I swept in front of the house Saturday morning, and then went to the Fortunata’s Bumrush. When I got home 4 hours later, there was a fresh accumulation of litter behind my fence and a notice of violation from the Environmental Control Board. Luis snatched it off the gate — “Are you fucking kidding me?” — and handed it to me. I am constantly fighting the waves of random trash that plague my street. Most days, sweeping once a day is enough, but sometimes the trash is relentless.

There’s something really perverse about ticketing property owners without bothering to use common sense. Overflowing trash cans with no lids are an obvious problem, and I can understand a citation in that case. A few scraps of trash on the ground right near my trash cans with their lids snapped on tight, arranged in such a way that it is obvious to anyone who uses their rational faculties for a split second that it was blown in from outside, is not grounds for a violation. Not a single scrap of trash in front of my house was generated in my house. Fining me for not being fast enough with the broom is punishing the victim. It’s like prosecuting a rape victim for public lewdness.

A guy who has owned a house around the corner for 15 years told me they once fined him for a single piece of paper in the gutter. When he went to court to appeal, they told him that if he loses, he has to pay $300 instead of $100. Not being a gambling man, he paid the $100 fine. I wasn’t planning on appealing, but then I remembered that we have a copy of a dismissal of a similar fine won by the previous owners of our place last year. They swept twice a day and still got a violation, which was overturned by a reasonable judge. I figured I’d send a copy of that in with my own letter explaining the situation: that it is impossible to keep the front of the house litter-free at all times, especially on such a high-traffic street.

It’s clear that sanitation cops are not interested in what’s fair or what’s logical — salaries have to get paid and positions have to be justified, after all, and slapping fines with a pain-in-the-ass appeal process on homeowners is a great way to get that money flowing in.

Last night after work I cleaned the kitchen and took the trash out. When I got outside, I decided to sweep the front of the house: trash area, sidewalk, gutter, tree pit — I even swept part of the sidewalk in front of the neighbors’. I think I was kind of hepped up on all the caffeine I had had throughout the day and needed to burn it off. I picked up every last cigarette butt, quarter water container, and Doritos bag and put it in the bag I was putting on the curb. Shit was sparkling. As I swept up the last heap of trash in the gutter, squatting between two cars, I realized that there was a dollar among the refuse. Kinda nasty, but far be it from me to leave money on the ground.

I guess my class privilege (aka, desire not to live in filth) handed me that extra buck. Hm?

My yard is no stranger to trash. It’s a good 2 feet higher than the neighbors’ because of the three decades of household trash tossed into the soil as a sort of emulsifier. But we have cleaned the top layer and laid a patio and garden in a small corner of it, and I’m annoyed when I have to pick up new trash.

But one day a couple weeks ago I couldn’t help but be amused by the out-of-the-ordinary refuse I found as I let the dog out — one pair of pink panties, one open package of lube, and one big, fat, gushy condom full of milky sperm. I usually pick up the trash around my house barehanded, but I wasn’t touching that shit. So I went inside to get a paper towel, and when I came out, my housemates had let their dogs out — and the condom had mysteriously disappeared. I assume it was the big ridgeback-mix puppy who, uh, cleaned it up for me. Gross.

Every few days, another pair of panties sails into my yard from the building a couple doors down. That’s right, they have to make an effort to fling them over my neighbor’s yard and into mine. Like when they tossed that glue trap with a smashed mouse in it a few months back. It takes talent.

Those apartments are mostly Section 8 and stabilized. I guess now we know where the money they’re saving on rent is going — into an endless supply of new panties.

Whatever, joke’s on them — that dump will be condos in a year (like I figured months ago). Done deal.

A few neighbors have noticed that they have been hauling trash and other junk from the bodega at the corner of Central and Melrose for the past couple weeks. A source confirms that they have been evicted for allegedly selling drugs. I’m going to go with that, because I don’t see how they could really be making any money there selling groceries — who would buy food from this crumbling, squalid, stank dump? The building itself, mostly boarded up, is almost imperceptibly leaning toward the street, and I can’t imagine it will be saved.

Good riddance, shitbag bodega. You won’t be the first to go.

One of my favorite buildings in Bushwick, at the north corner of Hernández Park seems to be under repointing work. As I understand it, that’s a big ticket job.

From the People’s 311 Flickr pool.

Bloomberg isn’t just good at having the mainstream media fawn over him — now he’s got the bloggers on his side.

Last week, between blowing kisses at Bloomie, Louise from Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn wanted to know if any of us were at Bloomberg’s 311 buggie press conference.

No, no we were not. I might have been doing something more interesting…like turning my compost. I continued ignoring yet another subject I find painfully boring.

But finally, this morning, Carrie McLaren from Stay Free magazine alerted me to a project she is trying to launch: People’s 311. Fine, I’ll comment already.

My initial reaction was revulsion — 311 is just difficult enough to deal with so that you really have to be motivated to call in, generally guaranteeing the problem is big enough to even bother. But this expands the coverage and makes it nearly effortless for anyone with a camera to report every. little. infraction. — and it sort of reminds me of Cuba’s block captains. It probably doesn’t matter because the city will reject it — unions hate when people work cheaply or for free. Bad for business.

It’s not that I don’t think 311 can be useful — god knows I have used it — but I think bombarding the system with information about illegal advertising (who caaaares?) and 100-year-old peeling paint in the subways (come ON) can only dilute the effectiveness.

So what do you guys think? Is this super or Stasi?

Something I didn’t know: the neighborhood beautification organization Trees Not Trash is responsible for getting planted all of the street trees except one (probably that huge one at the corner of Bogart and Seigel) in the part of the East Williamsburg industrial area considered to be inside the Bushwick orbit. Gothamist got TNT founder Kate Gilliam to talk about how she started, her admiration for Bette Midler’s community garden activism, and ways to clean up your neighborhood.

TNT is having a benefit show this Saturday: so check it out!

I have been complaining endlessly about the lot directly next door, which over the last six months has been piled with junk cars and 10-foot-high mounds of trash and debris. Mice started to show up in our house, then the neighbor’s house. Then one day last week, a crew smashed down the fence and yanked all the cars out. The boss was complaining to one of the workers: “I haven’t seen anything this bad in 20 years.” I stuck my head out the window and asked, “Are you cleaning this whole lot out?” He said yes, and I thanked him very much. The next day, a dumpster came and a crew filled it with most of the junk in the lot. They’re not done but they made a lot of progress.

Suddenly, my housemates started sitting in the back yard. “It’s so much nicer out here without all that junk looming over you.” It really was like a dictatorship had fallen — a dictatorship of the disrespectful and the slovenly. And the mice have, surprisingly quickly, vanished. The next step will be to shove their 15-foot fence, which is encroaching on and tipping over onto my yard, over to their side.

The lesson here is, complaining does work, even in Bushwick. So use it responsibly.

Anyone have a similar story of cleaned up (or not!) junk lots?

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