Read more about local beautification efforts in the June/July 2025 feature story.
David Goldblatt heads out early most Sunday mornings, with two trash cans and several plastic bags loaded into his Dodge Dakota, and wages his one-man war against litter in Evansville.
Goldblatt preselects a certain section of roadway, usually a well-traveled one, and picks up litter by hand until his trash cans and plastic bags are filled; that usually takes an hour and a half to two hours. Why does he do it? Not because he has to, but because he wants to.
As the owner of Dave’s Taxi Service, the 62-year-old has a unique perspective on the appearance of Evansville. When he picks up travelers after their flight has landed at Evansville Regional Airport, he often is the first person to greet visitors to the city. And he wants their initial impressions of Evansville to be positive ones. “I’m very passionate about this,” Goldblatt says. “I make a decent living, I’m very blessed. I try to give back to Evansville when I can.”
Not only are his beautification efforts making a difference — Goldblatt estimates he picks up a couple of hundred pounds of rubbish each week — but he shares that it’s a great form of exercise, as he doesn’t use a grabbing stick. “I bend down about 1,000 or 1,500 times each week, it’s good for my hamstrings and back,” he says, adding that the stretching helps a lot considering he sits and drives so much for his job. “Plus, it takes my mind off of work for a while. It’s good for your soul.”
Goldblatt says he would enjoy having others join in his cause. He has even created a slogan — Intersections Neighborhoods Corners, or INC — to help spread his message. “If you aren’t able to help clean up a neighborhood, maybe you could clean up an intersection. And if not that, maybe just a corner,” Goldblatt says. “If we had just 200 people doing this, our city would be so much cleaner.”
