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December 19, 2004
trash and gentrification
I spent yesterday morning cleaning trash out of the alley behind our house.
The alley is a T, running down the center of most of the block between the north/south streets and also parallel to the much busier Fairmount Avenue. There are 21 or 22 houses that abut the alley. Two of the houses are empty and boarded up and one of the houses is carved into 4 apartments.
The alleys in the neighborhood are used as alternative roads from point to point for people that are, compared to the people that use the sidewalks, usually hairier, dirtier and more likely to have a large bottle of beer in their hand. Part of our alley is a direct line between a corner store and a rooming house and a sketchy block. This traffic generates a certain type of trash, and the alley pedestrians seem to have a deep scorn for trash cans. The bottles accumulate along the sides of the alley and the bottle-bags* get caught in tree branches and float everywhere (we've taken to calling them the neighborhood flower).
The empty houses also attract traffic*. Just as our back section was a dumping ground when the house was empty, the two vacant houses on the block have been the target of dumpers. I filled my pickup truck cleaning these two spots, and had to just pull the larger stuff to the alley edge for the city to get the next time that they do a large items pickup. Some of the things that I picked up include several bags of discarded household trash, 2 car batteries, a tire and half of a lawnmower. Also, dogs or a desperate person had gotten into a trash can and strewn the garbage (bottles, tampons, food wrappers, diapers, etc.) all over the alley beside the one of the vacant houses.
While I was out in the alley, I kept wondering what my neighbors might think. One of my neighbors says that it is the other neighbors that are dumping most of the house trash. I imagine that the older neighbors approve. I wonder if there is any embarrassment or shame for the others, or if they just don't care... And, while the foot traffic through our alley has really dropped off in the past year, I feel that there is still the chance that some crime against me could occur while I am working back there.
Posted by john m at December 19, 2004 8:44 AM
Comments
I've heard that alley cleanups have been taken up by community associations, for example, West of the Boulevard (or whatever it's called now). And/or your city council member might see organizing a cleanup as a good way to drum up some positive publicity. Point being, if your neighbors are involved there might be more support, or at least more of a feeling of personal safety.
Posted by: at December 19, 2004 9:26 PM
Our civic league and other neighbors worked during the cleanup last March. It isn't the large efforts that need work, it's the daily maintenance once cleaned that is failing. One of the alleys that we cleaned 9 months ago is impassible because of the dumped garbage (the 1200 block between 19th and 20th Streets).
Posted by: john m at December 20, 2004 8:42 AM
Oooooh, I hate litter. We live on the main road connecting our little town with the Interstate, and we often come home to find trash in our front lawn from lazy jerks throwing it out their car windows.
Good for you, litter vigilante!
Posted by: Kristin at December 28, 2004 5:54 PM
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