Monday, January 31, 2005

Drunk/Stupid People as Obstacle to H St. Improvement (& major pain in the ass)

H Street can now boast a farmers' market, a couple of sit-down restaurants, 2 decent bars, a sweet coffee shop, and 2 theater related spaces. Yet the street continues to suffer the same old very basic problems. To be specific, I'm talking about trash and the issues related to public drunkeness. Yes H Street needs more businesses (with responsible owners who take an interest in the street's potential), but business owners don't want to move into an area where they fear customers won't want to venture. So it all comes back to the trash and the drunkeness. Also, these issues are all the more aggravating because they result from daily voluntary acts by their perpetrators. I have watched a mother wipe ice cream off her son's face only to toss the napkin onto the sidewalk (instead of aiming for the trash can 15 feet away). sometimes people just don't care. You can't do much when people refuse to respect their surroundings. H Street has a lot of traffic moving through it every day, so I like to think that much of the trash comes from outsiders moving through the neighborhood. But I know this isn't always true. Sure, much of the larger scale dumping is not local, but plenty of the street trash is clearly locally produced. This a good neighborhood, full of good people, but irresponsible behavior like this brings us all down. Then I come across this report in the Post:

Drunk Man Goads Rottweiler

EIGHTH AND H STREETS NE, Jan. 13. Police asked animal control to help with a Rottweiler that a drunk man was encouraging to attack pedestrians. When an officer arrived, police said that the man did not own the dog and that they had told him to go home. The animal was held at the D.C. shelter pending contact by an owner.


I swear...not surprising at all.

No comments: