Althouse: Do the departing college kids just throw all their crap at the curb in your town?

August 17, 2005

Do the departing college kids just throw all their crap at the curb in your town?

They do here.

ADDED: You'd think Madison would be more eco.

8 comments:

Ron said...: Our eco-czars here in A2 are also unable to do anything about the Crap Festival...maybe it's 'revolutionary tradition.'; 8/17/05, 9:22 AM
Simon Kenton said...: Yes. Then the raccoons, bears, and animal companions (dogs) that are off-leash so they can pursue their ideals of personal development all rip into it and scatter it up and down the street.

/Righteous old toot mode on/

At the end of a school year I had an elk rifle, a sleeping bag, and more textbooks than at the end of the previous year. Year after year it all fit in a 1957 Golden Dodge with a bullet hole in the upswept rightrear fender. What they leave astonishes me: stereos, computers, TVs, modular furniture, CDs, skateboards, skis, boots, parkas, all in a heap on the curb, mingled with rotting pizza shards.

From being a mommy you recollect that old folktale of the simple boy who gets the magic stick, and can tell it "Beat, Stick, beat," and it beats anyone he wants. Eventually it gets loose, starts beating him, and he forgets the command to stop it. I used to read this, of course, as a parable of what happens when you hire a divorce attorney. Now I wonder if it doesn't 'mean' our economic system.

/righteous old toot mode off/; 8/17/05, 9:24 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: You may be jumping to conclusions here...it's not clear the college kids did that. I lived in the heart of Madison's Mifflin St hippie ghetto in the 70s and never saw anything like that. I suspect it's more likely the kids put it out in good order, and then the "homeless" (much more numerous in Madison these days) came along and ripped through it for anything they could find.; 8/17/05, 10:11 AM
Skewed Left said...: When I was at the University of Pittsburgh, the South Oakland sidewalks could get pretty gross. A lot of old furniture and other junk would make it's way to the curb but fortunately the City of Pittsburgh would do a great job picking up almost everything.

The worst were the piles of trash. No one - and I mean no one - had a trash can. It was just bags and bags of garbage stacked up on the sidewalk in front of the houses converted into apartments. The stacks would fall over into the sidewalk and block the path and the leaking beer out of the bags smelled absolutely awful on a hot day in early September. Flies were EVERYWHERE - ugh.

Fortunately, not so bad here in Raleigh near NC State. I guess the kids that live up above Hillsborough St. have a little more common sense. Thank goodness, because stale beer in the Southern heat would just be awful. We have twice-a-week pickup in the city, as opposed to once a week in Pittsburgh, so I guess that helps. We also have more apartment complexes - but the trash left at the complex dumpsters sometimes looks like those pics from Madison.; 8/17/05, 10:30 AM
sean said...: O, come on! Weren't you young and irresponsible once? I sure was. You (Anne) are too young to be turning into a curmudgeon. If you choose to live near students, you must take the costs (noisy, irresponsible neighbors) with the benefits (all night services, lots of attractive young people around etc.)

As to the eco angle, although the young are exempt from some vices, hypocrisy, self-righteousness and moral narcissism afflict them just as much as they afflict us elders.; 8/17/05, 11:13 AM
Ruth Anne Adams said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/17/05, 11:57 AM
KCFleming said...: It's usually easier to fight poverty in Africa (watch a TV concert, send a donation), than it is to behave as a mature adult in your own backyard.

Being a student is no excuse for trashing a neighborhood. Nor is it curmudgeonly to point out that these young people, many no doubt raging against the machine, are pigs. Fine them, and fine their landlords.; 8/17/05, 3:19 PM
Ang said...: Sean: "All night services?"

You're not from Madison, are you?; 8/17/05, 6:24 PM