Larry Platt: Philly, we need to build a better mess trap

LAST MONTH, when our long regional nightmare ended and Kevin Kolb was finally traded by our Birds, the QB landed the worst kind of parting shot: one with a ring of truth to it.

When Kolb was introduced to the reporters that cover the Arizona Cardinals, he waxed enthusiastic about his new surroundings. He talked about the stellar condition of his new workplace, the University of Phoenix stadium, and his new hometown. He was "stunned," he said, by the "city alone, just how clean and nice it looked. Granted, I was coming from Philadelphia."

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Ouch. Kolb's shot followed a June report from Travel + Leisure magazine that ranked Philly as the nation's second-dirtiest city, right behind New Orleans. When the news release announcing Philly's dubious achievement went out, Meryl Levitz, CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp., promptly pulled her organization's ad from the magazine.

"When you're getting out an image of the city on one page, and you're saying, 'We Love You, We Love You Back,' and on the next page, they're saying it's dirty, that is not a good context for an ad," Levitz said at the time. "It kind of felt good to pull it."

Levitz is one of our city's great ambassadors, and I totally get why it felt good to yank our marketing dollars. No matter what we Philadelphians may say about ourselves, when others run us down in public, they have something coming to them.

But, still, the incident pointed to a certain sense of collective denial, didn't it? Because the fact is, if you've spent any time in, say, Boston, Chicago or (dare I say it?) even New York, you have to kind of concede: Kolb and Travel + Leisure have a point. We are a dirty city.

Take Amtrak in from New York, gaze out the window, and you can't help but wonder: Why in the world would a business relocate down I-95 to here? Walk our streets and chronicle the debris. Watch our fellow citizens discard Big Gulps out car windows, blithely toss coffee cups on the street or nonchalantly walk past hoagie wrappers on our sidewalks.

The denial has to end. We first started chronicling Philly's filth in April, just before mayor's fourth annual Spring Cleanup. Just weeks after the impressive photo-op, reporter Jason Nark revisited the lots in question, only to find them a mess yet again. Nark put it brilliantly: "Picking up after ourselves is literally the one thing every Philadelphian can do to make our city a better place."

That we don't is what drives Rina Cutler, deputy mayor for transportation and utilities, crazy. "We have to shame a handful of people in this city into understanding that it's not in their best interest, or the city's, for us to be viewed as dirty," Cutler said.

Cutler has declared open season on littering, and we're joining her. And by we, I mean you and me.

Starting today, the People's Paper aims to challenge all of us to take responsibility for our streets. Over at least the next year, there will be calls to action (Cutler's trying to recruit roughly 12,000 more block captains throughout the city to spearhead anti-litter efforts), public cleanups that will have the feel of a party, ongoing editorials and narratives from the front lines of the war on litter, analysis of why we're so messy, and public shaming of those among us who refuse to pick up after themselves.

Most of all, there will be you and your voice - on these pages, as well as on philly.com, Facebook and Twitter. We want to hear your ideas about what we can all do together to clean up our city. Some of our coverage will be tongue-in-cheek (this is the Daily News, after all), if also sincere. This is an issue that affects all of us, and goes to the heart of our civic self-esteem. That's why I've reached out to Meryl Levitz and GPTMC to help in this effort, and why I'll even invite Kevin Kolb back here to participate in a cleanup.

This is not a pro or con issue. The simple matter of cleaning up after ourselves transcends so much that divides us. So stay tuned for more. And the next time I see you, I hope we'll both be holding garbage bags and wearing rubber gloves.