NYC's “Crappiest” Neighborhoods

The doggy-dooiest of them all

Everyone knows some boroughs may be nicer than others, but this isn’t about bad places to live. By “crappiest” we mean the ones, um, with the most poop. 

New York is a walking city – and so many walkers have had the unfortunate experience of stepping in a pile of doggy doo while trying to cross the sidewalk. Maybe it gets smeared on the sole of your shoe and you drag it in your kitchen; maybe you’re clever enough to take off your kicks before you go inside. Either way, it’s incredibly annoying when you have to suffer the consequences of people not picking up after their dogs.

Besides, it smells.

No one has it worse, however, than those who live (or walk) in the Bronx. The “crappiest borough” had 354 violations for unattended droppings last year – more than a third of the summonses issued across the city – according to the New York Post. Mosholu Parkway and Hunts Point Avenue had the highest concentration of complaints in the borough.

But Manhattan’s got its fair share of pooper-scooper violations as well. The borough experienced an 88 percent increase in fines for leaving doggy doo on the ground in the last year. And careful where you step on the Upper West Side; that’s where you’re most likely to find a pile of you-know-what on the street, sanitation department officials told the Post.

"It's on every block every day," Suparna Chakrabortti, a Queens resident who regularly visits her family on the Upper West Side, told the paper. "In the past couple months, it's gotten much worse. I don't remember it being this bad."

How do the other boroughs fare? Brooklyn is second “crappiest,” with 224 fines in 2008 – nearly a 50 percent spike over 2007. Queens proved a little cleaner – 168 fines in 2008 – but its swanky Astoria neighborhood was atop the list of infractions. Staten Island only had 53 citations last year, but that marks a whopping 120 percent increase over the year before.

Pedestrians who don’t have dogs as well as those who do, but bend down to clean up after them, are fed up. The Department of Sanitation is too. It quintupled the fine for inconsiderate pet owners from $50 to $250 several months ago.

Overall, the city was slammed with 909 violations from July 2007 to June 2008 – a 16 percent spike over the prior year – according to the Post.

No matter where you live or where you’re going in the city, you’d better watch where you walk.  

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