The sign on the front dash board of “Capt.” Bob Terzi’s Yellow Cab says it all: “Please don’t litter.”
A former stagehand from a family of Broadway and off-Broadway stagehands, Terzi, a resident here for about ten years, has been driving a cab in Bayonne for about four years.
Keeping the city clean has become a passion, and whenever he can, he makes a point of picking up litter in between his fares.
A frequent caller to WRXP 101.9 FM radio with clever quips, Terzi has become something of a local celebrity, doing a local cable access TV show among other things. He’s sometimes called “Captain of Clean” for his passionate devotion to cleaning up the city.
“I’m on the radio at least three times a week,” he said. “I make up new lyrics for songs, a kind of Weird Al Yankovic of Bayonne.”
“Whenever I see litter, I stop and pick it up.” – Bob Terzi
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A collector of movie posters from his days as stagehand, he said would like to start a stagehand museum, using some of the classic full-sized posters he still has from the original “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and other films.
It starts with education
He said he has been pushing to educate the public about litter and trash, and has begun a website called Trashcabwebs.com with the idea of making the public – particularly kids – more aware of the problem.
“Whenever I see litter, I stop and pick it up, and when I see a kid littering, I try to tell them why it is wrong,” he said. “I want Bayonne to become the cleanest community in America.”
Bayonne, unlike other cities in Hudson County, is particularly vulnerable to litter because there is no street cleaning operation on many of the side streets. The Town Center Management Corporation has had crews working with brooms and buckets along some of the side streets off Broadway, but the city does not have an alternate side parking arrangement that allows city sweepers to access most of the 60 east-west blocks in the city.
“But it isn’t just Bayonne,” he said. “TV used to have commercials about litter. When’s the last time you saw one of those?”
While litter has become one of his passions, he has also recently joined the movement to save the “To Struggle Against World Terrorism” 100-foot high monument by world-renowned artist Zurab Tsereteli, which he fears will be lost due to a land deal that sold the park property where the memorial is located to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
“I always start my day here,” he said during a tour of Harbor View Park, where other visitors pause to look at the names or the monument, taking photographs of the 100 foot icon.
Terzi is among a number of people who are protesting the relocation of the monument, and says, he has been offering tours of Bayonne – into which the monument fits prominently.
He has been collecting signatures of passengers and others in an effort to stop the monument from being moved. In a few days, he has collected more than 300 and believes he will get a lot more.
“Some people don’t want to sign, but most do,” he said.
With his notebook filling up with signatures, Terzi had gone on-line and has a website where people can sign the petition
http://www.trashcab.webs.com. Click on “Save our Teardrop,” then go to the petition, he said.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.