BAY VIEW — The Friends of South Shore Park is celebrating 30 years of bringing neighbors together to keep one of Milwaukee's most beloved green spaces clean and beautiful.
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The volunteer group holds weekly cleanups every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at South Shore Park, where participants meet near the anchor, gear up with buckets, pickers and gloves from an on-site shed, and fan out across the park to collect trash.
Jill Lafrenz, president of the Friends of South Shore Park, said the group has grown and evolved since its founding.
"Friends of South Shore Park has been around for 30 years, and it's a group of neighbors who came together to keep the park safe and clean, and we've evolved, you know, and done a lot of different things."
For at least five consecutive years, the group has held cleanups every Wednesday. After a few years of collecting trash, volunteers began weighing what they gathered to better track their impact.
"The first year that we weighed it we realized we were really going to get close to 1000 pounds, um, so we did, and so now it's kind of been our pleasure to beat every year is 1,000 pounds of garbage and it's a pretty small group that does the work."
Among the more unusual items volunteers regularly collect: single socks. The group has turned the odd recurring find into a lighthearted tradition.
"We were noticing a lot of socks and it's just a weird thing to find and they're usually in singles, not pairs, so we just started collecting socks to try to have fun with it because you're picking up garbage, so you have to make it as fun as you can. So our sock collection is the thing," Jill said.
The group welcomes anyone who wants to help and says no sign-up is required.
"You just show up. It's 5:30. We meet over by the anchor. We have a shed with our supplies in it, and then we hand out, we have all the equipment you need. We have buckets and pickers, gloves, all of those things. Then you go out, you know, we know where all the garbage is so we can help you pick the right spot to go, and then we bring all of that garbage back in buckets, dump it in bags, and weigh it at the end of the day," Jill said.
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