June 3rd in Oakland: Bashin' Trash with the JLDA

Well, it seems that trash-picking activities are gathering momentum in Oakland and across the bay. Just a little over a month since hundreds of volunteers picked and cleaned their way around East Oakland at the April 28 Keep Oakland Beautiful event, and following our own pick in uptown Oakland the next day, we were tipped off by stalwart trash talker & picker Claire the Extraordinaire about an annual event in her neighborhood that would be too good to miss.

Since 1999, the Jack London Neighborhood Association and in more recent years the Jack London District Association has put on an annual "Trash Bash" that brings residents in the area together to set broom and pickstick to the pavement, and remove dozens if not hundreds of pounds of plastic bits, wood pieces, cardboard scraps, empty cups and cans, cigarette butts, and all kinds of other junk from the streets--all while collecting pesky e-waste from community members too. If you want to read about all their past bashes you can see them on this page; being of the academic ilk, I'm personally a fan of their write-up of Trash Bash III in 2001, mostly because of the spiffy PDF format and their nice before-and-after pictures (see below).

We had great conversations and informal interviews with Ben Delaney, a founder of the Jack London District Association and long-term president of the association; Dan Dunkle, leader of the Radiance Oak live/work community, and long-time community advocate Gary Knecht. And we all walked away with full stomachs thanks to Steve Sacks of Prime Smoked Meats and the team of food donors and volunteers they had lined up. Tons of fun talking to you at lunch, Jamel and Lance!

And yes, because by this time we know that you're all wishing you had been there and wondering how you can find out more, we can tell you for sure that some footage from our conversations with Ben and Dan will be featured in the first episode of our TV show forthcoming via the Midpeninsula Community Media Center (expect within 6 weeks--sorry, folks, this ain't the nightly news, but we'll keep you posted).

In the meantime, and in the rest of this post, we want to shift modes from mostly language to mostly images, because they tell so much of the story of the spirit of the streets that you can come in touch with when you're out there picking with like-minded folks. A few of us took the shots below but they're right in tempo with what the folks from JLDA read from pictures like these, when they write: "While roaming the streets you may discover the answer to life, the universe and everything" (from the Trash Bash VI page). So, here's to the answers, or, at least, to the discoveries:

Here's Youki, Claire (taking picture), and a few other Trash Bash volunteers (out of view of the camera here) working the street. Before...



        and after...

And now here's Claire putting the finishing touches on this street by the 880 overpass. Looks almost picturesque, doesn't it?



     ...while Jim focuses on pickin' butts out of hard to reach places:

Now Ray models his modified trash picker's belt, replete with found tools, bags, and even chopsticks for those hard-to-reach items:



Then, after the three hours of picking was over, Ben and Dan spoke to the crowd about just how much had been accomplished:

...and everyone listened in the middle of all the eating, drinking and dancing:



Last, but not least, I have to share the second sighting of the rare bird known as a "wug" (thanks, Humphreys, for the point-out). Because, while in the days, weeks and months following a trash pick-up like this, the wind blows and more trash accumulates on the street's surface, there are discoveries made and memories formed that go much deeper.