. >> i have been coming to the pool for a long time now. it is nice they are sweet. >> in the aquatics center they are very committed to combining for people in san francisco. and also ensuring that they have public safety. >> there are a lot of different personalities that come through here and it makes it very exciting all the time. they, their family or teach their kids have a swim. >> of the gem is fantastic, there is an incredible program going on there, both of my girls have learned to swim there.

it is a fantastic place, check it out. it is an incredible indication of what bonn dollars can do with our hearts and facilities. it is as good as anything you will find out why mca. parents come from all over. >> there are not too many pools that are still around, and this is one-stop shopping for kids. you can bring your kid here and have a cool summer. >> if you want to see some of the youth and young men throughout san francisco play some great pickup games, come wednesday night for midnight basketball. on saturdays, we have a senior lyons dance that has a great time getting exercise and a

movement. we have all the music going, the generally have a good time. whether it is awkward camp or junior guard. >> from more information visit . >> all right. good morning everyone. how about a big hand for our dancers? i can't hear you.

[cheers and applause] yeah, give it up to them as they head back to the hilton. let me begin by thanking all of you for coming out today. it's such a beautiful day in chinatown, is it not? i see larry excited to go clean. first of all i want thank all of you for coming out. it's very important and from our department, the department of public works. we are so excited that you guys have come out today to join hands with us to keep our city clean and green, and every year for the chinese new year we always hear and the chamber of commerce and all of the chinese organizations here always work with us to make sure that they bring a lot of people out to help us clean the community so thank you everyone.

all right. also earlier this morning our agency has been all over chinatown preparing for the chinese new year's festivities. there are so many events and chinatown is the mag nent of bringing tourists into san francisco and we have to do our part and there is no way that our agent or rec and park or all of the agencies together and get the city cleaned and your extra hands are very much appreciated so give yourself a hand for coming out and keeping our community clean. [applause] i am going to introduce someone who i call a cheerleader of neighborhoods and someone that taking care of neighborhoods has been his priorities, and also former director of public works but now our mayor ed lee. please welcome him. >> thank you muhammad. good

morning everyone. i want to thank muhammad and the entire dpw crew. you know muhammad he's going to be the grand marshal this year at the parade. all right. i can just visualize him. he will say he doesn't have to piece a garbage up because he's the grand marshal and i want to thank you for can i -- kicking off the chinese new year and valentines day. muhammad where is my flowers? >> [inaudible] >> i want to say thank you to all of the community groups that are working together with our departments to make sure that

our neighborhood here, not only chinatown, the entire district is clean, ready for not only valentines year and the new years and there is going to be a lot of celebration. today we have the flower mart and you will see people buying all of the symbols of happiness of welcoming in the new year. i want to give a hearty thanks to the chinese chamber of commerce who are here today. thank you very much. [applause] eddy raise your hand. i see a lot of the chamber members here and i wanted to thank the chinese benevolent association who are here and thank you to all of the departments here represented. how about a hearty hand for these department ?ses yeah and we have our special guest that are performing all day long. they're going to

remind everybody not to trash the place, make sure all of the tourists and people coming from neighborhoods enjoy the great few weeks coming up. make sure they are also keeping the neighborhood clean. i want to congratulate again introduce our new direct supervisor julie christensen for being here and the hilton and a big sponsor of these teams and always here and making sure the youth is working together with our businesses. i had the pleasure of being able to join all of you at the different events the next few weeks. i also want to say we're working hard together with the supervisors, with our office, with the neighborhoods, not only to do more housing, but we got to keep our streets safe. today when we're cleaning the streets make sure everybody who is

volunteering pays attention because dpw and all of the agencies and rec and park we're making sure anyone that drives big trucks in and out of the district whether delivering all of these goods or dog construction like they're doing on this public restroom that will be finished very soon. no matter what they're driving whether in a city vehicle or truck or they're delivering great goods or they're the big trucks we're training everybody to be safe. watch out for pedestrians and what i ask is that pedestrians big and small are also looking both ways and making sure they're safe. we invite a lot of people on our streets and our sidewalks. we just want to make sure the number one thing is everybody is safe. this is important to us because without your help, without your safety you have nothing else to share and we're all about sharing more prosperity in the city. we want to build more housing. we want

to make sure that the low income housing is the best it can be and increase housing opportunities in the city and everyone shares in the great prosperity in the city. we want it here in chinatown and north bech as well. and how about that more house something yeah, we can work on this but during the holidays it's about celebrating the culture and sharing and making sure peoplend chinese folks have a long history here and we want to share it with everybody in the city and i am proud of our public works and the rest of the city departments joining the volunteers. have a safe day today. this is the 19th year? 15. wow 15 years of cleaning. i know

muhammad has all of these statistics and we got rid of the graffiti on the street and i know it because i did them myself and the traffic and the light polls and i want to thank all of the crews and making sure you're safe out there and great appreciation for everyone. i see you out here, the wonderful agencies. there are so many of you and i know muhammad is going to go through the entire list, but yes let's keep volunteering. let's keep asking people to make sure that they respect our communities and let's keep the district clean. this is a welcoming in of the entire year of the ram and let's ram through a wonderful year for everybody. thank you very much. [applause] >> all right. give our mayor another big hand please. so i know you noticed these three guys out here and i know you know what they represent. does everybody know what they

represent? who is the green? >> [inaudible] >> comp post. who is the black? >> [inaudible] >> all right. who is the blue? >> [inaudible] >> recycle. okay. so i want to thank our partner for the clean team, but also leading the nation in this rheology and has been instrumental in making sure that all the stuff that we try to get rid of it goes to the right place and reused and by their leadership san francisco has been able to increase its rate almost up to 80% now. 80%, so we have to go that 20% and that 20% is the hardest to get to, and so you see these guys out here and they're here to remind you to

recycle and put it in the right place. all right. give them a hand please. [applause] as we go from district to district it's always our honor for us to ask the supervisor of the district to come up and say a few words and i know julie has been involved in many, many community projects around chinatown, but as a supervisor for the district this is her first clean team so please welcome her. julie christensen. >> good morning. good morning. as the supervisor it's a special day for me. it's new years. i love the custom of starting new years clean and fresh. it's also valentines which is about love and i think we all love chinatown when we clean and fresh, so today we're grateful to you for helping with

that. my job as supervisor is to act on your behalf to thank people who have made a special effort to make today a success so i don't think we can thank muhammad enough for all that he does for district 3 and chinatown. let's give him a big round of applause. [applause] and our mayor of course who keeps a special eye out for chinatown. thank you mr. mayor. [applause] and all the representatives of our city departments, especially phil ginsberg who keeps the park nice and we're starting on a new project to keep it nicer. thank you. and to rose pack and all of the members of the community who work hard everyday and not just special days that make chinatown a wonderful place to live. thank you to all of the communities, so as supervisor we turn our thanks into

certificates of appreciation, and so this is just a physical way to let people know that we're really grateful for what they do. there are groups that participated today especially on behalf of the community i would like to thank the chinese chamber of commerce for their participation today. is eddy here? eddy thank you very much on behalf of the community. thank you. [applause] eddy, you get two. and let's see do we have a representative of pinuen here? anybody here? you're going to get two norman. you just stay right there because there is one here with your name on it. we're out of order now. here we go. chinatown community development center, reverend norman fong.

thank you norman. [applause] and do we have cyc here? our community youth center. who is here from cyc? the ambassador program, all of the things that they do. thank you very much. and then so thank you to all of the community members. thank you. thank you, thank you. [applause] and then we have our community business partners in this. they contribute in so many ways both financial and support. today we have doris from the hilton here. thank you doris for what the hilton is doing for this event. [applause] can you hold all of that? thank you. and then today we have a special thank you to walgreens. do we have anthony stewart and

shirlee from walgreens. are they here? >> [inaudible] >> it's great. we give them a certificate and we get a check. what a good deal that is, but thank you to walgreens for their support. okay. so that's the end of my job. you guys are going to start yours. thank you so much for your help today and for what you're doing for the community. i will turn it back to muhammad. >> all right julie thank you very much. as you know nothing happens in chinatown without the chinese chamber of commerce and with the clean up events the first stop public works makes is to the chamber so that we can get a list of all the things that people are concerned about, but even more than that when i started by work with the city at the public works department the chamber was able to take me to go all over china to be able to see how they keep their cities clean, and as a result of that

we have learned a lot from china, but also europe and other countries on what it takes to keep a city clean and all those ideas, some worked well in san francisco and helped our department get to where it is. i am the first to admit we're not where we want to be but we're almost there and on our way so with that said please welcome rose park from the chinese chamber of commerce. >> good morning. i can't believe it's only 15 years because the mayor mentioned 18, 19 years. that's how long i felt it has been. i remember the first time we do the clean up i had to raise the money to buy the gloves, to buy the brooms, to buy the dust bin and we clear out all of the suppliers in chinatown and then muhammad told me the gloves

were not industrial gloves and the needles can pick through them or whatever so we learned as we went along and then the mayor got walgreens and also hilton -- then holiday inn to get involved so i didn't have to raise all of the money. then we embarked on the clean toilet program where our members went and painted owl of the -- and remodeled all of the bathrooms in chinatown for all of the restaurants so we could offer the facilities to the tourists, so we came a long way. the only thing that i feel we still need to do is for the city to think of a way to deputize a lot of us so every time we see somebody littering the street we can write them a citation. if i see somebody spit on the sidewalk i issue

them a citation, and let me tell you people throwing cigarette butts around we give them a citation. honesty that's what we needed, and then i do have a book from the police department, but since ed became mayor i didn't want to use it and accuse him of giving me the citation book so instead i choose to carry this cane, and let me tell you it has worked wonders. this morning i used it on a guy in a suit who was about 55 years old when he spitted. i accidentally hit him in the knew with my cane and then i said "you spit" and i tried to avoid it and i hit you accidentally so what are you going to do? call the police? so i can give you a citation

for spitting and nothing irks me more than the garbage around. we're are one of the most densely populated areas in the whole city. plus we have a majority of the tourists coming to our area and we are also situated between the financial district and the hotel row so you can understand the volume of garbage that we produce everyday in the streets, but still our citizens should do their part to keep chinatown clean. thank you very much. i can thank dpw and the park and rec enough for all their hard work. thank you. [applause] >> please give rose park another round of applause because her leadership is unmatchable in this area. [applause] next person i'm going to introduce is someone that many of you know or might not know

is ms. naomi kelly and the city administrator and she is out there ahead of all of us trying to make sure we can raise the money to keep this clean up going so that we're able to buy lunch for you. we're able to get some of the supplies that we need so she's going to thank all of the groups out here today and give her a big hand and welcome her. naomi kelly. >> good morning everyone. well, again this is just a thank you to all of you who are here today who are going to pick up and clean up and remove graffiti on our streets and i want to thank all of our sponsors so first off 76. thank you. starbucks. walgreens, nice water, the emerald fund, recology, the hilton, academy of arts university. pg&e. lesser

cabs. sf clean city coalition. local 261. san francisco's unified school district. [cheers and applause] the housing authority. i saw barbara smith join. juvenile probation program. project 23 trial diversion program. the california department of corrections and rehabilitation. san francisco park alliance. united players. cyc. go care. zoo khai -- sorry. san francisco middle school. all right. [applause] [inaudible] elementary school. chinese newcomer service center. san francisco department of environment. and last but not least san francisco rec and park

. [cheers and applause] back to muhammad. >> all right. a few more people who are in the house that we should acknowledge. i see mr. tom cotton there from the port of san francisco leading the port. i see ms. san francisco in the house. welcome. i see first lady anita lee to volunteer today. i see barbara smith from the housing authority and tom and leading building inspections and make suring they're safe and for everyone to enjoy. am i missing anybody else? oh okay. i don't think he needs any introduction. like with all of our events we're in partnership with many city departments and from day 115 years ago when we launched this clean up. >> >> with volunteers and to keep our city clean a partner that has been with us for every event. we work together side by side. public works is out in

the streets and the plazas but in the parks we have a different team lead by phil ginsburg and please welcome him to say a few words. >> good morning. let's pick it up. it's beautiful. we're going to clean. so before i begin i have a very, very special, special announcement. today i want to everybody to know that the new head of the san francisco park patrol is rose park. congratulations rose. you start work on monday. >> [inaudible] >> well, not only is it the new year it's also valentines day and at the san francisco recreation and park day we call it "love your parks day" so thank you for being here and partnering with us to keep our

streets, our neighborhoods and our beloved parks clean. fort smith square is our -- fort smith square is the holdest park in the city and we must treat it with respect and thank you for keeping these areas clean. i want to give a shout out and a person in charge of the parks is the zach taylor and he is leading a crew today and if you're not lucky enough to clean with us you will get to do worm casting. now that is cool. really. so today we're celebrating the year of the ram which is really fitting because the ram is known for some very important characteristics that apply to our park volunteers. they're generous, a strong sense of community and a special affinity for beautiful things.

we welcome 184,000 hours of volunteer time including you so our profound gratitude for being here today and let's go clean. thank you everybody. >> all right. are we ready to go clean? are we ready to go clean? >> yeah. >> so we have one more event before we go clean and that is the fire works and the mayor and the team here will go down the stairs and go over there and light the fire works, but a couple of things i want to say before we go down there the first is someone who i forgot to acknowledge who has been with us not just in person helping us, but making sure that they write a check to support these events. walter wong and his company. please give him a big hand. he makes sure events go smoothly. when we need anything and can't find it we call on walter and

he makes it happen and please a big hand for walter and his contributions. and the second thing when you're out there today please work safely. it's the number one priority. in 15 years we didn't have one injury. if you see something that you do not feel you should be touching or something of concern to you look for someone with a vest or in your team. someone wearing a public works vest or park and rec vest will advise you on what to do. that's a simple rule. and enjoy and don't forget the 15 years of clean teams and we come back here and share stories and break . thank you very much for coming out. i very much appreciate it.

(fire works).