Bringing a bit of color into the new year, by digging through the last of last year’s photos. It’s a classic take by a skilled artist. Three colored outlines, internal shading and highlights, arrow quotes and a two toned background — there’s a ton of good work going on in this piece. The shape of the lettering gives it a good flow too. Here’s hoping this new year is filled with lots of color and flow.

Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan.

Putting “preserve” back in the phrase “nature preserve”

Read last year’s post or view the updated photo gallery.

It would seem that this is becoming an annual report which is somewhat funny and also somewhat sad. I do like the aspect of reporting and in this age of propaganda, distortion and denial, it’s more important than ever to show the proof. The idea of an “annual report” is funny to me as it reminds me of the how it all started and the “local archeology” tagline. It’s a bit of dark humor pulling us out of the dismay. There is no corporation here, no investor relations, no government agency requiring a report of my activities. There’s just an art project tied onto the back of a hike while cleaning up the neighborhood.

So how did 2025 go?

The year was both more active and more focused. Last winter when the snow covered everything hiding man’s many sins, I used the time to scout for areas that needed attention. Turns out, this was time well spent and come summer, I was able to go back and tackle three or four problem areas leading to huge progress. These areas are spots of commercial dumping and led to an increase in trash volume and trash weirdness. I’ll still need to follow up on them as the forest continues to spit out and reveal more trash, but a significant amount of clean up reduced the obvious blight. Disappointingly, I also discovered some new trouble spots which will lead the 2026 adventures.

The Trash

In addition to the usual containers this year, I started using a couple of old masonry tubs on my hand truck to help carry out stuff that just didn’t fit nicely into a bag or bucket. These bins quickly became essential for large pickups in areas of commercial dumping. It’s also worth noting that as I ranged further I actually had to start to use our car. It was too far from the house and the terrain is too rough to physically carry out the trash. There were two car loads in December.

Using the same conservative estimates from 2023, 50 pounds per bag comes out to 2,900 pounds for the bags. For the buckets, using the conservative estimate of 20 pounds per bucket leads to a total of 820 pounds of trash put in buckets. The bins are a bit more awkward due to their shape, so estimate the trash weight by volume is difficult. They were often lighter, but held oversize items to keep them from falling off the hand truck. Let’s go with an estimate of 10 pounds per bin for a total of 330 pounds. Additionally, there’s also the category of the unwieldy and unweighted. Things like truck tires, large pipes or car transmissions just never get weighed or factored into these estimates. It would be cool one day to get an old large farm scale to just drop items onto for actual weights. Maybe one day.

This leads to a total estimate of 4,050 pounds of trash removed in 2025 surpassing the amounts collected in the previous two years. Over 2 tons (2.025) of trash removed from the forest without even factoring in many of the larger items.

Here’s a list of some of the items that jumped out

• Car batteries
• Concrete blocks
• Steel buckets
• Shovel heads
• Appliance motors and parts
• New York and Connecticut license plates
• Children’s pacifier
• Concrete parking blocks
• Car headrest
• Windshield wipers
• Pitchfork
• Styrofoam packing
• Lawnmower handle
• Box springs
• Automotive car seat
• Porcelain vase
• Heating vent cover
• Cast iron pipes
• Plastic green doormat
• Home stereo receiver
• Iron weight from a window sash
• Large truck inner tube
• Electric weed wacker string trimmer tool
• Car and truck tires
• Screen window
• Beach chair chaise lounge
• Carpet and foam padding
• Roof shingles
• Fluorescent light bulbs
• Insulation panels
• Garden hoses
• School bell
• Soccer balls
• Hypodermic needle
• Champagne bucket
• Axe head
• Car axles with transmission housings and drum brakes
• Metal shopping cart

Where’s it all go?

One thing I also wanted to answer in this year’s update is a question I sometimes get from folks: “What do you do with it?”.

For the trash, it easy, just put it out for the town to pick up. The really big, awkward or dangerous stuff gets loaded into the car and taken over to the county’s Household Materials Recovery Facility (H-MRF) which is really…the dump. It’s free for county residents and you don’t even have to get out of your car. Just pop open the back and they pull everything out, but you do have to make a reservation online beforehand. It’s also notable that in 2025, they are now required to track how many tires you bring over. I don’t think there’s a limit, but probably something the county needs to report on.

Alternatively, the town offers a bulk pickup service. It’s a bit random, so you never known when they’re going to show up. You just have to put the stuff out front and wait. They also have more restrictions on what they’ll take (no tires or batteries), so I’ve been using the service less and less. I also think it’s more neighborly to not leave a giant pile of rusting metal out front of my house for two weeks until the town comes by to pick it up.

For the recycling, there’s the trusty town bin and this is where the volume gets a bit crazy. We have a town provided 35 gallon blue wheeled bin for “co-mingled” recycling — basically plastic, metal and glass. In our house, there’s just no way my wife and I could ever fill the recycling bin that size on our own. With the large volumes of bottles and cans I’m pulling out of the woods, the 35 gallon bin is completely full almost ever week. Often times with 2-3 accompanying bags as well. The bin says it has a load rating of 122.5 pounds, but let’s dial that down a bit. If we estimate that the materials weight is 80 pounds and it’s full 35 weeks out of the year, we’re looking at 2,800 pounds of recycling. Subtracting the weight of our usual weekly household recycling of…maybe 15 pounds…and we’re looking at 2,275 pounds of recycling removed from the forest.

Remember kids, picking up the trash is only half the job. Packing it out of the woods and disposing of it properly is often to hardest part.

The Design and Development

There were only a few development changes to the gallery this year. The majority of the effort was in processing and formatting the increased amount of photos. It seems I was much better in my documentation efforts in 2025.

Typography

I swapped out the typeface used for the bold subheads (Canada Type’s Gibson) due to license restrictions when I canceled my Adobe subscription. The new font (Argentum Novus) isn’t visually identical, but it’s close enough to fool most non-designers.

UX/UI

As the page was growing and growing longer, I realized it needed a couple of UI improvements to help the UX. Notably, a few navigation links so that visitors can quickly jump to a specific year. Likewise, since the new navigation links are not sticky and scroll off screen, I added a “return to top” button to allow visitors to jump back to the top of the page.

The links to each year’s blog post were also moved from the page header to under the heading for each year. I also added in some horizontal rules to help define each year’s section. They come in handy when scrolling along as there’s not a lot of visible space between each year’s images.

Looking Ahead

While on my winter snow hikes to scout for trouble spots, I also began expanding my range into another, larger, neighboring park. This one is managed by the county (not the town) and generally, is in better shape, but of course, my keen eyes can find a broken bottle or rusty beer can anywhere. There’s the opportunity that I may start pulling trash from this new park as I just can’t…leave it. But the work on the first park will take priority. There’s no reason to give up before the job is finished. Here’s to making your neighborhood a little cleaner, a little brighter and a little healthier for the future.

Please don’t litter.

View the updated photo gallery

Fresh off Zohran’s wonderful win in the mayor’s race and the well deserved hype about his campaign branding, I saw this piece rolling the streets on a panel delivery truck. Like the campaign, it’s got it’s roots firmly stuck in the orange and blue of the Mets while nodding to the typography of the Knicks. It’s big and bold. In some ways it reminds me of a candy bar wrapper, the sugar filled Saturday morning cartoon inside joke that only the kids understand. I like to imagine it’s the hand of another famous New York resident, King Kong, who is bringing the knowledge to set the record straight.

Midtown, Manhattan.

Sometimes you have to look up. Sometimes you have to look down. As a follow up to the original star I found last year, I just found the whole family rising up across the night (sidewalk) sky. Based on the location, I’m pretty sure it’s a new stencil and not an update where the three smaller ones were added to the original. Still love the pixel art, still makes me think of Space Invaders and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. More sidewalk decorations please.

Midtown, Manhattan.

A phrase that keeps popping up in the culture from songs, to films, to television and now on the streets of the city. Laid down by a strong hand with confident brush strokes to quickly get the message on concrete. There’s plenty of flair too with the arrow rising out of the”N”. Whether we like it or not, the moon will always have a hold on us. Gravity and imagination together to influence us.

Midtown, Manhattan.

A quick illustration with flair and a signature the gives off a vintage vibe. It’s kind of like a modern day Zorro just happened to walk by, win a duel and then slash his message across this pillar. And it looks like The Feather has done it before. There’s a hint of the old tag erased or painted over. But you can’t stop The Feather! (Ping when the TV series starts. I’m in.)

Cotswalds, England

A lovely illustration of a hare sitting in the grass found in a unlikely place. This tree stump was found under an ancient gazebo, quite out of context and unexpected. There’s a bit of condemnation in the eyes that also speaks to the context. A cut down tree with cracks separating the rabbit from it’s natural environment, just as we separate ourselves from the environment, just as we can’t hear the rabbits, just as we cut and crack ourselves.

Cotswalds, England