Eddie Greenberg is the Promenade Maintenance Supervisor for the City of Santa Monica, and he heads a crew that “sweeps, cleans and brushes one million square feet a day,” as he said last Friday, June 29, when he was honored for 30 years of service to the City at a ceremony held, appropriately enough, in the open air of the Third Street Promenade.
At the noontime gathering, the Bayside District Corporation presented Greenberg with a plaque, the Broadway Deli supplied a cake, and his crew gave him a Lucite intaglio and a dozen spoken tributes including Odell Barrett’s personal observation that Eddie “cares for this Promenade and cares for his crew.”
The event seemed to have been pulled together, at least in part, by Promenade fixture and peace activist Jerry Rubin, who emceed as a succession of speakers paid their respects – Bayside’s Operations Manager Andrew S. Thomas, the City’s Community Maintenance Director Elaine Polachek, former mayor Michael Feinstein, Police Chief Tim Jackman, and City Councilmember Kevin McKeown, who noted that Greenberg’s crew not only keeps the Promenade clean but does the job with environmentally friendly materials and methods.
Eddie Greenberg stood humbly off to the side as the dignitaries paraded to the podium and his crew voiced their thoughts and thanks. But when Rubin turned the microphone over to him, the quiet and passive honoree became a compelling and even garrulous speaker. Pulling out a binder book of notes, Greenberg talked about increased retail sales volume over the years, likened the Promenade to Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” and described delegations from Japan that came to the Santa Monica pedestrian marketplace to see how it was done.
As if in testament to the fact that it was done very well, the Promenade itself sparkled in the noonday sun of a beautiful day that announced the end of June gloom and the beginning of serious summer weather.
