Hey, who you calling a slowcoach?
I write in small notebooks that fit in my pocket.
I am careful not to lose them in case what I write is a gem. Ernest Hemingway once lost a bunch of short stories he’d written before becoming famous, and he never saw them again. I once lost half a notebook to my dog’s belly. It was probably what came out as compared with Hemingway’s stories.
The second notebook I lost went missing mysteriously, and with it my solution to Buenos Aires’ traffic problems – not the nerve-wracking jams but the dangers pedestrians face in crossing the road.
The solution, written from personal experience, went something like this, if my memory doesn’t fail me:
One day a few weeks ago I set out in the car knowing full well that hell awaited. The subway was down so most people had to commute on the streets or brave the railway after a spree of derailed trains.
I set off with time on my hands and the resolve to drive my Hyundai Elantra station wagon as I’d learned growing up in Los Angeles, the city of the car: I gave cyclists and pedestrians the right of way.
And do you know what? [click to continue reading…]
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"Ah, the joy of a clean sidewalk. If only this was Buenos Aires!"
BUENOS AIRES IS the Paris of the south. That may be true. The architecture, bustling streets and café life certainly do bear resemblance. But I have an inkling that Buenos Aires comes out on top in one thing: dog shit.
It’s everywhere.
My track record is pretty good at stepping clear. I’ve trod in shit once in my 16 years in Buenos Aires, grandly at that. It took an old toothbrush and boiling water to get it out of the treads of my running shoes. My vision of the city narrowed after that. I stopped gazing at the architectural gems and the beautiful people. I kept my eyes on the sidewalk and the paving stones to avoid the shit here, the shit there and the shit everywhere. [click to continue reading…]
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"I know, I know. It is an uphill battle to get people to pick up their dog's poop. But, I'm spreading the message."
MY SIDEWALK IS full of dog poop. Walk around my block and the worst stretch is on my corner. I pick it up and throw it out, weekly. But the dogs keep coming and the pileup grows again. It is as if dogs have declared my stretch as a dumping ground. They sniff for that perfect spot until there, right in front of my house, they find it, the very patch from yesterday. And they let it go. And their owners think nothing of leaving it behind.
Fight? Maybe.
Give in? Maybe.
Educate the careless, ill-educated, moronic and self-centered owners?
That’s a thought.
I have thought of many possibilities, from passing out plastic bags with a smile and a message: Keep Our City Clean, Pick Up the Poop. To shooting them paint guns as a sign of how they are marring the city streets. Maybe something a big more press-oriented like the late Harvey Milk’s dog poop campaign in San Francisco. Anything to raise awareness about the hazards of a shit-strewn street and the pleasures of smelling flowers on a sunny day or the damp on a rainy day, all without the stench of shit assailing the nostrils. [click to continue reading…]
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