Standing behind a table covered with bags, work gloves, and trash grabber sticks at the end of Niagara Avenue and the beginning of the pier, Sarah Windy gestures over her left shoulder toward the beach. “We’ll start there in the pier parking lot and move down Newport to Bacon and then the alleys. Ready? Let’s go.”
Windy picks up her five-gallon bucket and starts walking down the pier with her 13-year-old son Brian Hollingshed. The other 15 or so volunteers are still meandering around until they spot her and start to follow. Windy’s down the steps and picking up litter before the rest of the pack catches up.
She leads, they follow, and soon their crew, made up of young and old, tall and short, Ocean Beach natives and the recently arrived, are filling their buckets with bottles, bags and butts – lots and lots of cigarette butts.
In fact, it all goes back to butts. One Sunday in January, Windy parked her car on Newport Avenue and noticed a cigarette butt, and then another, and more, and then other pieces of litter. Soon she had a plastic bag filled with trash, and she hadn’t ventured more than 10 feet from her car.
“We’re always complaining about things that we don’t like so I thought it was important to not just complain but to take action,” she said. Inspired “to make a difference and do something positive for our community, which I love so much,” Windy started the weekly Sunday Sunset Cleanup.
With a hearty endorsement and help from CSI-OB (Cleaner Streets Initiative Ocean Beach) chairman Greg Crowley, the Sunday Sunset Cleanup events started in February and have been growing ever since.
“I felt that this was something that I could do and, by being out there as a group, maybe show visitors that it’s not OK to litter,” Windy said.
The group meets at 6:15 p.m. (or usually one hour before sunset) on Sundays at the end of Niagara Avenue where buckets, gloves and grabbers will be available. From there, Windy usually has a plan of where they will concentrate their efforts. One week they went down the cliffs to Santa Cruz beach, on Easter Sunday they took on the San Diego River estuary, but it’s most often in the areas that receive the most visitors.
“On Easter people were leaving messages on the group’s Facebook page (BTW: Sunday Sunset Cleanup) saying they were in town and wanted to help out,” Windy said. “We ended up filling a pickup truck with garbage collected from around the river.”
Last Sunday the crew got down and dirty in the pier parking lot, Newport Avenue, and several alleys on the way to Bacon Street.
Near the pier, a man in a Padres jersey, who was using a selfie stick, noticed the commotion and asked what was happening. After learning about the cleanup, he put down the selfie stick, put on some gloves and decided to join the crew.
“It really makes me happy when different people come out and take the time out of their day to put some effort toward making Ocean Beach a better community for all of us,” Windy said. “The great thing is, it’s just a little effort from each person, and the result is huge.”