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.

Trash Bash 2012 with JLDA on Sunday!

image from JLDA site--click to visit

Hi folks, ready for a little pickin' fun this weekend? Join us as we join the Jack London District Association for their annual Trash Bash event, featuring a few hours of picking, free lunch, and a trash Art Show in the early afternoon. Yeah! RSVP on their site to make sure you get a free lunch, & we'll post more info soon...event flyer? pick challenge? trash quiz? who knows what might happen when a group of wily pickers gets together...

Before You Just Do It by silly.millions

This is a song about many things..some of these things we all need to consider, think about, question, and act on.....it was written in 1991 and performed by the swamp zombies in Huntington Beach, CA.  lyrics by t-ray vogelzang

 when do you listen to shoes
   to tell you what to do

my shoes tell me nothing
my shoes just keep walking

when did all this pavement get laid
weren't feet meant to walk on the earth

my feet wanna feel the sand
the mud and grassland


Almost 20 years later, this song re-emerges as a possible theme song for the Talkin' Trash with Ray & Dave Community Access tv series....

its basic commentary focuses on the individual human being in relation to the non-human corporate machine...


'listening to shoes' in the song refers to Nike shoes....who has always been telling us to JUST DO IT...
but why should we....
let's think for ourselves before we just do it...


what do you think?  

Amplifying the pick with the Sea Scavenger Conservancy, May 12 2012

Yesterday Youki & I hopped on BART so we could join up with Lorraine Palmer and the Sea Scavenger Conservancy for their monthly industrial shoreline cleanup. We were expecting to be down on the rocks with our toes almost dangling in the water by Mission Bay or further south, but yesterday the schedule brought us to the stretch of the Embarcadero between Pier 40 and the Bay Bridge--"from plate to gate", as Lorraine said.

We could try to report back on every bottle cap and cigarette butt, every plastic wrapper and empty chip bag, every bottle of booze and torn piece of fabric, every lone shoe and single-use dental floss--and so on and so forth--that we picked off the ground and put into the big lined malt bags that SSC uses for picking. Actually, these bags are worth a post by themselves--they're perfect! Easy to carry, tough, big, and as Lorraine showed us, having a liner lets you keep the occasional little treasure separate when you don't want to toss it in along with the rest. And you'll find lots of little treasures when you're out on the pick long enough.

Yup, we could report on that stuff. And sure, hopefully we did help keep a few (dozen) pounds of plastic and other junk out of the SF bay. One thing we definitely did was to meet some cool regular volunteers and others who were just discovering the joys of picking after signing up through the volunteer placement organization, One Brick. Those little things--and for us the mini talkin' trash team getting joined by Hsinyu who BARTed over from Berkeley in the middle of the pick--give you inspiration, and help you learn about the place you're in too.

Yeah, we could try to report on everything. But after looking at the bay, and the ocean, while you put one little piece of trash after the other into your bag, it's also pretty easy to feel overwhelmed. It's too much for a few pickers, or ten, or even a hundred to do. How, I've been wondering since yesterday, inspired by the spirit of all the volunteers, do you not only amplify the efforts you're making (getting more and more people interested, picking up more and more trash), but also to make efforts that take place in one place in one time by one group of people stand up and speak further, longer, and with another audience? Even after the wind has picked up and the empty chip bags over there blow back onto the sidewalk we just cleaned....

Here's one idea. Try clicking on the blue lines and the little colored pushpins on the map below. See the half mile along the Embarcadero where all the Sea Scavenger Conservancy volunteers picked bags of stuff off the streets, out of fences and bushes? See the picture of the mystery schedule that Zack guessed was for training truck drivers? See the sewer cover where I tried to fish out some paper and plastic (luckily didn't lose the stick down there, whew)? See all the places where more pins could be added, telling the stories and showing the sights? If you were on the pick, and heck, even if you weren't, you can add to this map too...click it...go there...drop a pin...make it grow...


View Sea Scavenger Conservancy 5/12/12 Embarcadero pick in a larger map

Looking back on this pick, looking forward to the next...

finding trash with heart...

Well, we have to say that our trash pick in uptown Oakland and over to Lake Merritt on Sunday afternoon was pretty much as awesome as trash-picking can get. Good conversations, thought-provoking finds, a public poetry reading and, oh yeah, lots of trash cleaned from the streets! Altogether we were seven volunteers and spent almost three solid hours cleaning and bagging trash, and chronicling some of these experiences, thanks to our steady cameraman Mike.

There's lots more to say of course but instead of my trying to summarize it I wonder: if you were on the pick, what's one memorable experience you had? Connection you made? Thing you found? Picking technique you developed? Or other memorable aspect of the afternoon?

And if you weren't on the pick, but were there in spirit or involved in picking somewhere else, we'd love to hear your pickin' thoughts too!

Uptown Oakland trash pick on April 29

Even though there were hundreds of volunteers picking yesterday for the big National Day of Action via Keep America Beautiful (see the link in our blogroll), apparently there is still some trash left on the streets of Oakland. We're gonna hit the streets with Claire, Jim, Mike, and anyone else who'd like to pick. Meet Sunday the 29th at 1pm right in front of Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, at the corner of 18th and Telegraph Ave., next to the Fox Theater, and a super short walk from the 19th street BART station. From there we'll go toward Lake Merritt...welcome all, join the pick & smile...


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Investing in the Fillmore

We were glad to see this article on the Fillmore, just down the street from Ray's place...: "S.F. Mayor Lee and Supervisor Olague Announce Increased Investment in the Fillmore"