Why don't folks care as much about clean streets as they do about clean ears?

 

If I had to say which item I find littered on the streets of OGCLE territory more than any other, it is the Q-tip (or off-brand cotton-tipped swab). At first I thought these must have fallen out of garbage bags/cans when people put their trash out. It's unlikely, but what is the alternative?- that people walk around cleaning their ears in public? I've never actually witnessed a Q-tip in use on the streets, but they are EVERYWHERE. Here are photos of a couple that I passed just this morning walking one block. WTF??!?! 

 

So maybe people aren't using them to perform ear hygiene. The only other use for them that I know of is to apply make-up. But I've never seen any that have make-up on them. So what's the deal-a-roo?!? (actually, I probably do not want to know).

A Q-tip blooms

Yummy, this one looks well used.

 

In case you're wondering, the second most common item I find all over the streets and sidewalks is the used dental pick. Gross as it is, it makes a little more sense- I mean, people could be coming from restaurants and picking the remnants of dinner out of their teeth. Of course, flossing in public and then tossing the used pick on the sidewalk is disgusting. But it makes more sense than cleaning your ears in public.

Nothing should surprise me anymore.

FWIW, I did pluck up these two Q-tips after photographing them. Some bloggers photograph this kind of stuff and just leave it there, and they get their blogs featured in Gothamist and other local news outlets. I'm not bitter though, really I'm not!* (*That's a little CBT I'm performing on myself; I'll let you know if it works.) Hey, the person who picks up a stranger's used hygiene products has a right to be bitter.

Here's a funny thing that happened recently though. The other night I was b*tching to my poor husband about this while we were exiting the train station (which always has quite a collection of Q-tips and dental picks). I said, "Why do people leave dental picks and Q-tips all over the place?!?" and a man walking by, without skipping a beat, said, "Oh, those are mine, sorry." Har har. Actually, I did laugh out loud when he said that; but overall, the situation is a sad, pathetic reflection on human behavior.

Which parked item is not like the others?

This is actually a scene from 44th Avenue, not 43rd. Dang, I can see why the druggy losers prefer to hang out on 43rd; 44th is getting real grungy. And the funny thing is 44th Avenue is more populated- they even have a fancy fully-occupied new condo whereas we have an abandoned building/now-crackhouse. But 43rd Ave has its very own morbidly obese cleaning lady (ca c'est moi!). I'm just surprised that the many people who live on 44th don't seem to give a crap about all the litter (you can't see it in this shot, but trust me, t'was litterful). And if it not for Fire Alarm Guy and the Woodside Neighborhood Association, there would be graffiti tags all up and down the 44th Avenue overpass. I just hope someone called 311 about the freakin FRIDGE. You'd think they would be bummed about losing a parking space to an appliance!

UPDATE: July 27, evening: Someone DID get fed up with this fridge taking up a parking space. Did they call 311? Nah! But they did drag it onto the sidewalk. Thanks y'all! 

 

Reported to 311 on July 28, 2015. Ticket number 1-1-1133574121.

 

Gee thanks, 43rd Ave Crappification Group!

The usual crap went down today on 43rd Ave... these insipid scrawlings appeared sometime between my morning cleanup at 10am and now (7:30pm). 

But I painted over them with a quickness!! (not the same shade as the wall, unfortunately, but I wanted to cover the tags lest the scribblers think they have some kind of ownership of the neighborhood). I will enjoy a victory that will be sadly short-lived, as I fully expect new tags to appear tonight :(

Meanwhile, in case you don't believe my tales of 43rd Ave Whitefish (as, indeed, I haven't posted any pix lately), behold the following:

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By the end of the day, I had sustained a cut and some bruises. No one said amateur garbage haulin' was easy!

It's smoke or snooze over here

Last night I decided to test my mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques by walking home via 43rd Avenue after work. It was a worthy test, for I discovered that mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques do not work at all. (That's one self-help book I can recycle.) What I encountered on the Avenue made me furious. Well, let me back up to Woodside Avenue, which I passed first on my walk from the train. The lovely Community Garden that some kind neighbor planted on Woodside and 72nd was strewn with trash. (You know the phrase "This is why we can't have anything nice"-?!?) I picked up the trash as best I could. And, sigh, then I proceeded up the block to 43rd. Of course, the wacky weeders were already out. This was about 7pm. It was still daylight, and there were still plenty of people walking home from the train. But there were two large groups of weeders, just standing right out on the sidewalk puffing away: one group close to 72nd Street, the other group right in the middle of 43rd (on the overpass).


This is what it looked like when I did my lie-down-in(?) protest last night. But the lady
 in the photo is a generic internet person; I myself am much wider.
Say, I guess I could have lain down on that dumped mattress-
that would have made me look even crazier!

 

What made me so mad last night, and continues to irk me all the time, is that NOBODY CARED. There were so many people walking by, through clouds of pot smoke- all kinds of people: young, old, families with little kids in hand or babies in strollers... and no one cared at all. Well, I care. I sometimes feel like I am the only person who DOES care.

Since I'm a little bit crazy, what I did was lie down on the sidewalk about 10 feet from the overpass group. I wanted to see if any of these nonchalant pedestrians (or drivers, for that matter) would stop when they saw a body on the sidewalk. Obviously large groups of people doing drugs right on the sidewalk do not bother them at all. Well, it turns out that neither does the sight of a person lying on the sidewalk, eyes closed. They just walked around me. Some must have been creeped out at least a little though because they walked in the street. Anyway, my great test of whether or not anyone gives a fork about anything yielded the expected results: no, no one (who was walking around here last night at least) cares about anything, or anyone. That is why people can do drugs in broad daylight on the sidewalk. And why people can graffiti whole panels of overpass (this happened a few months ago on Woodside Avenue, which is MUCH more heavily trafficked; many people saw the graffiti in progress, but no one called the cops).

The subject of graffiti reminds me that there actually are people in the next 'hood over- Woodside proper- who care about such things, namely, Fire Alarm Guy and the Woodside Neighborhood Association. They have helped clean up our neighborhood- including its graffiti- many times. The problem is, until people who actually live here start to take some interest in what goes on, we are pretty much screwed, and it will remain a garbage dump/drug hangout.

Please people, if you see something (like those a-hole kidults who smoke pot every single night here), call the cops on them. And if you see a body lying on the sidewalk, at least stop and see if it has a pulse! (and ideally ask if it's okay, and if no response, call 911). Sigh.




The 43rd Ave Crappification Group

In the mythical la-la-land that likely only exists in parts of suburbia and in my mind, sidewalks are bordered by flowers or hedges, or at least by grass that is NOT infested with drug baggies, used condoms, and Phillies wrappers. But in Elmhurst we do things a little differently. Sometimes we even go all out and decorate with filthy mattresses and television sets. Well, not "we". I am convinced that this is the work of The 43rd Avenue Crappification Group. Their mission: maintain the status quo of filth and neglect and lawlessness, despite the efforts of the disgusted neighbors who are trying to clean up.

The tv on the lefthand side of the photo has been here for at least a week.

For what it's worth, I made a 311 complaint about filthy sidewalk conditions the other day. At the time I only reported the television; the mattress just appeared yesterday. I hope the DSNY isn't gonna be pissed!

P.S. Not sure if they are dues-paying members of the Crappification Group, but the nightly drug-smoking losers definitely contribute in spirit. I for one feel sick to my obese stomach every time I walk down the Avenue at night. It's not even a feeling of fear, but of FURY and disgust, and frustration that no one seems to care about this drug problem except me.

It's very lonely being angry.

P.P.S. I think my crazy garbage-obsessed ranting steered away one group of potheads last night. I had encountered a pile of trash on the Ave near 72nd, and was SO infuriated, mainly because I had done a thorough clean-up over the weekend. So I was probably saying things along the lines of "What the eff is wrong with people?" and "Disgusting effin pieces of sh*t!!!" (Yes, I get VERY angry when I see  litter.) Anyway, the smokers (these were the older, suit-wearing smokers, as opposed to the a-hole teen smokers that gather further down the Ave), all hopped in their (maroon sedan) car and sped away before I even got within 10 feet of them. Woohoo!

Your scenic tour of Elmhurst continues....Also, CAKE is a LOSER.

This is a photo of an apartment building's garbage. For some reason, the collected trash is stored out on the sidewalk, where people probably add to the overflowing receptacles whilst walking by.

 

Oh, who am I kidding? No one really bothers trying to put their trash IN a garbage can.

 

**On the door, you'll note the artistic stylings of one of our local artists- "CAKE." This mysterious scribbler is very prolific in the Woodside/Elmhurst area. I've even seen his (or her?) work on Queens Boulevard heading towards Sunnyside. Now, I enjoy cake as much as the next [fat] person, but does the word belong on the door of someone's domicile? Methinks NOT.

I saw the sign...

Behold the work of a complete and total loser!

 

Graffiti on parking sign, 74th Street near Roosevelt

Behold the slipshod work of a person walking by with nothing but alcohol prep pads. (I know, I have to go back with some more powerful ink remover, but at least it's a little faded, no?)

The sign, after I spent about 10 minutes and multiple alcohol pads trying to scrub off the graffiti.

By the way, when I was up their scrubbing away at the GRAFFITI, a gentleman walking by said, "Are you trying to get free parking for life?" I thought that was pretty clever.

What part of "No More Cloths" don't you understand?!

On this site t'was a clothing bin.Thankfully it was removed a few weeks ago. So why do people still bring their  clothes here? Do they not notice the absence of the large metal bin?!

43rd Avenue Vice!

 

This past Saturday, June 28, the day of my encounter  with the creepy perv, I collected the usual number of drug baggies on 43rd Avenue and on 74th Street. What the fork is wrong with people?!? Also, while I was picking up litter on 43rd Avenue, I met Brian of the diaper leaves and buds. When he saw me rolling the garbage cart towards his car, he got out and scraped the contents of a blunt into the can. Then he declared his intention of replacing that nasty stuff with more fragrant dried leaves (those weren't his words, of course). Whatever, as long as he does it in his own home or vehicle and doesn't litter Phillies Blunt crap all over the sidewalk like the stupid loser 43rd Avenue smokers do, I don't have the energy to care. I just found it remarkable that this encounter happened so early in the day- say, 9am, 9:30 at the latest. Apparently the term that applies to such activity is "Wake and Bake" (I just learned this yesterday).

Weed weed weed.... if only that were the only drug round these parts. But most of the drug baggies I pick up are too small to hold pot, and many still have white powder/crystal residue.

Case in point: this morning as I was walking down 74th Street towards the train, I found a used alcohol pad and wrappers on someone's steps. I carry alcohol pads when picking up trash (so I can give my hands a scrub with them, followed of course by a "wash" with hand sanitizer gel). Stupid me, the first thought that popped into my head was that someone else must be collecting neighborhood trash and just got careless with their alcohol pad wrapper. My second thought was that maybe the wrapper had been left by a diabetic who had given himself an insulin shot. But no, I don't think that was the case either, because next to the discarded alcohol pad and wrapper was a discarded tiny pink drug bag that still had white grains in it. The grains were like the size of fancy chunky table salt, ie, bigger than powder or sugar grains. So I don't know what that is. Crack? Do crack smokers need to use alcohol pads? Or was this a drug that could be injected? (If so, I'm glad they took their needle with them at least.) Anyway, it's freaking DISGUSTING. Imagine being the person who lives in that house, and walking out your front door to find drug paraphernalia. Imagine opening the door and sending your kid ahead down the steps, and he picks up the little pink baggy. It's so gross. WHY WHY do people think it's okay to do drugs out in public, right on someone's front steps? This stretch of 74th, a block and a half up from Roosevelt Ave, is very busy at all times of day and night. Yet someone felt it was okay to just whip out the drugs. They assumed no one would say anything about it, much less call the cops, and they were right. :o(

By the way, this past Saturday morning I also passed a car in which a lady was servicing a fellow. Again, SATURDAY MORNING. Broad daylight. So gross. So very very gross :o(