By an edhat reader
Is it art or trash? Seen this morning in the Santa Barbara County Courthouse Sunken Gardens.
Art or Trash?
Anonymous
January 6, 2020, 9:49 am
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The Courthouse is art.
Thrashy Art.
Don’t touch it. Cathy and the Silly Council paid $75,000 to commission an avant-garde basket-weaving consultant who can finally increase tourism and business in the downtown area.
Our so called “mayor” Cathy and city council enable this sort of crap.
Talk to Dario Pini about illegal trash dumping. Why does he get fined, while vagrants get a free pass. Mayor Murillo, please address inequities caused by this town’s dual legal systems: one for vagrants, and one for the rest of us. What do vagrants do that is beneficial in return, that balances their continued lawless conduct?
Who wants to organize a protest where we all bring our trash cans to city hall & dump them on the front steps, then dare the police to cite us, or to even remove the trash? Apparently they wouldn’t legally be allowed to do either. Maybe that’ll help highlight the absurdity. Who wants to organize it? I don’t (too lazy), but I’d certainly participate!
Personally, I think most of the sidewalk hoarders need mental health services. Rather than complain, let’s figure out a way to get them help.
“I called Marborg and they told me that they’ve been told NOT to ever remove anything that might be the belongings of a street person.”
Well then we have a clear policy-definition problem here, because almost any piece of litter “MIGHT be the belongings of a street person. I guarantee that nearly every homeless person has, amongst their possessions, an empty coffee cup. So are empty coffee cups prohibited from being picked up? Look, i see the difficulty of having to differentiate between trash and a person’s possessions, but it’s clear that the person who leaves the empty cardboard boxes, plastic 5-gallon buckets salvaged from a local restaurant’s dumpster that once held cooking oil (and might still?), and shopping carts that he certainly didn’t buy and doesn’t own, it’s clear that he doesn’t keep these items as personal property, he just collects them to throw them on the grass where children used to play, as a big middle finger to something or other.
What the hell is going on?! This is nuts. How do we not have any respect for our public spaces? Allowing this behavior is enabling people to act worse. Clean it up Santa Barbara.
Yeah somebody should do something.
The Santa Barbara Municipal Code contains at least 100 separate ordinances regarding littering, illegal dumping, garbage, refuse, etc. You would think that our leaders would at least make an attempt to enforce some of these laws on their own land. Maybe SB city council should fine itself for noncompliance.
It would kind of be awesome to do a big “winter cleaning” of all the accumulated stuff in my rental, and just dump it on the Court House lawn while I deliberate. I may still want those chipped mugs, or maybe even the ripped napkins. Give me 72 hours, will ya? Alas, no. If I want to get rid of things, I have to pay for an extra haul, and there is no turning back once the fat, blue Marborg truck rounds the corner. Sad.
I’ll go clean it up. Should I take my pepper spray with me?
“Wanna be” art on the lawn? Trash on the side of the lawn?
It looks like the left overs from a “Save The Environment” rally !
The homeless are allowed to just collect junk and call it “personal property”. I’ve noted before that the area around the courthouse and administration building is a giant encampment filled with mentally unstable people and drug addicts. This guy in particular has been a problem for years and he seems to enjoy pissing everyone off. He loves throwing chidlike tantrums everytime someone tells him something he doesn’t like. This guy should be in a mental institution if he’s not playing a game.
And, I just heard we have a big cruise ship in town today, with lot’s of tourists.
Four years ago while walking my dog in front of the Red Cross Building on State St., between Constance and Alamar, I asked a disheveled man-who I found out later was Steve P.-to please move his two shopping carts full of trash and garbage from blocking the sidewalk so I could pass instead of having to step onto State St to walk beside park cars as traffic whizzed by.
He proceeded to scream that I was a Nazi B***, hated Jews, and I didn’t know who I was talking to because he had worked for Dan Rather at CBS News. (I found out that at one time he actually was a stringer in Florida for CBS). He proceeded to shove, scream and berate me all the way down to the corner of Alamar and State while I was talking to the police on the phone. As my dog normally sweet-natured dog was going ballistic trying to both protect me and snap at this dangerous man, I pushed back with the cane I was required to use at that time. Thank goodness for the Good Samaritan man who pulled over to ask if I was alright. Steve P immediately backed off. The police were slow to come, but they did arrive about 10 minutes later.
Officer Van Dyke was very congenial. He immediately knew who I was talking about. He said that five days prior he had thrown Steven’s 2 carts full of junk away. I requested to press charges. Officer Van Dyke asked if would I find it satisfactory if he talked to Steven P. to tell him he must never hang out in the area again. I reluctantly agreed. Officer Van Dyke gave me his card to call if I spotted the guy in the general vicinity again.
I later regretted not pressing charges because I owned a condo across from the Red Cross Building, (I’ve since moved), and was apprehensive Steven P wouldn’t respect Office Van Dyke’s strongly worded suggestion. Four three weeks prior to this incident, I had twice cleaned up garbage and trash strewn around the sunken sitting area in front of the Red Cross Building. I now realize it was this guy’s garbage. I also came to realize that several months prior, I had seen him bellowing and screaming at an obviously disturbed young woman as they walked down State St toward Alamar. He was ‘protecting her’. I asked her if she wanted me to contact the authorities. He proceeded to threaten me with a lawsuit, but said it ultimately didn’t matter as the police knew who he was and were afraid of him.
After asking around, here is what I found out. Steve P. is from LA, and has a sister who lives and works here in the medical field. He’s been given a section 8 studio but because he refuses to abide by the rules, was evicted, CHOOSING instead to live under an arch at one of the most photographed buildings in the country. If you walk through Alamar Park and look at the beautiful old stone masonry that lines the sidewalks, you’ll see his Neptune Radio Station stickers, along with other graffiti, etched into the masonry. It will take highly skilled artisans to try and restore it-that is if it can be rehabilitated.
I equivocated signing on to comment about my experience with this guy until I saw some people on this thread complain about how ‘we’ as a ‘society’ don’t care. I guess only ‘they‘ care. Rubbish. Excusing his destructive behavior is putting the onus on us. It’s a sly way to cast aspersions to any of us who have been directly or indirectly victimized by him. He is cogent enough to know to leave when another man gets out of his car to help a woman. He knows enough to never attack a young 6’2 man because of his short stature. He’s clear thinking enough to know how to try and manipulate the PD desk. He’s not hallucinating. He’s a public menace, and needs to be taken off the street and housed, under close supervision, before someone gets seriously hurt.
Is this more important than most of the issues in this world!?! You all really feel a need to chime in on this? Protest and dump more trash on the lawn, really?? Ignore reality everyone, and be distracted by this non issue! What’s wrong with us? What have we become. “Man in his infinite complacency…”
I absolutely PROMISE that if i had a pickup truck i would pull up to the curb, grab enough stuff that was obviously trash, load it into the bed, and calmly drive away. Kids were once able to picnic & play on that grass before all that dumpster trash has been able to leak its fluids into it. Sad that our city can’t solve this easily-solvable problem.
All politics are local. Yes, intentional and chronic trash dumping in public places, especially in this particularly community in this particular location, is an extremely important local issue. The act offends community sensibilities at every level. Voters can register their disgust to thelr local elected officials – both city and county.
Hey is this from the guy who, last time I was in court, was camped in the archway right outside the door? He had all his stuff lined up along the wall as if he owned it. Not knowing his mental state it made me nervous as he could be dangerous if he attacked someone. I wonder what the tourists taking pics of the courthouse thought. I found it amazing that no one was going out there and telling him he had to move out of there. Maybe they finally did so instead, he set it up here? Unbelievable.
Is the fact that people are commenting more important to you than other issues in this world? You really felt a need to chime in? Ignore reality, and be distracted by people’s comments? What is wrong with you, what have you become that you are so distracted by people being concerned and bothered by this?
This looks like Stephen’s stuff. He’s mentally ill and very intelligent. There are legal reasons (not all silly) that law enforcement must err on the side of caution when faced with this sort of nuisance stuff. I wonder if it would be more efficient for private community members to collect and remove such obvious trash on their own. The potential for that to turn into a vigilante anti-homeless gang is troubling, however, possibly seizing and dumping people’s sleeping bags and other important possessions.
This issue has been ongoing for decades. The library lawn used to be a prime location for street junk until it was fenced off for the Art Museum construction materials storage. It’s an unpleasant symptom of a more unpleasant problem — mental illness in its many forms + a society that refuses to care for its vulnerable and resource less members. Those of us who have close family or friends who are seriously mentally ill understand what a terrible and frustrating state of affairs it is. What if mental illness were regarded like other disabilities – blindness, being paraplegic, etc.? No shame or rejection, just treatment, support, acceptance and incorporation into the functioning of the community?
The SB Public Library feels safer now that they have security team. Perhaps the courthouse should hire them? It is just across the street from them.
To commit someone you have to have a place to put them. Since the State of California closed the state hospitals decades ago (“thanks,” Gov Reagan) there are very few facilities for the seriously mentally ill. The county of SB has some beds at the Psychiatric Health Facility on Camino del Remedio, there are a few beds at Cottage Hosp, the overflow have to be found available space in Ventura County or elsewhere. It gets very expensive, and there are not enough resources. Huge and complicated problem.
Mental health and homeless are big complicated problems. Not allowing trash all over our courthouse, or any public space, is not a big complicated problem. This is absolutely absurd. When will the city and county deal with this situation? When the TOTs diminish because no one will want to visit? Think this is bad? Wait until Murillo et all close State St to make it their pedestrian mall with tiny apartments and bike lanes. At this rate there will be homeless everywhere and shopping carts in the bike lanes. This is a disgrace. Have some pride in our community.
I have a pick up truck. Perhaps I should back it up to the courthouse lawn and dump my trash there instead of paying Marborg bimonthly. I pay a lot of taxes to live here, I don’t mind seeing homeless people, I mind seeing trash.
Dabbsie you show no insight into the human condition. Your exhausting narrative is about you and not society at large. Stop playing the victim and help with the improvement of society.
Don’t worry everyone, according to the unopposed Megan Harmon, here’s who’s leading your city. “We are four women. We are three people of color. We are moms and dads and grandparents to toddlers and school-aged children. We live in inter-generational and multi-generational households…”
Okay, so now what? And the “one man” didn’t even get a mention! Poor guy.