Boy, I’m glad I’m not Boy George—for many reasons, including the one that is the subject of this blog. The 45-year-old singer is being forced to do something that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy… picking up trash on the streets of New York City in oppressively hot summer temperatures. (For the record, it’s not the trash collecting that bothers me, it’s having to walk around a concrete jungle in the scorching heat that would kill me.)
Obviously, the former Culture Club singer isn’t doing it by choice. Rather, the “punishment” is part of a court-ordered community service project that comes as a result of the London-born singer lying about a supposed burglary in his Manhattan apartment. According to a police report, Boy George (real name: George O’Dowd) called the NYPD with the bogus burglary report in October, and the responding officers found cocaine inside his apartment. Boy George was arrested, but not jailed. Instead a judge ordered him to pick up trash from city streets.
According to a sanitation spokesperson, Boy George will be issued a shovel, broom, plastic bags and gloves when he reports on August 14 for five days of work.
“This is the epitome of community service,” a city sanitation spokesperson told the Daily News. “It’s not like he’s going to be working in an air-conditioned office.”
The sanitation official said Boy George could be assigned to pick up trash from streets in Chinatown, Little Italy, Nolita or parts of the Lower East Side.
The singer became an ’80s icon producing hits such as “Karma Chameleon” and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” A Manhattan judge threatened to throw the singer in jail if he failed to complete his trash picking before the end of August.