Officially Over

Discarded Christmas Trees

Discarded Christmas Trees

Discarded Christmas Trees

Discarded Christmas Trees

Discarded Christmas Trees

Discarded Christmas Trees

Discarded Christmas Trees

Discarded Christmas Trees
Discarded Christmas Trees Around the West Village, Manhattan

Today the big buzz both on and offline was how it’s the end of the holiday vacation. “Today is the real first day of the new year”, they’re saying. It’s back to work, back to getting up early, back on the diet, a new beginning, a new resolution. It’s time to get some real work done. I think the true sign of the end of the holiday is this: discarded Christmas trees. So recently they were lovingly selected, purchased and decorated. Now they’ve been thrown out on the street with yesterday’s trash. I feel bad for them.

21 thoughts on “Officially Over

  1. now that i look at these photos again.. im kicking myself for not snagging that office chair that someone was throwing away!! it looks nice and i’ve been bitching for about 2 years about this shitty $15 ikea chair and the bad things it’s been doing to my back!!!!

  2. oo – that’s kind of a retro office chair. street refuse, although often tempting, sometimes makes me pause. i imagine bums or animals having peed on it.

    i wonder if there’ve been children’s books written on discarded xmas trees? if not, it’s a subject crying out to be written on. oh, the humanity (flora, actually)!

  3. I was just about to say, “snag that office chair for me!” Looks like a nice, heavy, quality chair from the 50’s (?).

  4. What happened to the spirit of goodwill? It doesn’t seem to extend to the majestic pines….

  5. It’s always a little depressing to see all the discarded Christmas trees out on the streets. On the Upper East Side where I live, garbage collection is still sporadic, so some of the piles of dead trees have been out there for almost a week now. I guess there’s no Christmas tree recycling in NYC.

    I’d stay away from the furniture you find on the street. If someone didn’t pee on it, then there’s another reason to leave it where you find it, like broken supports or giant holes in the upholstery. For every story you hear of someone finding a gem in a trash pile there are probably nine others that go “I brought it home and found out why it was trash.”

  6. MulchFest in the parks was last saturday and this coming saturday.

    What’s the deal with the tree without any needles and the really short branches? I saw a similar tree in my neighborhood the other day. Was it still up in someone’s apartment without needles, or did they all fall off on the way to the garbage?

  7. More like the thoughtful owner stripped the tree of all its needles for a) some sort of creative post-holiday art project or b) bagged them so they wouldn’t clutter the trash? Who knows.

  8. You shoulda snagged that chair! In my years in BK, I’ve found a ton of good/decent stuff on stoops (:
    Some of it, you’d be surprised (or not) find their way to the big Salvarmy [ aka “Hipster HQ” ] on Atlantic Ave. 15$ or free? Your choice.

  9. I hate seeing “lone” trees discarded. As bad as the dead trees are, a lonely dead tree seems worse. That tree in the trash with no needles? – a friend in Phila used to get trees that now one else would take – like charity for christmas trees – they really looked awful in her living room. spindly, few needles, starved, a couple of colored balls and tinsel helped a bit but not enough.

  10. there was a tree out on the street and the people who put it there didnt even bother to take off all of the candy cane decorations and tinsel (second to last photo). that was especially depressing. the one that has no needles and is shoved in the trash can by bens just is strange. i found the first photo to be the most sad. i walked down the sidewalk last night that is in the second photo and there are now so many trees piled there that you have to walk on the street. it’s like a graveyard.

  11. i saw a really weird discarded tree- an actual fir (is that spelled right?) with long, long needles. it was weird.

    mulchfest is great. i was running a lot in prospect park this week and each time i passed the chipping site i had to stop and breathe in the smell of pine for a while. it was really magnificent.

  12. You know, I was thinking about this the other day, and realized that if you’re going to celebrate Christmas, the thing to do is be Eastern Orthodox. Then you can just pick up a tree from the street (with hundreds to choose from), and you can take advantage of all the after-Christmas ornament sales…

  13. The office chair reminded me what happen on Christmas day at Richards house ha ha ha
    Dad

  14. This is why I stopped the whole christmas tree thing a few years ago. My parents used to get one with roots and plant it after christmas, but of course you need property with dirt on it to do that, so it just won’t work for most all of y’all in nyc. The recycle/mulching sounds like the way to go though…

  15. I like to think that my tree will help the decomposition of all that trash at the dump. Hopefully a little nature will make all that plastic break down faster … oh … wait …

    I remember a year when I was little that my neighbors got a tree with the roots in a ball. It was all good – except they tree people had dug up a family of mice living in the roots … that later chewed their way out and infested my neighbor’s house! A Merry Christmas indeed.

  16. Appropriately cartoonish (ala Pinky & The Brain), I’m laughing maniacally – that even a word? – thinking about that family of mice. Yes, the most horrible things tend to stick in my mind.

    Zoiks!

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