OK, so I support the street-sweeping program. Think it’s a big part of the urban compact. Everyone sacrifices convenience, in the form of alternate-side parking, for the sake of a greater good, which is less debris, fewer rat carcasses, hence lower chances of hantavirus, and so on.

But one thing definitely has to happen: The street sweeper actually has to show up.

Well, that didn’t happen this morning, at least not on the 1400 block of Q Street NW, where this insane blogger happens to reside and staycation.

DPW, I want you to know that I busted my ass last night to make sure that I complied with the alternate-side requirements. I made at least four forays out of my house to see if there were any spots on the proper side. Finally, after a Studio play dumped out and some churchgoers finally got tired of spending a beautiful day inside beautiful sanctuaries, some spots appeared, and I pounced.

And for nothing. I don’t want apologies or excuses, street-sweeping team, just clean streets.

If you didn’t get your chance to wait in an impressive line of both people and idling cars to dump your hazardous waste for free last weekend, now you’ll have the chance to dump it all year long.

Your first (or second?) chance is tomorrow at RFK. The D.C. Department of Public Works will take household hazardous waste from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the stadium, a make-up date of sorts to accommodate District residents who did not get a chance to participate in last Saturday’s overwhelming semi-annual event.

DPW also announced that beginning May 17, weekly hazardous waste collections will happen on Saturdays at the Benning Road Trash Transfer Station, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Later this summer, Saturday dropoffs will shift to the Ft. Totten Trash Transfer Station.

Nancee Lyons, spokesperson for DPW, said she was baffled by last Saturday’s large turn out, but happy that people want to dispose of their hazardous waste responsibly.

“People were surprisingly in a positive mood as they made their way to the front of the line,” Lyons said on Monday, referring to the almost two-hour wait some people sat through. “Many people were just surprised to see so many cars there.”

Lyons also noted that DPW officials have been working with Mayor Adrian Fenty for the past year to start the weekly dropoff centers, saying, “all this event did was prove that there is a large need for these stations.”

Lyons’ advice: Keep your hazardous waste count low. Use the stuff up or give it someone else who can. If that’s not possible, here’s what you can get rid of through the DPW program:

• leftover cleaning and gardening chemicals
• small quantities of gasoline
• pesticides and poisons
• mercury
• thermometers
• paint and solvents
• spent batteries of all kinds
• antifreeze
• chemistry sets
• automotive fluids
• asbestos floor tiles

Items not accepted at the drop off site:

• ammunition
• bulk trash
• wooden TV consoles
• propane tanks
• microwave ovens
• air conditioners and other
• appliances
• radioactive or medical wastes

(photo by Bree Bailey)

—Whitney Boyd

Over the past six months or so, the city’s Department of Public Works has missed my recycling pickup five or six times. That’s not a disaster, just an inconvenience. Crap piles up outside my house, each time we finish a bottle of milk, I get a little more nervous, the dead-tree version of the newspaper starts to feel more like an indulgence than a necessity, and there’s some anxiety about whether the department will get it right the next time.

The lapse recurred this week. Tuesday is my recycling day, and nothing. My blue container was in the same spot at night that it was in the morning. So I left it out there on Wednesday; same result.

This morning I encountered a DPW agent in a pickup making his way down the street, and unloading the barrels of my neighbors, who’d experienced the same problem. I carted my bucket down to where he was working, and we tossed my recycling in the back of the pickup.

He explained that the driver was new and just missed the last half of the block. As I was walking away, he said, “I’m sorry about this, sir, and we’re working to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Talk about turning a negative into a positive.

I’ve had a lot of problems with parking tickets lately. This morning I parked at a meter on M Street that wouldn’t take quarters. I put in all my nickels and dimes and went to the doctor’s office, hoping I’d be finished in the 26 minutes I had on the clock.

At the 21 minute mark it was clear I wouldn’t be done, so I went back to the car to move it to a working meter.

When I got behind the wheel, I saw a pile of money in the middle of the street. I got out of my car and hurried over to pick it up. The wet bills totaled $60.

I’ve found money on streets and sidewalks my whole life. There is a weird, powerful feeling that goes with finding money. I used to think I found money so often because I was special.

It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s and found a $10 bill on a sidewalk while walking in Buffalo that I realized I found money not because I was special, but because I had spent my whole life walking with my head down looking for it.

But today’s haul, which ranks among my biggest finds ever, gave me the old “I’m special!” feeling. I will use most of the $60 to pay a parking ticket I got in this same neighborhood a couple months ago, which was totally bogus. I think that’s why I found it.

Sonuvabitch! Just walked past my car on the way to the office and I’ve been booted.

I got an expired-meter ticket about two weeks ago which I haven’t paid just yet, but I’m thinking, That sure as hell isn’t enough to get me the boot!

So I logged on to the city’s online ticketing system and punched in my plate. This is what I got:

The following tickets issued to this vehicle plate are due:

Ticket Number Issue Date Violation Location Amount
370199314 10/22/2007 P173 2300 BLOCK 15TH ST NW EAST SIDE $60.00
370709931 10/24/2007 P039 0500 BLOCK E ST NW SOUTH SIDE $50.00
370728256 10/22/2007 P173 2300 BLOCK 15TH ST NW EAST SIDE $60.00
371249830 11/19/2007 P173 1400 BLOCK BELMONT ST NW NORTH SIDE $60.00
372899295 11/27/2007 P173 1300 BLOCK W ST NW SOUTH SIDE $60.00
373726404 12/14/2007 P039 0500 BLOCK 11TH ST NW EAST SIDE $25.00

GODDAMMIT! OK, I remember the last one. But swear to God I never saw any of those other five tickets. One or two tickets I could see getting blown away by the wind or stolen by some asshole, but FIVE? Plus, one of those seems to be a duplicate—can I really get ticketed on the same day on the same block. And I know which block that is! The east side of the 2300 block of 15th doesn’t have street sweeping restrictions! It’s on the goddamned hill next to Meridian Hill Park!!!

Christ!

Anyway, now I gotta decide whether I wanna spend almost $400 paying for tickets and late fees I never knew I had or going down to C Street and hoping the line for hearings isn’t too ridiculous.

Your input is appreciated.

There appears to be a major sidewalk divide. The sidewalks fronting old row houses had yet to be salted down. Those walkways were still sheets of ice by 9:30 this morning. But the sidewalks in front of some sleek lofts in Adams Morgan were clear. Also clear were the sidewalks in front of Starbucks and Results on U Street NW. Not so clear: the sidewalk bordering the Third District Police Station.

So put ice removal in the positive column for D.C.’s gentrification wave.

I just got word last night that my beautiful 2001 Toyota Corolla (color according to the carmaker: “Lemon Mist“) will cost more than $10,000 to repair. In insurance lingo, this means my car is a “total loss.” For me, this means that I now have to go the mechanic shop on Michigan Avenue and clean out my car.

The mechanic said I have until Friday morning to complete this car cleaning. This task includes clearing out the dozen empty water bottles, piles of fading newspapers, and dozens of mixtapes. It also means carting away the giant trash bag in my trunk. This particular trash bag is filled with the refuse from my last car I junked five years ago.

I have never really looked inside that bag in all those years. I know there’s some good stuff in that bag: more mixtapes, a classic CD or three, a couple of t-shirts, special must-have papers, old batteries, and maybe a shoe.

Do I make a clean break and simply throw the entire bag out? Do I bother sifting through these five-year old artifacts?

Readers help me out with snarky jokes and helpful suggestions.

In October, the District’s Department of Public Works posted signs on our street changing our pickup days for garbage. We went from a Monday-Thursday thing to a Tuesday-Friday thing. Kind of a demotion, considering that garbage tends to pile up at our place over the weekend, thanks to lots of partying. But that’s nothing to really gripe about.

However, the signs didn’t address the issue of recycling. Before, I’d put the recycling out with the garbage on Thursdays. But the signs didn’t say that the recycling day would change. So last week I put the recycling out on Wednesday night, and it stayed there all the way through Saturday, no pickup to be had. I finally gave up and brought it onto the front patio after some guy eating a hard-boiled egg dropped his egg shell into it.

I brought it out again last night and am hoping it’s empty by the time I get home.

If not, I’ll take it in again tonight, and then take it back out tonight. With each passing day, it bulges a bit more.

And if I find that the recycling truck did indeed come by today, that’ll mean that I have three days of garbage/recycling service each week. I have a feeling I’ll quickly lose track of which nights I have to drag the buckets out front, and which nights I don’t. So I’ll just go out there every night no matter. Just before brushing my teeth, taking a piss, and hitting the rack.

Damn. The Prince of Petworth blog had a kickass couple of days. The guy gets around. He doesn’t just bloviate on the latest development deal. He has what every journalist’s cover letter only promises: “an eye for detail.” Over the weekend, he spotted some graffiti that’s been copyrighted. He also noted the irony of a neighbor cluttering up the ’Worth with pick-up-your-dog shit signs.

P.O.P. writes: “It appears a renegade member of the community has posted a number of these signs around town. Unfortunately they are not affixed very well to the lamp posts and as a result they are scattered on the sidewalks becoming quite a nuisance themselves. So is there even a poop problem to be worried about? Is this a good way to go about addressing the ‘problem’ given the whole ANSWER debacle?”

And finally, P.O.P. considers the pathetic sight that is the plastic bag hooked to a fence. This is no substitute for a trash can nor should it be, argues P.O.P.

This is a standard sight in most neighborhoods, especially high-density ones with a lot of late-night traffic. Or any neighborhood within a mile of a fast-food/carryout joint. P.O.P. wants to know whatever happened to the idea of getting more cans on city streets?

I wonder if the plastic bag on a fence really works. I also wonder if neighborhoods really need more trash cans?

So the city’s suing the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition over their hard-to-remove posters, which they’ve stuck to lampposts, electrical boxes, and other pieces of street furniture. Good for D.C.

A long time ago, as part of a community-service project, I was tasked with cleaning a wall full of similar posters. Lemme tell you, getting that shit off ain’t easy. Wheat paste, or whatever those folks are using, might be water-soluble, but it’s still sticky as hell—especially when you slather the poster with it, which is the only way to get it to stick when you first apply it. But after it sets up and dries, it’s there for good. Getting it off involves getting the posters as wet as possible, then taking a scraper to it an inch or two at a time. And you never get all of it; there’s always residue left over. Sorry, Shep Fairey, but this stuff sucks.

Thing is, what’s a better option? Tape is always a pain in the ass to remove. Tacky gum-like stuff I’m sure would be a disaster. Anyone out there have a better idea for securing posters to public property?

And here’s a question for the city: Why is there no provision requiring removal of signs in public space after a specific amount of time? Political candidates, for instance, are required to remove their signs shortly after any election—why not make that the policy for every sign-poster out there? If that were so, I’m guessing A.N.S.W.E.R. would be a little less liberal (no pun intended…OK, pun intended) with the wheat paste.

Terry Lynch, the persistent municipal watchdog and executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, recently celebrated a victory. Having finally compelled the city to do a blast removal of dozens of abandoned bikes chained to street signs and tree boxes, he fired off a jubilant press release. The memo included a list of nearly 100 suspect bike frames which Lynch had provided to officials in order to speed the cleanup process along.

According to transportation officials, more than 50 abandoned bicycles have been cut off and sent to the dump with the help of Lynch’s list. There was just one little hiccup of a glitch: Some of the bikes that were sent to the heap belonged to living cyclists.

The process is supposed to protect rightful owners: the Department of Transportation first tags a bike, giving the owner 10 days to move it or call and make a claim. If no one intervenes, the Department of Public Works removes the bike.

Lynch says he copied DPW employees when he sent his list to the Department of Transportation. According to Jim Sebastian, the DDOT’s bicycle program manager, DPW officials must have thought the list was already approved and snapped into action. So far, just two of the heretofore abandoned bicycles have been claimed; one was successfully rescued from the dump. It seems likely that others may have gone the way of the Velveteen rabbit—and that the owners simply assumed their steeds had been stolen.

And yes, the abandoned bikes are taken to the dump—the Fort Totten transfer station, to be specific—not donated.

Press release and list of bikes after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am a big fan of the city’s street-sweeping program. It does what it says it does—sweep the streets—and it creates some occasionally helpful anomalies on the parking scene. For instance, on pre-sweeping nights, you can generally find parking spaces in congested neighborhoods on the side of the street that’s gonna get a bath the next day. Sure, you gotta whisk you car away the next morning, but hey.

Yet there’s one thing I don’t quite understand about it: Why does the machine always seem to rumble down the block between, like, 3 and 5 a.m.? The sound or noise isn’t the problem, mind you. It has never awoken me. I’ve heard it during bouts of insomnia or trips to the bathroom that take place long before sunup. At that time, the street sweeper has no access to the grimy roadside but instead barrels right down the middle of the street, a space that generally has little debris. What’s the point?

Last week, Mayor Adrian Fenty’s DPW recycling trucks never came by, leaving me with a blue bucket full of cardboard, cans, and bottles. If you recall, last week was a “slide” week, in the clever lexicon of DPW. There was a holiday on Monday, Emancipation Day, and so my normal pickup day—Thursday—was supposed to “slide” to Friday. Well, it slid right on into the weekend and beyond. And after yesterday, this whole recycling thing is just sliding out of control. My bin and those of my neighbors were still full as of this morning, meaning that another skedded pickup day had been missed. The only ones who win are dog walkers, who have a lot of at-the-ready receptacles for their bags of dog crap.

The D.C. government is always keen on coming up with ways to communicate more effectively with their customers.

Recently, the Department of Public Works outdid itself. That is to say, in an effort to explain what happens with garbage pickups after a city holiday, the agency may have devised one of the most confusing visual aids on record.

The simple text-based explanation of holidays and garbage pickups goes like this: After a holiday when the city does not pick up trash, the trucks will come by one day later than usual. Is that so complicated? Apparently DPW wanted to make absolutely certain no one could actually figure out such a simple concept and will be sending this “slide guide” postcard to all city residents:

How silly of me to think the simple explanation would make sense to most people. Somehow, the statement of DPW Director William O. Howland Jr. included in the press release announcing the slide guide works a bit better. “Every week, we collect from 110,000 households, and when a holiday occurs, trash and recycling collections ’slide’ to the next day,” he said.

Take a close look at D.C. streets these days. At times specified for street-sweeping, you’ll find huge swaths of open parking spaces, presumably to make way for those orange Department of Public Works machines that gobble up leaves and debris.

But guess what: Those machines take the winter off. And ticket writers don’t enforce the parking restrictions, either. According to a DPW press release, there’ll be no tickets for street-sweeping violations until April 2.

So, if the rules aren’t in force, why are so many people complying with them? That’s DPW’s fault. Sure, they issue press releases and some media outlets pick up the news. But who’s really gonna burrow into the briefs on Page B8 to find this information?

The fix is obvious. DPW should just change the street-sweeping signs to say something to the following effect: “Not in effect from Dec. 1 through March 31.” If it’d be too costly to make permanent changes, hell, they could just affix some stickers.

No such luck. As a result, a lot of clueless folks are hustling their asses to move their cars by 9:30 a.m. on weekday mornings.