The Wizards Unleashed

By Vince Basehart

Walking the alley between 4th Street and the Promenade is like peeking behind Disneyland’s Main Street. Instead of a headless Mickey Mouse taking a smoke break, you find the heroes who keep Santa Monica’s shopping, dining and movie-going Eden pristine, the wizards who keep the magic alive. Beneath Parking Structure 4 is their barracks.

Every night, when the Promenade is mostly asleep, the stores are closed, and the last of the late night moviegoers trickle from the theaters, a small army is unleashed.

Mark Anthony Moreno works for the city. He points to a squadron of motorized vehicles parked at the ready behind him. They look like a cross between golf carts, RVs and Star Wars hovercraft. Moreno, burly at age 43, describes their specific purposes.

Motorized street sweepers are the first to move out. These are the SUV-sized vehicles with giant swirling scrub brushes beneath rubber skirts, scraping away the dust, plastic bags, paper, leaves, food wrappers, newspaper and other debris. The brushes push the stuff into a massive vacuum at the back of the vehicle that has enough suction power to inhale the average kindergartner.

Men wielding push brooms follow the scrubbing beast, reaching behind benches and trashcans for stray bits, and whisking them into the machines’ all-consuming maw.

After the scrubbers pass, other vehicles resembling ice hockey’s Zamboni machines move in. They blast a combination of water and cleaning solvents into the pavement at paint-peeling pressures, and quickly ingest and recycle the liquid, leaving only a clean, shining wake in its path.

Again, a platoon of men fans out, following these machines. They work hand-held pressure washers, concentrating a blast of water and solvent mixture like a chisel onto spots of mashed-in chewing gum and graffiti, rubber tire marks, stains and other tattooed-on blemishes. Delivering 700 pounds of pressure per square inch, the solution can cut through a steel-toed work boot and the flesh underneath it in an instant.

The cleaners assault the parking garages and bathrooms, riding a fleet of nimble motorized carts. They destroy filth with a swath of pressurized hygienic foam, and empty trashcans by hand.

The legendary Ed Greenberg, who recently celebrated his 30th year of service to the city, would have made a great general. He knows his mission. His men love him.

"It runs like a well-oiled tank army," he says of his crew of 20 and their machines. Their area of operation includes the Promenade and from Ocean to 5th, Wilshire to Colorado. "But if someone calls we'll go out to 6th or 7th to clear out some debris," says Greenberg. "We service pretty much any place downtown."

The crew works every bit of the clock but for a small stretch during the wee hours. Even then, they're ready to go at a moment's notice. Greenberg recalls having to respond at 3:00 a.m. to vandals who'd broken the glass on one of the fire hoses and uncapped a torrent until you could "float a canoe down 4th Street it was so deep."

They see things Promenade-goers don’t want to see. They find syringes used by drug users. They find knives. They once stumbled upon a pistol in a parking structure that became police evidence in a crime.

They find bodies. Moreno remembers coming upon the corpse of a homeless woman laying face down in an alley. “At first we thought she was just sleeping. We soon realized she was dead.”

Occasionally there are even “jumpers,” by which Moreno means the tormented individuals who take a plunge off the parking structures. Being a HazMat certified cleaning crew, they even know the right chemical absorbents and methods to use to eliminate these sad reminders.

They remove feces, vomit, blood, gum, soda, filth. They use emulsifying degreasers, environmentally sound detergents. They know the exact amount of pressure to apply to a surface, the right cleaner to use on any given material. They know things we don’t know.

But, among all of the hygienic horrors these warriors combat, there is one that keeps them up at night.