Shubert Represents at the Great Broadway Sweep

Dustin Conlon, Account Executive

​On September 22, I and several other Shubert staff gathered in front of the Sardi’s Building, adorned with our brand-new Shubert Organization caps, and prepared for our short walk to Times Square. Usually, if you see a group of Shubert employees together, we’re either on our way to a show. This time, around 18 of us volunteered to spend our morning with Andy Cohen to help clean up the Theatre District.
 
I’ve volunteered to clean up parks, paint houses, serve lunch, etc, but I never would've thought about volunteering to clean up Times Square. Don’t we have a sanitation department to take care of that??? Anyway, after a quick walk we found ourselves in the heart of Midtown, where we were briefed by representatives from The Sanitation Foundation (TSF) on our goals for the morning. The Sanitation Foundation is a nonprofit partner of the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) whose mission is to clean up the city and reduce waste sent to landfills. TSF and WE❤NYC partnered together for this week-long cleanup of Broadway, aka “The World’s Most Famous Street.”
 
After our briefing, we were split up into groups. Shubert had the largest number of volunteers out of all sponsors, by far! My group, the majority of which were Shuberts (plus Andy Cohen), started made our way down 47th Street to 10th Ave, then back across 46th Street to Broadway. The general directive was, “if you see trash, pick it up. Unless it’s a needle – please leave those alone.” Armed with utility gloves, grabbers, and bags, we found mostly cigarette butts, discarded snack food wrappers, the occasional piece of paper—the usual litter. We also found a couple of pairs of shoes (are we positive those were trash?), phone chargers, and Playbills (cry emoji). We did find a number of used needles. The TSF team marked the location of the needles and had a special disposal crew for those. It’s sad to think that things like that are usually just lying around such a tourist-heavy, residential, and business district.
 
All-in-all the cleanup was pretty straightforward. It was a couple of hours of labor, and it was nice to get out of the office to give back to Broadway. We were graced with excellent weather, and it really did feel like we were cleaning up our own little corner of NYC. I’m also very happy to share that MOST of the Shubert theatres were spotless, with hardly any litter.
 
My favorite part was getting to share this experience and bond with some of my colleagues with whom I’ve only ever interacted over Teams or by email. I work in the 520 Eighth Avenue office, so I’m fairly removed from the folks at Sardi's. I would absolutely love to have more opportunities to interact with my colleagues outside of the office.
 
Many thanks to Cassandra for putting this together!