Monday, December 15, 2014

Holiday decor: seasonal tree skirt and medical waste!

The previous post included a photo of a blue mop head in the filthy gutter in front of a business near the Roosevelt Avenue stop. Unbelievably, this mop head was still present as of this morning. I lost count of how many weeks it has been there.

12/15/14. Mop head in the gutter in front of a local business.
 
Additionally, a mop head now decorates the base of a nearby tree. I don't know if this is one of the mop heads from the gutter that somehow ended up back on the sidewalk, or a brand new one for the holiday season. I guess it does make a good tree skirt. And presents are certainly piling up underneath (if you consider cigarette butts and bottle caps presents).

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Meanwhile, the medical office next door contributed its own decorations to the sidewalk in the form of what appears to be a dirty chuck or drape, and a pair of exam gloves in the gutter.
 
12/15/14. Sidewalk in front of a medical office.

12/15/14: Close-up of litter in front of the medical office.


12/15/14: Exam glove (?) in gutter in front of medical office....
though honestly I find these all over the neighborhood,
so maybe it didn't even come from a medical facility.
 
I'll give this medical office the benefit of the doubt and assume that a garbage bag ripped at night (raccoons/possums/cats?), debris blew out onto the sidewalk, and when the employees come in this morning they will clean it up right away. If this is still there tonight, I am going to be pissed (and majorly skeeved). A kindly commenter to my last post suggested I make the names of these businesses public on yelp, but so far I've been too chicken to do so. In my mind I justified my chicken-hood by  saying "Well, maybe these businesses actually are clean inside, and just are too busy to deal with  their gutters." But honestly, the medical-waste-on-the-sidewalk and month-plus presence of guttermops are giving me second thoughts.
 
UPDATE December 22, 2014: I have disposed of these two mopheads!! That's right, for the first time in weeks, there are no blue mopheads in the gutter in front of a certain "medical" office on 74th!! At least, there weren't any as of 8:30 this morning... maybe they've been replaced with new ones though, or some other new form of nastiness. Yeah, I felt so relieved getting that second mophead this morning on the way to work. I picked up the first one yesterday afternoon, when I made an intentional OGCLE cleaning trip all the way down 74th Street to Roosevelt (usually I stop at Woodside Ave, but these mopheads were nagging at me). I was only able to pick up one yesterday because the other was under the tire of a parked car (believe me, I did give it a good tug, but it wouldn't budge). I wasn't really planning to collect the 2nd one this morning, but when I walked by, I saw it just lying there (no car parked over it) and I could not pass up the opportunity. So I grabbed a couple of plastic bags (there are always a few plastic bags kicking around), picked it up, and deposited it in the corner trash can. Thus ends my month-long saga. The white whale has been speared! (rather, bagged and deposited in the proper receptacle). Oh yeah, a lady saw me pick up this filthy and dripping mophead, and when I walked by her on the way to the trash can she stopped and stared at me in what looked like disgust and horror and uttered "J_ Christ!"

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