PAY ME IN SHINY THINGS

There are crows on my way to work. I always see them as something positive. It's the perky cock-of-the-walk strut they have when they walk along suburban sidewalks. "Hey hey hey, what's up? Look at me, this is MY road." They own the place, and don't care who knows it. Which is amazing when you remember that there are other birds, who may feel that they too deserve part of the action.

If you're a crow, you probably think that your diet is just fine.

Many humans seem to thrive on it also. Junkfood, carrion, questionable things.

It's only a matter of time before they start lining up outside Starbucks in the morning for a wake-up cup of Joe. And don't you dare get their names wrong, bitch.


This means that coffee chains will have to open up locations in some mighty strange places. Soon followed by burger joints and sellers of the New York Times. Which necessarily must also mean garbage cans there too, because we can't have litter there.
Compost, recyclables, discarded couches.
Used pipe cleaners.

The city fathers and mothers of San Francisco very probably esteem the crows and other junkfood eaters more highly than the denizens of Chinatown, because garbage pick-up is markedly lax there, and there are only two public garbage receptacles that I know of in the neighborhood, both near the shiny new Portsmouth Square public convenience.
Obviously for the benefit of tourists.

There used to be a third one near an opportunity for lunch. I'd often go there to discard a used pipe cleaner, now I have to look for any private bin marked "residual waste".
Tourists, as is well known, do not have used pipecleaners.
Nor discard them properly after use.
Slobs, I tell you.

If you want to know why your storm drain is not presently draining storm, it's because of all the used pipe cleaners. A clean pipe is a happy pipe. Remember that.
I could, I suppose, hand them to a random tourist.
"Here, Sparky, take this! It's for you!"
Welcome to SF.



The picture above represents Grant Avenue after the storms when all the storm drains are all clogged with used pipe cleaners deposited there because you didn't provide public garbage receptacles and damned well refuse to arrange adequate garbage removal.
Think of that the next time conventioneers complain.



By the way, the primary reason that there are trash cans in Portsmouth Square may in fact be because politicians speechify there when they desperately need votes and adulation, and it would not do for people to dump the helpful campaign literature on the ground while they're still talking. Very bad optics; they arranged for press coverage.




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