The Paris Olympics start later this month and tomorrow (Saturday) in Arlington, a new competition will emerge: the Grabber Olympics, for Northern Virginia’s litter-picker-uppers.
The inaugural event will begin at 11 a.m. by the Clarendon Metro station for a two-hour community cleanup with volunteer nonprofit NOVA Cleanups, sister of District Cleanups. Anyone is welcome to sign up and participate.
At 1 p.m., participants will gather for the games portion of the day at Quincy Hall in the Ballston area, NOVA Cleanups’ original meetup spot, Founder Steve Brown told ARLnow.
The Grabber Olympics commemorates the nonprofit’s two-year anniversary of organized litter removal across Northern Virginia neighborhoods.
Participants’ abilities to work a trash grabber will be put to the test in six different games. Speed Butts will test how many cigarette butts a player can throw out in one minute. Another game, Trash Canhole, will challenge players to traditional cornhole, but with cans in lieu of beanbags.
“We probably talked about this for a year or more,” Brown said. “We had our two-year anniversary coming up, the Olympics are starting in a week or two. We thought it was a pretty good time to actually sit down and do it right.”
The champion of each game will receive a prize from Quincy Hall’s alcohol distributors.
The bar will also fundraise for NOVA Cleanups with optional tab-rounding and a special cocktail, The Ballston Trash Can. It’s a kitchen sink-style combo of Blue Curacao, vodka, gin, light rum, peach schnapps, triple sec and an inverted can of Redbull served in a pint glass, Quincy Hall general manager Will Carter told ARLnow.
For every Ballston Trash Can sold, Quincy will donate $1 to NOVA Cleanups.
Donations to the nonprofit support new equipment and promotional expenses like merchandise, to raise awareness, Brown said.
“The more people who can find out who we are, the more people who come out to clean up trash, the more trash we can get picked up,” Brown said.
NOVA Cleanups hosts regular cleanups at various locations on the first Sunday of each month at 11 a.m.
