The Queens Qustodian: One Man’s Quest to Clean Up Queens by Meral Agish
Jeff Orlick, aka Jeffrey Tastes, is best known for his Jackson Heights food tours. But he has a self-appointed side gig as the Queens Qustodian. A one-man clean-up crew armed with a box cutter. The target? Illegal street signs.
No one does anything. Everyone waits. I can’t wait. I just want to do it. Just shut up and do it.
I’ve lived in this neighborhood, in Jackson Heights, for about six years. When I first moved here, I was totally intimidated by it. Just how many people are around and how many different things are going on at all times.
A lot of what I try to do is make it some place that I want to live. And that is by cleaning up all this crap around us.
And so it would be so easy to take it down, so why doesn’t anybody take it down? It’s crazy. So it just takes 10 seconds, but whatever, someone has to do it. It’s so stupid.
I developed the Queens Qustodian character just as like a lightning bolt, as something people could remember. Just as a way for myself to put on this outfit and do stuff. Try to make a little bit of difference.
We all have free time. No matter how busy you are. So I have free time to go around with my stupid box cutter and cut down signs.
People think I’m crazy. Sometimes you have to go up high on like traffic signs to get things. And it seems like a stupid thing to do.
You have make things not acceptable. Or call attention. And then maybe it’ll get done.
Look at this one right here. It’s pretty high up there.
One of my principles is that if you want someone to do their job, you do it for them. And that works. It makes people feel guilty.
I have to get it done. And I have to get it out there. Because every day that nothing happens, I feel like s**t.
I have no idea if I’ll ever move away from Queens. It would be very difficult. I have a lot more to do here.
Jeff Orlick may be the most visible and most involved resident of Jackson Heights.
He’s well known in the New York food world for his tours of local ethnic eateries and midnight crawls of late night food carts. Every year he curates Viva La Comida, a festival that brings together many of the city’s top street vendors into the heart of its most diverse borough.
To make a living, Jeff gets up in the wee hours to work the control room at CBS. But he still has what seems like limitless energy — and if you talk to him, you quickly get a sense of how his mind works. It’s a mile a minute, but with enviably good ideas. A momo eating contest to highlight the traditional dumpling of the area’s growing Himalayan community. An oyster book and essays about food culture. A TV show that would match guests with the food they most dislike, a kind of dating game for picky eaters.
And the list doesn’t stop at food. One of Jeff’s other interests, neighborhood accountability and clean up, gives him the same sort of creative energy.
When he’s playing the role of Queens Qustodian, he wears a one piece jumpsuit and a hat customized by the graffiti crew that was previously behind the Five Pointz graffiti Mecca in Long Island City.
He patrols the neighborhood with a can do spirit that’s both nervy and nonchalant. He’ll use a car jack to break the lock on a long abandoned bike chain. He’ll slap “you park like an asshole” stickers on cars that have parked with their rears jutting out into the street. Or he’ll shimmy up a highway sign to cut down illegally posted street signs.
All just to make the streets a little cleaner, the neighborhood a little nicer.
