Naples, Italy has been suffering from a terrible trash pile up. Basically all the dumps are full and the city administration essentially locked up on how to fix the problem. Read the New York Times article for the full story.

These property owners in the 1200 block of 9th street don't care about local rules and regulations to clean and secure their vacant properties. I'm going to contact them all about getting this fixed and will share as I learn more.

1216 9th Street - Stairwell (listed as vacant)

1226 9th Street - Broken Window

1226 9th Street - Unsecured Doorway

1230 9th Street - Stairwell (listed as vacant)

Treebox Vodka highlighted in today's Washington Post. That's right Mom and Dad I'm in the Washington Post. Be proud. They even staged a funny photo of me in front of the damn mattresses that sometimes litter the streets.

The article appears in today's Sunday Source called Blogging The Block, written by Christina Antoniades. They showcased 4 blogs from the area and included me in a call-out feature about starting your own blog.

The DC Service Request Center is an online tool allowing you to request government services. I've had pretty good success with requesting large haul trash pick-ups that I'm unable to do myself. The negative side to the tool is there is no feedback loop. For example if they are unable to service the request it doesn't tell you why or what the next steps should be.

All in all, it's a great start and a good resource to help keep the city clean. I hope the Mayor's office continues to fund this program and further develop the tool.

Below is a list of all the services that can be requested (sorry about the fuzzy screenshot):

After I posted earlier on the 9th street places, I decided to quit being a complainer on my little soapbox here and get pro-active. So I looked up each property in the DC property sales database and found the contact information for each place. Then I wrote a personal letter with photos of each place and asked if they would take care of the problems as soon as possible. (Thanks to MS Word for letter templates, as it's been years since I've created an actual letter). These were mailed on Monday morning to each contact and since then most of the issues have been cleaned up or at least started.

So, please do the same with other negligent property owners in the city. A letter might just help to get things kick-started. Obviously we know some places will require more then that - but it's a start for some of these places.

Here's the progress and the before/after photos.

[before] 1216 9th Street - Stairwell (listed as vacant)

[after] Notice the beer can already lingering there.

[before] 1226 9th Street - Unsecured Doorway

[after] Secured it with a new door and cleaned up the stairs. Still needs a bit of work.

[before] 1230 9th Street - Stairwell (listed as vacant)

[after] Much nicer. (ready to be filled up again)

This weekend the office of Jack Evans and DC Department of Public Works are sponsoring a graffiti clean-up event in the Logan neighborhood. This is your chance to paint over those Nehi and Inca tags that are everywhere. DPW will supply sprayers and paint.

The Details:
Gather at: Thomas Circle (Washington Plaza Hotel)
Time: 10 AM
Bring: Work Gloves

This info was sent via Jack Evans weekly newsletter:

This Saturday, June 16 beginning at 9:00 am (not 10:00 am as previously reported), Evans will set out with paint brush and power gun to erase the graffiti that has plagued the neighborhoods of Dupont Circle, Logan Circle and Shaw.

Those interested in participating in this clean-up effort should meet at the following locations at 9:00 am:

* Dupont Circle - Dupont Circle Resource Center, 9 Dupont Circle, NW;
* Logan Circle - Thomas Circle; and
* Shaw - The Green Team continue to do a tremendous job in Shaw with graffiti removal. Hats off to the Green Team for helping to keep Shaw graffiti free.

Although Evans has closed the list for this weekend's clean up, he continues to ask Ward 2 residents to identify unsightly graffiti sites. If you have locations, contact your respective ANC liaison (ANC 2B - Michele Molotsky, ANC 2C - Windy Abdul-Rahim and ANC 2F - Sean Metcalf) from his office at 727-8058 or send him an email at jackevans@dccouncil.us with "Ward 2 Graffiti Removal Taskforce" as the subject.

--

So it looks like there is no clean-up in Shaw as that task has been delegated to the Green Team.

--

Email here to sign-up for Jack Evan's weekly newsletter.

DC Urban Gardner's announced in their June 15th newsletter that they are looking for bloggers to help them cover or submit stories about local green projects. And they are looking for help on their website to update calendars, links, etc... about green projects across the city.

Read their newsletter for more details and other local news.

Last Saturday was the Logan/Dupont graffiti clean-up. I've included some photos below of the event and some of the tags that were cleaned up. My wife and I were part of the Logan clean-up and we got some spots along 14th street and a bunch of buildings in an alley-way behind 14th/Rhode Island area.

This event illustrated to me that the graffiti clean-up process is a huge uphill battle. We had about 10 volunteers and resources from the Department of Public Works, but only made a small little dent in the graffiti. Business owners need to be more vigilant and continue to clean up graffiti as soon as it hits their building.

I love how these treeboxes have become trash cans for people. I'm sure there are plenty more like this around the area, I captured these two this morning on my way to work. Should be nice weather this weekend - so grab the work gloves and clean up these rogue trash cans.

I know I've been slacking here at Treebox (it's just so humid to really be outside). Don't worry though - there's still plenty of trash out there. This type of hyper-local, neighborhood blog can be relatively hard to keep up. Especially with this topic of trash, litter and the such - there's only so many angles to the issue. Anyway, feel free to drop a comment or send me an email about any topics of interest that you think should be covered here. I'd love to hear what others think about this issue.

Here's a roundup of what else is going on, regarding city development on the neighborhood blogs:

• Stay up to date with the Shiloh Properties


• Vacant Property Hearing - June 3


• Conversation about Shaw development (Off Seventh)

And, just to show that I haven't been totally slacking. I did capture this recently. The vacuum collection over near 8th & Q streets. Is this still around?