Tag: Raymer St.

The Festival of Garbage

Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

For anyone who lives in Van Nuys, and has not lately visited Raymer St. between Kester and Van Nuys Bl., the Festival of Garbage is now in full display.

Dumped along the median from the bridge to the boulevard are tons of trash. It is perhaps the filthiest, most appalling and most wretched scene of degradation in the entire city of Los Angeles.

Calcutta looks like Beverly Hills compared to this.

Across from the sanitation crisis is a large recycling center, an irony that one might analogize to having an indifferent fire department next door to a burning building. If you are in the business of collecting refuse, how can you refuse to clean up the area around your business?

Adding to the criminality of the area, dozens of unhitched trucking trailers are parked along the road, taking up space, and attached to no moving vehicles.

The bridge over the railroad tracks has been, naturally, taken over by the homeless who live under, in and on top of the structure. They cross on foot over the tracks where Metrolink speeds by a few times an hour.

Does Los Angeles have any measure of pride? How does the city allow this tsunami of trash?

Who is responsible for this mess?

I vote for Councilwoman Nury Martinez and Mayor Eric Garcetti.

The Wasteland.

Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

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After depositing an old, fat 1994 television at SCV Recycling (14658 Raymer St. Van Nuys, CA 91405), a thriving and well-run recycling center, we drove out onto the wasteland that is Raymer Street between Kester and Van Nuys Boulevard.

Seemingly enticed by the nearby recycling facility, the median between the road and the railroad has become a vast, out-of-control, 24/7 dumping ground for trash, especially electronics. The sight of so much garbage recalls those National Geographic photos of impoverished India in the 1960s or 70s.

45 years ago poor people in the Third World lived in boxes, and the San Fernando Valley produced cars, well-educated students, affordable housing, advanced electronics and defense weaponry. Now it’s the reverse.

Perhaps La Nueva Councilwoman Nury Martinez will devote some energies and order a clean-up of this blight.

People who imagine that Van Nuys can be brightened by hanging some tinsel from trees surely will be sobered by the reality that this is what reality really looks like.