Petersburgers themselves clean the city. For what?

In St. Petersburg on the roads of a heap of snow, it is difficult to move along the sidewalks due to ice. The authorities cannot cope with cleaning, so some citizens decided to clean their yards and streets on their own.

The famous conductor, Executive Director of The Hat Bar, art director of the Floristic Studio and a resident of the Nevsky district tells why they did not wait for utilities and the neighbors reacted to cleaning.

Arkady Steinlukht

Conductor, Honored Artist of Russia

- I recently returned to Petersburg with a tour in Italy - and the condition of the streets made a strong impression on me, the contrast was striking. On the roads, natural ice, snow removal machines with brushes drive for some reason not in all areas. Then I decided to go out and put the ice even before the entrance to our front line on Litein: it was terribly slippery and it was easy to come out, it was just scary. He took an ax, hung on scrap, from the chairman of the HOA and immediately went.

I did not plan any publicity at all. When I began to stab ice, my wife came out-and says: "Let me take a picture of you." And then for some reason she showed our girlfriend, who without demand has posted everything on the Internet. I myself did not want to call anyone anywhere.

I cleared seven or nine meters so that people could walk [along the street]. This has gone for an hour. This is a long time: I clean the snow in the country - and if you remove the freshly covered snow, everything happens easily. This also works in the city: I remember, they did the wipers in Leningrad, and the city was cleaner, even if there was a lot of snow.

It is useless to complain, in my opinion: people responsible for cleaning no longer did their job - but, apparently, they received a salary. I saw how recently a shop nearby removed the territory next to his entrance, and my colleague said that he climbed onto the roof and knocked icicles.

Elena Yanishevskaya

Executive Director The Hat Group

- We decided to arrange an action for cleaning snow [on Belinsky Street] last week. If something came to mind, you need to do it at once. Everything was organized literally in three days, all participants (The Hat bars, Oliver, St. Martin, “Terminal”, “Minker and Barrel” and Pinch - approx. “Papers” ) agreed to allocate a person from each establishment with his instrument.

Prior to this, each institution on Belinsky - of those who took part in the action, cleaned its piece of territory. But we all understood that this was ineffective, because a person would pass through this cleaned segment - and slipping on the nearest, uncleaned. We constantly saw how people jumped there - we decided to fix it by cleaning the whole street. It makes no sense to call the public utilities, for a long time we saw a janitor only once.

Ironically, when she went to the place of cleaning, she slipped and fell. The work turned out to be hard because at first the guys worked with scraps.

Despite the fact that we called not all bars from Belinsky - simply because we are not familiar with the employees of all establishments, but we had to gather promptly - we took out hot food and fed for free.

In the process, passers -by also joined us, many said gratitude. One of the local residents took us a punch, and this allowed to make the passage even, removing large pieces of ice that are not amenable to scrap. Closer to the end of the action, when everyone was exhausted, even guests of the establishments joined the cleaning.

Cleaning took four hours. During this time, we cleaned about 500 meters of the odd side of the street, that is, most of it.

Now it is much easier for institutions to maintain cleanliness, and I hope that each manager will continue to control the cleaning of their part of the territory.

Dmitry Romanov

Resident of the Nevsky district

- In our courtyard, Lomonosovskaya for a long time practically did not clean: everything was in porridge, ice. To get to the car, it was necessary to use a shovel. Once my wife and I decided to go out and clean the paths littered with snow. In some places there were 50 cm of snow.

Before that, I tried to send an application for snow cleaning to [portal] "Our St. Petersburg." I received an unsubscription - in the end, the tractor drove once, but the snow still remained.

The first time we cleared our yard in an hour - it was very stressful. For the second time, already getting used to it, we coped in 30 minutes. Utilities must rake snow from the yards and remove parking, but if they can’t cope, we must go out and make our city better. Let it take time, effort and means, but it will be more pleasant to walk.

Recently, janitors still cleaned in our yard. But for some reason they decided to put the heaps of snow in front of the cars-so that it was not to leave.

Svetlana

Art director of the ATELIER de Fleurs floristry and decor studio

- We tried all winter to maintain order at the studio: we spent half an hour to knock out the ice and sprinkle the road. But on Sunday, February 3, they decided that we needed to clean the street [Voskova] to asphalt. The day before, my son returned from training and fell. In addition, an old grandfather lives in the front door, who hardly walks with a wand.

I first came out with a shovel. Then the girls from work joined me, we took more shovels and bought Kylo. There was a break during the day. In the evening, two men came to us. The first said that he was uncomfortable when he saw that the girls were cleaning the ice. The second - what he had long wanted, but he did not have tools.

The work was difficult, since we had a small Kylo: it is difficult to break off large pieces of ice. We even joked that everyone represented us fairies, and this is what we are doing. The joining men brought a large heavy Kylo - and the work went faster: they coped in an hour and a half, clearing 20 meters of the road to the asphalt.

Unfortunately, I rarely hear that someone goes independently to clean the streets. Everyone spits, they say “how bad”, but they themselves do nothing. And if someone cleaned, for example, a parking place, neighbors stand on him, using other people's work.

While we cleaned, the guys from utilities passed by - they said that the ice was better cleaned if you pour boiling water from the kettle on it. And went on.

Under the video on Instagram, many wrote to us that we did this in vain, as we pay taxes and at the same time we carry out the work of utilities living on these taxes. I do not quite agree with this: it seems to me that you need to help myself. This winter goes beyond the usual one-some new measures are needed.