On Fri, May 09, 2003 at 08:00:46PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
Why would a "clean and sober" person (I'll call them this instead of "gentrified") want to go dig in the dirt where the dogs have crapped, where the addicts have shot up, and where their best tomatoes and zuchinis and whatnot get filched by the bums and addicts?
Yep. The decrepit "community garden" that I can see from my window is next to a shady area with park benches and picnic tables. That corner would be pleasant except for the constant homeless presence. In the spring and the fall, there are guaranteed to be homeless people sleeping on the benches. For whatever reason, in the summer they seem to sleep about 50' downslope toward Rock Creek Park, and in the winter they must find a warmer downtown grate to sleep on; I don't know. This despite the fact that the park is supposed to be closed at 10-11 pm or so. There's also a basketball court in the park, which during the summer time is a magnet for the youth from the less-gentrified area a few blocks away. The sound of a basketball bouncing and the assorted whooping and yelling carries pretty far on a quiet summer night at 2 am. Again, so much for posted closing time. There's also a soccer field, which because it's raining hard right now is a muddy swamp that will take a week to drain. Thanks to modern municipal efficiency, the grass has never been replanted and so it's mostly dirt, unfit for a real soccer game. And this is just at the beginning of the summer sports season too, so it'll just get worse. In the mornings, the park is used as an offleash dog run by local militant dog owners, with the predictable watch-where-you-step results. This despite supposedly strict rules against having dogs off leash in the city. The park is a convenient short cut from people living on Rep. Gary Condit's old street and walking to the Metro to go to work in the morning -- which overlaps with Dog Exercise Time. So dogs inevitably run after and bark at the people trying to get to work, which normally isn't a big deal, but you have some people who are really afraid of dogs or you have a small person and a really big dog, with the inevitable shouting matches and hard feelings arising between pedestrians and dog owners who can't or won't control their pets. I've only seen the police drive by the park once during DET, which prompted the dog owners to quickly leash their pets and then unleash them about 10 minutes after the drive by was complete. Anyway, I suspect these problems are hardly unique to this bit of our nation's capital. To go back to the community garden discussion point, yes, who would want to raise veggies in your "plot" when the area is already spoken for by dogs looking for a place to take a dump, soccer players stomping through your plants trying to find their ball, and homeless men looking for a midnight snack? -Declan