dumpster rental

(in response to a query on the UC Neighbors List)

When I first moved to the University City Village 25 years ago in June from the Big Apple, I was excited about all of the innovative trash removal initiatives I had heard were happening in Philadelphia. In New York I had had a cheap (rent controlled) and cozy one-bedroom apartment in the barrio just south of Columbia University. When I had moved into *that* apartment several years before, there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air. It was just after the Nicaraguan revolution and somebody had scrawled the graffito "Celebremos la muerte del perro Somoza!" ("Let us celebrate the death of the dog Somoza!") in red paint on the side wall of my building.

For those of you who have forgotten that heady time, the dictator Anastasio Somoza was overthrown by the Sandanistas in 1979 and denied exile in Miami by Jimmy Carter. He wound up in Paraguay where he was assassinated in the fall of 1980.

At any rate, in New York, trash disposal was a simple matter of opening the window and heaving the garbage out into the communal courtyard where the hogs and goats readily devoured almost anything and everything and the rats ate the leftover plastic and electronic components. This was of course in the days before the rise of recycling and personal computers.

Shortly before moving to West Philly I had read in the Times about the innovative although still unrefined Philadelphia system of dumping napalm from municipal helicopters. I understood that there were still some kinks in the system, since in addition to incinerating the trash, the city frequently burned women and children to a crisp, but I was hoping that by the time I arrived in June those little details would have been ironed out.

Unfortunately it was not to be. However, I was pleased to find that a rural Amish Druid Liberation Front commune was in the habit of collecting food scraps on alternate Tuesdays. They provided big metal dumpsters with a picture of Mr. Natural or cheery slogans emblazoned on the side.

Other vegetable compost was in high demand by the nascent urban gardening movement, and at that time they paid top dollar for compostables by the square foot. Solid trash was no problem -- I soon discovered that neighbors simply put their used stuff on the sidewalk out front and it miraculously disappeared. More penny-wise neighbors saved up their junk until spring and then held a "Porch Sale", when other neighbors would come by and purchase their junk, hoard it in their attics until the spring of next year, when they would haul it out to their porches and hold yet another "Porch Sale". It was a primitive but resourceful type of recycling, in the days when the city had not yet caught on to the value of all this used stuff.

I forget which year it was that Kyle Cassidy arrived in the hood, but it soon became clear that his side yard was a welcome dumping spot for unrecyclable heavy metals, dangerous chemicals and construction debris. Word on the street was that Cassidy used the metals and chemicals as fertilizer for his hydroponic hibiscus plants which, BTW, if you've never smoked Cassidy's hibiscus, well then you've never gotten stoned at all. It's probably best to check with Cassidy whether this system is still current, since soon after he moved here something snapped in his frontal cortex and he began investing heavily in shotguns, Mauzers, Bulgarian Shipkas, and M60 machine guns.

Dead possums, rats, ferrets, feral cats, or raccoons trapped in the attic or between partitions, and dead skunks and other neighborhood roadkill were always welcome in the kitchen of the old Abbraccio Restaurant, where Roger Harman's chefs performed absolute miracles with their exotic herbs, spices and sauces.

But I digress. As to finding dumpsters IN the phone book, you probably won't have much luck, even with the mammoth tomes known as the Philly Phone Book. I know that there is now a pedicycle service that hauls trash. Some of the more "cutting edge" neighborhood hipsters set up clawfoot bathtubs in their backyard, fill them with a concoction of lye, mercury, and vodka, and dump a few piranhas in for good measure. This BTW is also good for disposal of those human body parts that are so hard to know what to do with. Gary Heidnik used to keep them in a freezer in the basement with a few girls in chains, but that was before the gentrification of the hood.

--Ross Bender