cleaning
annually
40 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 11 — 2015TRAVEL