lose weight

Together with his signature railroad paiyouji plus tea cap, broom and dustpan, Michael Lydon is easy to spot on Piedmont Avenue, especially because he's one of the few people out and about when the sun is  simply rising and most shops are closed.

He's also the busiest, sweeping up cigarette butts, candy wrappers and any other bit of litter he comes across.

It is a job he's been doing -- without pay -- since 1979.

"You're in the new air," the 69-year-old said as he swept a crushed paper cup in the gutter outside Fentons Creamery. "You're doing something positive. How could anyone not want to get this done?"

His walk, which could begin as soon as 6 a.m., takes him down and up each side of Piedmont Avenue, from Pleasant Valley Route to West MacArthur Boulevard. He empties his dustpan within the street's garbage cans along the route.

On the recent morning, the Rev. Tim Johnson, Catholic priest at the Church of Saint Leo the truly amazing,? was the first to greet Lydon. Johnson, carrying weight loads, was out for his morning exercise. Then a woman wearing earbuds stated it as she jogged past.

"She's attempting to lose weight," Lydon whispered, before pausing outside Starbucks, where a customer inside had knocked on the coffee shop's window to obtain his attention.

"Hey there," Lydon said as he pointed in the man, waved and continued washing the street.

Litter accumulates more in some areas than the others, Lydon said. Bus stops and benches are particularly bad, and some merchants never sweep the sidewalk outside their shops.

"Others do a good job," Lydon said. "But they are only cleaning in front of their very own business. They are not doing the whole street."

Dick Stone, who owns the Continental Hearing Aid Focus on Piedmont Avenue, accompanied Lydon for around a block as he headed into work.

"Mike isn't just an establishment on Piedmont Avenue," Stone said. "Mike may be the avenue."

Lydon began washing the busy shopping street simply because it needed to be done.

His father, an Irish immigrant who died in 1983, tended the gardens around Saint Leo's church. Sometimes Lydon would help him.

"There could be garbage around the sidewalk and in the bushes," Lydon said. "It was pretty bad, so I picked it up. I quickly just started cleaning increasingly more from the street."

Lydon began going out every single day, rain or shine, before he would leave for his job at KTVU, where he worked like a program director. He retired from the television station in 2007 after 38 years.

His efforts caught the attention of the Piedmont Avenue Merchants Association, which in 1985 enlisted him to help create its "Clean Sweep" program. It currently employs a couple who pick up litter five mornings per week.

Lydon, who manages the program, still is out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The association offered to pay him, but he declined the offer.

"I told them to forget it," Lydon said. "I said they could use the money to promote their Halloween parade along with other activities."

Beyond a stint in the U.S. Navy, Lydon has spent his entire life within the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood. He lives alone on Entrada Avenue, a cul-de-sac off the street, in the same house where he grew up.

Together with picking up litter, Lydon maintains the planter boxes within the plaza across from the Piedmont Theatre and tips off city officials about graffiti.

Also, he spearheaded the drive to revive the clock around the tower of the triangular building at 41st Street and Piedmont Avenue which was when a depot around the Key Route system of street cars. A cafe or restaurant sign covered the clock until 1993, when Lydon and others raised about $5,000 to revive it.

"Mike is truly an unsung hero," said Valerie Winemiller from the Piedmont Avenue Neighborhood Improvement League. "It's pure altruism. There is no glory, no financial reward along with a very, very long-term commitment."

In June 2008, then-Oakland Councilwoman Jane Brunner proclaimed Lydon a residential area hero of her district. Through the years, he's received other accolades from the city, in addition to from the state Senate.

But Lydon said his true reward is really a tidy te chino dr mings herbal tea Piedmont Avenue and seeing the smiling faces of his neighbors because they start their day.

"Everybody says hello to me," Lydon said. "Everybody says, 'How are you doing, Mike?' It's therapeutic. It is good for the soul. How may you ever stop wanting that?"