- April 27, 2024
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Gum on the sidewalks is something everyone is glad to avoid — almost everyone.
Yet there are some people whose jobs involve seeking it out, along with the dirt and grime that gathers in many locations the public frequents in the city of Sarasota, the Downtown Improvement District and St. Armands Circle.
But the public may not be aware of the effort that goes into pressure washing much of Sarasota, largely because that work is often performed in the early hours of the morning, when fewer people are utilizing the sidewalks, said John Cloud, president of Gorilla Kleen.
Cloud said the scheduling, while difficult to avoid, isn’t ideal for the crews.
“I've never been a big fan of making people work at night. I just don't think good work gets done at night, so it's a challenge,” Cloud said. “But we've always had some great crews.”
The city of Sarasota has retained Gorilla Kleen for over seven years. It was the only company to submit a bid for the most recent request for a contract that was executed July 6, 2023.
Once daylight arrives, the overnight work of a pressure washer largely goes unnoticed.
“It’d be nice for the fruits of your labor to be noticed, but I think a lot of people will spit gum right on a brand-new sidewalk and just don't really think about it,” said Gorilla Kleen employee Pete Mohr.
Just one example was the cleaning of a 22-story building, as recounted by employee Zach Imboden.
“The bleach was dripping 22 stories down, and the people, no matter what you said, would not walk the way you wanted them to walk and then they would all get bleach on them," he said.
Caution tape and cones only have a limited effect, explain staff. They can easily be — and often are — ignored.
“I always constantly feel, when a person gets mad, like, somehow, someway, I'm in their way when I'm trying to do something,” said employee Nick Marino.
“It’s weird; we’re more likely to have people complain because you're cleaning the sidewalk and they can't use it than say thank you,” said Cloud.
Strolling through St. Armands Circle, the public may not have thought about how the white marble statues maintain their luster. Yet the regular cleanings the Gorilla Kleen staff perform cannot address the biggest problems.
“Somebody felt compelled to draw thongs on the white marble statues,” said Cloud of one incident.
Those are just some examples of the problems that mainly those who are cleaning the community may be aware of.
The company’s schedule of cleanings in the area is extensive. Each year, for the city, the company performs two large cleanings, taking about a month each.
One extends across Main Street, from U.S. 301 to Gulfstream Avenue along with all of St. Armand’s Circle, and another includes Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. from 301 to Orange Ave. and the Hillview and Osprey area.
Some other areas they clean include the waste transfer station, the Sarasota Police Department Building, essentially all parks, city parking garages, the Sarasota Memorial Hospital parking garage and city sidewalks.
Despite the challenges, there’s a sense of satisfaction in the line of work, though.
“I never said to myself, I want to be a pressure washer when I grow up. Once you get good at it, I'll be honest, it's like an artist painting ... that gets a million dollars per painting," said employee Nick Marino. "It's just, I'm cleaning houses. And it's just as satisfying.”
There are certain challenges in working as a pressure washer, not the least of which is finding the pieces of gum — every piece.
“It pretty much just wipes it right off, but the trick is you have to find each piece of gum,” Cloud said. “I don't care how meticulous you are, you can't find each. It's impossible.”
Once they are found, cleaning them is easy; it just requires a little heat and pressure.
Cleaning graffiti from some of the area’s landmark statues, such as the Unconditional Surrender sculpture after it was vandalized in 2019, poses its own challenges.
Staff will bring different chemicals and tools, testing certain ones in small patches to find out whether they can be applied to the whole statue.
“That's a case where it's paint on paint, so it's a little bit tricky. You have to be clever enough to loosen the graffiti and get it off before you damage the lower paint,” Cloud said.
With the Unconditional Surrender statue, staff said, it helped that the paint on the statue was much more robust than the graffiti that had been applied.
Concrete is not as strong as many might assume, according to Cloud. If one is cleaning relatively new concrete, the pressure from the hose can destroy it, or erode its finish.
The Florida heat is not without its effects on the pressure-washing profession. Roofs grow much hotter than the ground, said Marino, up to 120 degrees due to a combination of mixing chemicals and the sun hitting the roof.
And then there are calls that staff might prefer not to manage — such as when the city of Sarasota calls about human excrement.
“Someone's got to get rid of it. Right?” said Marino.
And even though staff work at night, there’s one location where the activity never stops — Sarasota Memorial Hospital, which is open 24 hours a day, where many people experiencing emergencies will have to interact with the cleaning area.
“In their mind, like, I'm gonna have emergencies, don't try. Don't get in my way. Well, but we’ve got to be here. You have to sort of balance all those things out,” Cloud said.
He said when he first started at the company, everyone was in their 20s, while he was in his 30s. Now they are in their 30s, he is in his 40s, but there are few younger people coming into roles.
Nonetheless, it seems like new people aren’t rushing to fill the roles, according to Marino, with a trend away from blue collar work among younger people.
“I think like any job, once you get really good at it, it’s fun to do," said Imboden. “I say fun because it is fun to me.”
