West Ridge seems to have a lot of residents and visitors who don’t know the first thing about disposing of their garbage. The messes pictured here are inexcusable and unacceptable.
Look at the 6400 block of Washtenaw, an absolute pigsty. It used to be a beautifully-maintained block, but most of the current residents and owners don’t care anymore:
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- Most parkways are a sea of garbage.
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- This fire hydrant is a magnet for bags of household garbage.
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- Why do people put their garbage under trees?
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- This mess is in front of an apartment building.
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- This filth is along the walkway to a building entrance.
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- Garbage in a gangway between two three-flats.
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- This garbage was deposited by pigs walking past the bank parking lot, too lazy to carry their garbage to their building dumpster.
Then there’s the building on the northwest corner of Devon and Fairfield. Although it has at least 12 apartments and several businesses, there’s only one dumpster, so there are messes like this:
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- Overflowing dumpster. This occurs almost every Friday and usually once during the week. The rear dumpster belongs to one of the businesses.
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- This garbage bag and its contents (or what’s left of them) has been in the alley for at least two weeks.
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- Advertising circulars pile up outside the entrance to some of the apartments.
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- Planter used as garbage dump.
It’s time for building owners and residents to clean up their acts. Now.
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Wow. I just don’t understand the level of pigs that live in that area.
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In all fairness to residents, I believe most of the trash is from people from outside the neighborhood who visit Devon Avenue. If it’s any consolation, take a look at the blocks just north or south of Devon from Damen to Kedzie, and you see the same filth.
That said, there’s no excuse for residentsof these blocks, both owners and renters. not to clean up in front of their property.
In the words of the immortal Mavis Staples, “If you don’t respect yourself, ain’t nobody gonna give a good cahoot.”
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I wish I could agree with you. Unfortunately, most of the garbage bags deposited on he parkways and tossed into the alleys comes from residents. I’ve watched people come out of their buildings garbage in hand, and toss it on parkways as they get into their cars on the way to work. I’ve seen people get out of their cars, toss a bag of fast-food garbage on the parkway, and then enter the buildings where they live. The building with the overflowing dumpster has several tenants who will dump a bag of garbage on the lid rather than raise it and put the garbage inside; others depositing trash then do the same. This morning (Saturday), there were Starbuck’s cups on and around the book deposit bins outside the library, as well as all over the street. Yes, it’s true that many visitors to the neighborhood are leaving garbage everywhere as well. Just look at the photos on my Devon Garbage Pits page.
It’s a tremendous burden to those of us who live a block north or south of Devon to have to clean up after these pigs. I pick up garbage on my block every time I walk my dogs, and sometimes by the time we get back from a walk there’s yet more garbage. One potential solution is resident-only parking on the blocks immediately south and north of Devon. Some of my neighbors have approached the alderman’s office on this and it’s been a nonstarter. Might be worth trying again.
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Mid-winter is a miserable time of year. Our neighborhood presents a weather-beaten face to the world, and the omnipresent trash looks particularly repulsive. It’s clear that residents and businesses on Devon, and blocks north and south, lack the moral sense to clean up their properties and their homes. So, when I walk the neighborhood (primarily north of Albion), I carry a bag with me and pick up the big pieces of litter I spot; sometimes smaller stuff. When spring arrives and our neighborhood looks green again, the trash doesn’t accumulate with the persistence it does during winter. Or maybe it doesn’t look as repulsive in the spring.
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