Tag: trash

Van Nuys, Tijuana.

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North of Victory, along such streets as Langdon and Orion, there are beautiful homes, lovingly maintained, with lush plantings and comely architecture.

But out on Sepulveda, between Lemay and Haynes, the meridian that breaks along the west side is like a hellish scene out of Tijuana. There are discarded toilets, papers and plastics, cans and bottles, televisions, even a picture of a holy saint thrown down like so much garbage.

Trash

What civilized place would permit the public areas to look this deplorable? Have we no pride or self-respect at all?

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Wendy’s: 6181 Sepulveda, Van Nuys, CA

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The parking lot at Wendy’s (6181 Sepulveda at Erwin) is full of trash. It has been that way for many months.

The scene: shopping baskets full of garbage, discarded clothes, fast food containers, and all the litter that a Wendy’s can produce.

Conversations with the man who cleans the parking lot at Wendy’s, along with a visit to an employee at Wendy’s has produced no results. They tell me that the responsibility for cleaning belongs to LA Fitness Van Nuys, even though the towing signs along the cinderblock are all “Wendy’s”.

LA Fitness takes care of everything in their newly paved area, but Wendy’s takes care of nothing except what is directly around the sidewalks on their building perimeter.

Why is this tolerated?

Sheer laziness and neglect and the refusal to take responsibility and pride: that is Wendy’s doing.

The victims are anyone who lives in Van Nuys and the surrounding community.

Waiting for the Bus on Sepulveda

Posted in Transportation, Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Bus Stop Crebelley, Vaud, Switzerland © 2013 Gerald Verdon
Bus Stop
Crebelley, Vaud, Switzerland
© 2013 Gerald Verdon

Later this year, friends and family from Zurich, Switzerland will visit here in Van Nuys. In that lovely nation public transport is dignified, clean, cheap and abundant. (see photo above)

The visitors will see Los Angeles with Swiss eyes, a city where trash sits on Sepulveda in both human and inhuman formations. Only Disneyland and Magic Mountain will come close to presenting an ideal city. That’s our American dream.

But for the bus riders who must wait in the sun, without protection, for 30 or 45 or 60 minutes, before a bus arrives, for these people trudging up to work at low paying jobs putting bagels into bags, or unloading boxes, imagine how their day starts before work?

Imagine they must sit here at the beginning and sometimes the end of their day. And think of what this says about Los Angeles, that our bus system is so neglected that people are treated no better than garbage.

What do Mayor Garcetti and Councilwoman Nury Martinez plan to do about this?

734 Bus at Sepulveda and Busway, Van Nuys, CA. By Andy Hurvitz
734 Bus at Sepulveda and Busway, Van Nuys, CA. By Andy Hurvitz

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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.

LA Fitness Van Nuys.

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Fast-food wrappers and soda containers litter the parking lot of the LA Fitness on Sepulveda in Van Nuys.

For at least five months, discarded lumber, illegally dumped, has lain scattered.  Members on their way to step class or leaving the gym scarf down burgers, fries and dump their refuse right on the pavement.

The culture of Van Nuys.

 

River of Plastic/ Rio de Plastico

Posted in EnvironmentTagged , , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Riding my bike around the Sepulveda Basin today, I was startled and sickened to see a river lined with trash.

Plastic bags literally covered every branch, every limb, and every single tree along both sides of the banks; devouring, like some gruesome movie monster, nature.

The amount of garbage is so extreme, so massive, so overpowering, that the camera’s lens is unable to completely capture the visual tragedy.  Like Haiti after its quake, a photographer must decide whether to shoot wide angle, thus diminishing the particular atrocity, or to go close-up, possibly denying the vast destruction all around. I shot these images both far and close to record the appalling filth and criminal neglect of the river.

There are other sections of the LA River, formerly encased in concrete, now undergoing naturalization. This area of the river, which meanders gently through the San Fernando Valley acts as a flood basin and wildlife preserve.

The City of Los Angeles has abrogated its moral and legal responsibility by allowing and ignoring this environmental catastrophe.

One weekend of box office receipts, from the theaters showing AVATAR in the nation of Moldavia, would probably be enough to pay for a LA River clean-up. Two weeks of Ellen DeGeneres’ paychecks might finance the annual salary of 20 city workers assigned to protect the river. 1/44th of suspected comedian Conan O’Brien’s $44 million dollar pay out might save the lives of thousands of birds.

The pictures on this page were shot around Balboa Boulevard in Encino.