I’d never had occasion to visit the intersection of Lafayette and Worth Streets in Manhattan before skating past it during the City’s Summer Streets event two Saturdays ago (as well as this past Saturday).

When I did, I immediately noticed the ceremonial name attached to this stretch of Worth: Avenue of the Strongest.

Who are these “strongest”? They are, of all things, New York’s sanitation workers, and were bestowed this honorific back in 1996.

I’ve got no particular quibbles with giving these civil servants a street to call their own. But “avenue of the strongest”? I’m sure strength is a laudable virtue of the garbage collector, but to exalt to this degree seems extreme. The name comes off as vaguely totalitarian, like something that you’d come across in a history of Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany.

[image credit]