The Cleveland Browns have three more games this season, just one of them on their home turf, and that means there's just one more chance in the city for tailgating.
A short 15-minute walk from the stadium, the Muni Lot is a perfect spot for fans to gather and show their support for their home team.
It was cold and wet on Cleveland’s Municipal Parking Lot a few hours after the Browns fell to the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday 21-7. The tailgaters had long since left, and the lot was nearly empty.
That's when a new team took this field.
"This cleanup tonight really shouldn't take us no more... than an hour and a half or so, two hours," said Melina Bailey, a third-shift supervisor with Cleveland's parks department.
She and her team of seven tackled the task of cleaning up all tailgaters left behind.
Work began long before the tailgate ended, Bailey said, with the dayshift team on defense amid the sea of fans bedecked in brown and orange.
"Your weekend crew will come down and hand out trash bags to make sure that it's extra bags given, along with the 32-gallon reciprocal cans that's already down here, to ensure not too much litter and debris will be on the ground once we show up to actually clean up the Muni Lot," Bailey said.
After the game ended and the fans departed, Bailey’s night crew went on offense.
They have a game plan, starting first with four workers with leaf blowers to tackle all of the empty plastic bottles, paper cups and crushed beer cans that didn’t find their way into trash cans.
"They will actually start up there on the side of the garage," she said. "It's normally, like, a lot of trash and debris they will blow down here into the parking lot as well, and then they will just go down and hit the islands as well as the fence line to sit and blow."
Then it’s time to bring in the big guns: the packers.
Not the Green Bay Packers... but garbage trucks that compress the trash once it’s tossed into the hopper at the back of the truck.
"On the nights we basically handle the bulk of trash, that's what we mainly get clear off the islands as well, and we set and use a packer for that," Bailey said. "So, we'll have a packer going down each side while we'll have about three to four gentlemen throwing trash into the back of the packers."
What’s left after all that is easily handled by a street sweeper drafted from the city’s Division of Streets.
On this recent game day, the rain and cold may have kept down the crowds at the Muni Lot, Bailey said, leading to a lighter workload for the night crew. The damage done wasn’t too bad, she said.
"After tonight's game, it's really looking great. So, I would say probably the average room may have 30 bags at the most, if that," Bailey said. "It's a pretty good night."
To the untrained eye, the sight of the Muni Lot after any tailgate can be intimidating, Bailey said.
"When I came on last year, everything was ... just so unexpected because I didn't know what to expect as well," she said. "I was thinking like, my God, we're coming down here. We're going to have to pick up all of these trash cans. I'm thinking of the paper picker myself."
But when she learned of the system the night crew has in place, along with the other members of the crew to handle the work, Bailey said it felt easier to manage.
Marvin Green is one of the members of Bailey’s team. He’s worked with the city for 10 years. Though he’s a fan of the Washington Commanders, Green said the Browns fans are pretty diligent about making sure the lot is clean and respecting the staffers responsible for keeping it that way.
"They’re always handing, you know, water, food and just being real courteous," Green said. "They usually put a lot of stuff in the bags that they pick up, and you see all them bags are gone. So yeah, [they're] pretty courteous."
Green said he appreciated the lighter turnout this Sunday.
"It was cold. It rained earlier. [It's] late in the season. They ain't doing too well. So you ain't nobody really come out here," he said. "This is sweet right now."
Bailey and her team will take their field one more time this season when the Browns take on the Dolphins at the end of the month. And even though tailgate season is drawing to a close, her team will soon be taking on a new opponent: the snow.
"We're definitely prepared for the rest of the season," Bailey said.
