The Golden Job

Five men stood inside Washington Square Fountain, heads bent, intently staring inside the open water fountain basin, debating their next move. Around them lay fishnets, grates, hooks, screws, buckets, screwdrivers, a grey trashcan, 200-meter yellow hoses, and gloves. Should they wait for their buddies to finish cleaning the pumps a few hundred feet away in the basement of the Comfort Station Building so they can use that water, or should they go ahead and take the water they needed now?

Every so often, a young skateboarder would skate awkwardly in and around the five men and up and down the fountain stairs. Though it might have seemed annoying and a reckless thing for the skateboarder to do, the men did not appear to mind. They talked away and deliberated some more, seemingly oblivious of their surroundings. While the others discussed, one of the men started taking pictures of the main jets inside of the fountain. Another man knelt on the ground and started cleaning the drains around the fountain's basin. Out came an iPhone, a crack pipe, an apple watch, a wallet, a lot of plastic trash, a mid-side cobblestone—the men wondered how this got in the drain—and a quarter. Finding money always got the men excited. They once found up to $10 at another park.

The park was beginning to fill up. It was a warm Spring morning, and the sun was high in the sky. All around the men, activities were unfolding. A man sat at his piano in the middle of the park and played a song; bystanders stopped to listen and cheer him on. Tourists stood in front of the Arch to take memorable photos; college students sat on the lush green grass studying or enjoying the warm spring weather. Inside the fountain, the men pondered.

Finally, one of them, Matt, left the group and walked away to stand on the steps of the fountain, facing Fifth Avenue and Washington Square Park North. He carefully studied something near the Arch.

"We should use the other one on the other side of the park," Matt said, turning away from the Arch and pointing across the park to Thompson Street. "That one is way closer and would be easier on us."

These men weren't just anybody. They were New York City Plumbers who worked for the Parks Department. 12 men were responsible for the plumbing in the 1000 and more parks in New York City. Five of them were on this Washington Square Park job.

Their job today was cleaning and turning on the fountain. Unfortunately, they were being held up by dirty pumps that needed cleaning. Every fall, the men shut down the pumps that supply water to the fountain and leave them open to keep them from bursting when it freezes during the winter months. Then, every spring, they must clean out the dirt accumulated in the pumps underground before turning on the fountain.

Unfortunately, one of the men, Charlie, says cleaning the pumps "can be a bitch” especially when someone must go down in the pit where the pumps are. A few men were down there now. "There's no air down there," Charlie said. "It's hard to breathe. Can't really move around."

The men above ground decided not to wait on their buddies underground. They connected a 200-meter yellow hose to a water hydrant that sat outside the south side of the park, opposite Thompson Street and power washed the fountain drains.

Charlie calls what he does "the golden job of plumbing." He has been a plumber for the city for three years and loves that the job comes with a great pension, plenty of time off, and working outside every day. It’s a different pace from his old job working as a plumber for a private company, where he was “stuck in a building every day and had no benefits.”

"This isn't like an everyday plumber's job like fixing the sink, or how most people envision plumbers with plungers fixing toilets. That's not what we do. We do a lot of water mains and street mains. This fountain is going to go up like 40 feet in the air and that involves a lot of controls, pressure pumps, and booster pumps. It's pretty intricate. It's a niche job."

While Charlie loves his city job for its "irregularity" and the many benefits it provides, Matt who has been on the job way longer than Charlie hates that the job also comes with fixing park bathrooms.

 "Man, the things we see in these bathrooms. People try to flush wigs, wallets, crack pipes, all sort of things. One time a huge belt got stuck in the house pipe because someone tried to flush it. ‘Why would you flush a belt?’”

Matt was not exaggerating with his description of park bathrooms. The Washington Square Park bathroom was no different. The female bathroom had three stalls. One was in use when I went in. The other stall closer to the door was open. It looked like someone had diarrhea in there. I immediately regretted my journalistic urge to investigate the dirty park bathrooms. I ran out of there as fast as I could.

"See, I told you. The bathrooms are always just nasty in these parks," Matt said. 

The men finished cleaning the drains around the fountain, placed the fishnets back into the basin, and used the hooks to lift the heavy grates, placing them back onto the basin, careful not to destroy the head of the pumps. The fountain was clean again. It would take four hours and 32,000 gallons of water to fill the fountain.

Onwards the men marched, to finish cleaning the underground pumps and get ready to turn on the fountain.