🧽🚚 From Tow Trucks to Skyscrapers: One LI Crew Cleans It All

🧸🔥 Viral Squishy Toy Trend Sends Nassau Kids to the ER

🎨🎟️ Long Beach's Boardwalk Ticket Booths Get a Colorful Makeover

🖥️⏸️ Islip Weighs a Pause on Data Centers

Picture a nine-story building in Manhattan getting a full exterior wash, then picture that same crew heading back to Long Island the next morning to clean a mansion in the Hamptons. That range, from skyscrapers to backyards, is exactly what Onsite Cleaning Services has built over more than a decade.

Joey didn't start out chasing power washers. He ran a tow company from the time he was 19 until he was 32, sold it, and took a union job. Two years in, he missed being around trucks so much that he bought a trailer rigged for washing and started cleaning them himself. The first six months were just Joey, alone, washing trucks after his union shift ended. Word spread through friends first, one guy asking him to wash trucks, then another friend seeing it on Instagram and asking the same. From there it snowballed into a business that now handles fleet washing, residential power washing, roof and window cleaning, paver restoration, and commercial storefronts, washing somewhere between 60 and 100 trucks every single week.

The client list reads bigger than you'd expect for a Long Island cleaning company. Bartlett Trees, a nationwide operation, found Joey on Instagram and he's washed their trucks for 10 years. Sunbelt Tool Rentals uses him across their Long Island and Queens locations, including emergency response for oil spills. His crews have worked embassies and residences tied to close to seven different countries in the United Nations. A commercial for the business just started airing on 103.1 the Wolf. But ask Joey what actually separates him from other guys with a pressure washer, and he won't point to any of that. He'll tell you about the Sunday night he personally showed up at 7:30 to strip rust off a customer's driveway because the house was going on the market the next day. That's the kind of thing that turns a customer into a client for eight, nine, ten years running.

If you're looking at residential work, jobs start at a $350 minimum, with window cleaning running $25 to $30 per window and fleet washing ranging from $50 to $150 per vehicle depending on size. Given the scope of work this team handles, from mansions to municipal fleets, that's a fair price of entry for a crew that treats every job like it matters.

Joey isn't slowing down either. He's actively expanding into New Jersey, already booked to clean two full assisted living buildings there next month, and he's eyeing growth into Connecticut and Westchester, with an eventual push into the Tampa, Florida area on his radar. All of this while raising three kids and somehow managing travel baseball across seven states this year.

If your house, storefront, or fleet could use a refresh, you can find Onsite Cleaning Services on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/onsitecleaningservices/ and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Onsitemobilefleetwash, where most of their new business actually comes from these days. Also check out their website at https://www.onsitecleaningservices.com/.

From tow trucks to skyscrapers, this is the kind of local growth story that makes you want to root for the guy down the block.

If you've got a kid glued to TikTok this summer, here's one trend worth shutting down fast. Nassau County fire marshals are warning parents after two Floral Park siblings, a 4 year old girl and her older brother, suffered second and third degree burns trying the viral NeeDoh squishy toy challenge.

The trend has kids sticking the gel filled stress toys in the freezer, then microwaving them, chasing some kind of oddly satisfying texture change. Chief Fire Marshal Michael Uttaro explained what's actually happening inside that toy: the water starts to evaporate, the corn starch begins to give off a smell like baked goods, and it becomes a very, very hot gel that can explode on contact, spraying scalding contents onto hands, faces and chests.

Both kids were treated at Nassau County Medical Center. Officials aren't asking parents to confiscate every squishy toy in the house, just to keep an eye on what's happening in the kitchen and what's showing up in your kid's feed. A five second video is not worth a burn unit visit, so consider this your PSA to pass along to the group chat.

👉 Read more: Patch

Long Beach's boardwalk just got a lot more Instagrammable. The city teamed up with the Long Beach Arts Council on a project called Tickets to Paradise, inviting local artists to transform the beachfront ticket booths into full blown murals, and the final phase wrapped up in early July.

In total, 16 booths got the treatment, each with its own theme, from marine life and surfing scenes to a memorial honoring beloved lifeguard Austin Gibbons. One standout, painted by local artist Michele Dodd, shows an eagle clutching a veteran's season beach pass, sponsored by Waterfront Warriors, a nonprofit that sends free vacations to veterans.

The whole thing was done on volunteer time by local artists who wanted to give the boardwalk a little more personality. Next trip to the beach, budget a few extra minutes to stroll the ticket booths before you set up your chair, it's a free outdoor gallery hiding in plain sight.

👉 Read more: Long Island Herald

Data centers have been popping up across the country chasing the AI boom, and Islip just signaled it wants to slow that down before one lands in town. The Islip Town Board voted 4 to 1 on July 14 to schedule a public hearing on a proposed moratorium that would pump the brakes on new data center construction while officials figure out how to regulate them.

The concern is a familiar one in towns weighing these projects: data centers can gobble up huge amounts of power and water, take up large stretches of land, and don't bring the kind of foot traffic or day to day activity that other commercial development does. A moratorium would buy the town time to write zoning rules before any project gets too far along.

The public hearing is set for August 11, giving Islip residents a chance to weigh in before the board makes a final call. If you've got an opinion on whether a data center belongs anywhere near your neighborhood, this is the meeting to circle on the calendar.

👉 Read more: The Islip Bulletin

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