Earlier this week, two neighbors and I took time out of our day to pick up trash along 4th Street North from 26th Street down to 24th. We brought along 3 heavy-duty garbage bags usually reserved for Clean Sweep events. Two of the three bags started to rip from the collective weight of liquor bottles we picked up. This, unfortunately, is not an exaggeration. But a funny thing happens when you walk around picking up garbage. You have a convenient excuse to spend a fair amount of time watching a block and gathering details. Heck, some of the people hanging out on the streets just assume that if we're picking up garbage we must be with Sentence to Serve or some such agency. Since the only conceivable reason to pick up litter is getting caught breaking the law, then maybe, in the eyes of the thugs, we're all right.
In the top photo, we see a crowd gathered at 326 25th Ave N, which seems to bolster the claim by Michael Bell that people at that address are part of the problem too. That contributed photo, however, was not taken during the time of the garbage pick-up. I just like the juxtaposition of the squad car in the rearview mirror.
What we did see was a slew of problem properties, owned by some familiar faces - starting with...
