On the Lower West Side, winter mornings smell like bakery steam and diesel, and 26th Street starts moving long before the sun clears the rooftops. Alvarado Snow Removal is out ahead of all of it, pushing lots, breaking the plow ridge at the mouth of a driveway, salting the narrow walks between buildings where shade holds ice into the afternoon. A storm here rarely arrives politely; it comes sideways, and it comes at three in the morning. The measure of the night's work is a shop owner who unlocks the door and never once thinks about the sidewalk. That is the entire point of it.